Regarding terrain texturing

[WhiteHyena]

Bit of an open question here. Just in the planning stages of putting together an iPhone game and thought I'd try and get some input. My issue at the moment is that I'm not too sure how to tackle the terrain and I'm wondering how other people have tackled it? Game would be a 3rd person shooter, of sorts :P

My main concearn at the moment would be how to blend textures, if it's possible- going from grass to a path, grass to stone and so on. The only idea I've really had to tackle the problem so far is just to have one generic 'floor' texture like grass or something, then layer everything on top of it either as meshes or textured planes.

Any advice? Cheers.

[Graylord]

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Landscape.html

[Tilluss]

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Landscape.html

I didn't think Landscape was part of mobile UDK.

EDIT: Just checked and it doesn't work in mobile UDK

[WhiteHyena]

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Landscape.html

Yeah that dosen't help me even slightly, I am posting in the iOS section, remember? :P If the terrain tools worked then of coursse I'd use them.. but they don't, hence why I'm asking for how others go about it.

[Graylord]

Oh, I wasn't aware I had stumbled into the iOS section.

[Xenobite]

you could make a terrain mesh in UDK and export it into some 3d program where you can split it into smaller parts so you can use distance culling for better performance (combined with fog it can give really huge performnace improvements with minimal visual impact)

now about materials
you can use vertex blending in mobile material to blend few different textures but because you can use 2 textures only (I think) - you might also prepare UV layouts / apply local materials in 3d program where you can use

(for example you are using 3 texture types - dirt / rock / grass)

single textured materials:
1 dirt
2 rock
3 grass

blended versions:

4 1+2 - dirt+rock
5 1+3 - dirt+grass
6 2+3 - rock+grass

unfortunately I just started playing with mobile materials so I don't know how to use vertex blending (I think it is faster than using another texture to blend these)

with some local manipulation on UVs you can also add some local rotation of textures and such

btw terrains work as invisible collision on IOS (tested on iphone) - didn't yet make some performance tests to see if they take too much of processing speed