Terrain dilemma

[bntheman]

Hi guys and gal's. I have a dimmea that I cannot resolve. My game that I am focusing on requires to include a high school football stadium, which means that it is an open field and connected to the back of the school's ground. Something like this... http://currentinwestfield.com/wp-con...endering-2.jpg I thought I could make my terrain start from the back of the school to the end of where the trees meet behind the football stadium and add an opacity material layer to the the terrain. However, it seems that the terrain layer tool does not support opacity materials. So I tried making one 512x512 texture map, which came out to be a bad idea as the result was very blurry. I then tried using a decal, but in order for the decal to fit to the size of the terrain, I had to up the width and height drastically, which caused terrible z-fighting.
The hardest part is that I cannot just slap a grass layer and a dirt layer, like most tutorials I have looked at. I actually needed to use Illustrator to design the outer running track, the high school mascot, and the yardage lines and numbers. I then used Photoshop to make the opacity masks for blending. I would love to do this in 3ds Max, but I hate its sculpting tools, and I would like to use UDK's tree tool. Does anyone have any tips or ideas?

[meowcat]

I don't really use UDK at all these days, so obviously my advice is NOT based on a lot of map making experience but here is my suggestion (perhaps you are already doing this and I'm just misinterpreting your post). Model the track, and playing field and texture them separately (for the field you could probably make some modular pieces that could be fit together to make a near-seamless blends or just use some material combination of a tiled high-res grass with the lower-res white line markings etc; the track could probably be made using some standard tools in 3DSmax for curved surfaces using a tiled texture). I think that the terrain tool had a way of turning off/hiding subsections/squares, so just hide the sections that are underneath the field/track model.

[bntheman]

I don't really use UDK at all these days, so obviously my advice is NOT based on a lot of map making experience but here is my suggestion (perhaps you are already doing this and I'm just misinterpreting your post). Model the track, and playing field and texture them separately (for the field you could probably make some modular pieces that could be fit together to make a near-seamless blends or just use some material combination of a tiled high-res grass with the lower-res white line markings etc; the track could probably be made using some standard tools in 3DSmax for curved surfaces using a tiled texture). I think that the terrain tool had a way of turning off/hiding subsections/squares, so just hide the sections that are underneath the field/track model.

Meocat, I like your idea. I was really banging my head because, I kept thinking since a football field is played on flat a ground and a terrain is a type of ground, that would of been the best solution. However, I did not know the troubles that I was going to get into. Also, I actually think I can still texture the running track and with the mascot logo, team name at the goal ends, and the white lines and numbers as one texture. Then it should be possible to add a lerp between that texture and the tiling grass texture/dirt. Even better yet, possibly do vertex color blending, since it would be then a static mesh as oppose to my drawbacks with the terrain.

[gaz661]

I would make the field from static meshes and either use multiple materials on the mesh or split the mesh into separate colour pieces.no need for terrain or landscape in your scenario.

edit:and use quite a dtailed mesh so you can use vertex painting to its fullest.(patches of worn grass etc)

[bntheman]

I would make the field from static meshes and either use multiple materials on the mesh or split the mesh into separate colour pieces.no need for terrain or landscape in your scenario....

gaz, I appologize for not being clear. I should of mentioned that the football field is surrounded by other land-markings, such as a Baseball field, Playground area for the elementary school, grave yard, trees, and a housing development under construction site. So in other words, a terrain or some sort will be needed, since I hate 3ds Max's scultping tools. In addition, even if my terrain was sculpted in Max, I could not even think of a good way to import 100's of trees as individual trees, without having to re-layout them out in UDK. IMO, that sounds like double the work. Nevertheless, I am not saying that yours and meowcat's ideas for the football field would not work, in fact I think they are excellent ideas and should also work for the baseball field. Therefore, if you or others do come up with other ideas, just keep in mind that I will have a terrain for my other land-markings. I guess it is all about a matter of how much should be terrain and how much should be static meshes. From this learning experience, I see that non-tiling textures do not work well with large terrains, unless you use a large enough texture, but this can have its own drawbacks with performance as well.

[gaz661]

no reason why you cant use both terrain and static meshes.just lower the terrain below the places you put the static mesh.i still think a static mesh will work best.
as for the trees,you will have to hand place them which ever way you choose.