Wiky's Scatter Volume Tutorial

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Wiky's Scatter Volume Tutorial

Post by Spawn » Wed Nov 03, 2021 3:03 pm

Wiky's Scatter Volume Tutorial.

Or as they say in Mexico: How to make grass.

Important: Make sure your game is set to high detail or your environmental effects will not show up. Launch NOLF2 / CJ and select Options, Performance, Environmental and choose HIGH.

Step 1

Determine where you want to place the grass. If you're thinking to yourself "in the bong" then this might be the wrong tutorial.

I've got a dandy little test level where I can experiment with things. That way I don't spend ages waiting for some of my bigger projects to compile just to make one minor tweak.

Place the marker (that green line thing) where you want the center of your scatter volume to go (press x to place the marker where the tip of your mouse is)

Line it up in at least two viewports. It's not super important to get it right the first time as you can always drag the scatter volume where you need it later.

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Step 2

Right Click and choose Add, Object. Ye good ol' Select Object Type window appears.

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Scroll down and expand the VolumeEffect parent. Highlight ScatterVolume, select OK.

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Heavens to Mergatroid, its a superfly fresh cube.

Step 3

Now you need to bring up your Project window (alt + spacebar) if it's not attached to the side of your views already.

Select your volume brush (it should be already selected) if not, hit Ctrl + H to enter object mode, then click on the center of the gray cube. Click the Properties tab in the Project window.

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Step 4

Where it says TextureName, click the B to the right of the box. The Open window appears, open the TEXFX folder, then the Grass folder, then choose GRASS1.DTX, click Open.

It will look like this.

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Step 5

Time to run your level and check our progress!

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Now take a look at our beautiful grass!

Can't we all get a lawn?

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Wait a durn tootin' minute. Why is there grass on my walls? Grass don't discriminate, it inseminates! All over our walls.

So we need to control our grass by telling the scatter volume where to plant.

Step 6

Go into brush mode (Ctrl + B) right click on the ground or floor texture (or whatever you want the grass on) select Texture, Select Texture.

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Step 7

On the project window, click on the Textures tab. Notice your floor texture is selected. Notice where the texture is. In my case, it is located in the CZECH folder and called TILE1.DTX

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Step 8

Now select your scatter volume again by entering object edit mode (Ctrl + H) and clicking on the center of the cube. Always click near the center of objects. Unlike brushes, you need to click as near to the center as possible. This becomes evident when you have multiple objects near each other. Or large objects (such as a scatter volume) near small objects (such as lights).



In the project window, select the properties tab.

Scroll down and click the B next to PlacementTexture.

The Open dialogue appears. Find the texture that we looked up before.

Mine is in the TEX/CZECH/ folder as TILE1.DTX

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Step 9

Once you've selected it, save your level, compile it and run it.

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I never treat ya wrong do I?

Now, you could have accomplished this same effect by just changing the dims on your scatter volume to just cover the corner and not touch the walls, but I wanted to illustrate how to use the PlacementTexture field.

Other items of interest:

Obviously there are a ton of settings in your scatter volume properties. Start with the basics, then change only one setting at a time, compile and run.

There are many types of grass textures, experiment.

Like the docs state, don't use grass or other scatter volume effects for cover as these effects can be disabled by the user.

To resize the volume brush the official docs state (and I quote) "Although it may look like a brush in the editor, you will need to be in Object Edit mode to scale the object’s proportions. It is advised to move these manually with the mouse and the object’s handles, and not to try to rotate them."

Now the dude who wrote that must of been smoking a little grass when he typed that, because it's a crock of Bantha poodoo.

I do agree with not rotating the volume effect, but you must use the DIMS (dimensions) property in your scattervolume to resize it (NOT THE HANDLES). Now, like most objects that have dim properties, the size is measured in units from the center out. So even though our cube is 256 x 256 x 256, the dims read 128 x 128 x 128.

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(Reposted from Nicepurchase.com/nolf
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