Vertex Manipulation 3 - Creating Realistic

Ok, have you ever wondered how good looking terrain is made? The cliffs in maps like cs_belair, cs_costabrava or even cs_shogun and as_tundra? Or even the ground in de_odile on the outside paths? Maybe even impact craters?
Well, here I show you how. Only one type of solid is needed: Our friendly triangle!

A good experience of vertex manipulation is required to do this. Read and understand my other tutorials on this topic for the basics if you're new to it.

Now, if you're familiar with this tool and/or read other tutorials, you will know that triangles are our friends for this, as they are almost error free when using vertex manipulation on them. The only time they cause an error is if an edge is dragged without the accompanying edge not being dragged exactly in line with it. Also, when moving vertices, if say you're moving it upwards and you move it left or right by one square, this will cause an error in your solid. (see My tutorial called Vertex Manipulation 1 for more information on this).
Otherwise, you can't go wrong with them!

P.S. I will be using cs_cbble.wad and half-life.wad for this tutorial. Also, the smallest grid size possible.

Now, lets get ourselves a triangle and experiment. So, select a cylinder with 3 faces and draw one into any of the views, leaving you with something like below. My dimensions are 138 x 120 x 64.



Now, assuming that you've read my first tutorial on vertex manipulation, you will know what you can do with the triangle. So, since we have ourselves a cliff texture here, lets make it sloping for a cliff.

Select the triangle and copy it before we do any editing. This way, we won't have to create a new triangle every time we need a new one. 
Select the triangle and go into vertex manipulation mode. Select the following vertices, step by step, and drag them to the stated positions:



16 squares (2 'big' squares) up. Note that I am showing the Side(x/y) view next to the pictures because that's the one we'll be needing.

Next, paste that triangle next to the one above and rotate the new one by 180 degrees in the Z plane. Align it exactly next to the first triangle and to the right of it. With the new triangle, go into vertex manipulation mode and do the following:



Move the vertex shown, down to meet the edge on the first triangle. Here its 7 squares. Note I'm showing the Front(y/z) view with the 3D view as it's the easiest view in this case.

And also, move the shown vertex up by 10 squares (the 2d view is the Side(x/z) view).



You should now have something that looks similar to this:



Not bad hey? Two triangles, no errors and a cliff edge!

Now, keep going with the triangles, making a small cliff. Here's mine that I made:



By applying the same principles, I have created a gradual uphill cliff. This is made from 14 triangles. Looks pretty decent and is fairly simple to do as well. 

Now, we shall make a path that runs beside the cliffs. So, paste that triangle in again and give it a different texture to make it stand out. I've started with my triangle here, and got the following vertex selected:



Now, in the Front(y/z) view (shown), move this vertex down by 15 squares.

Last stage for this triangle, move the shown vertex down by 64 squares in the Front(y/z) view:



There we go, a nice start to our path up the cliff. Next, is to make a triangle that joins onto it. So we shall now do this as shown below:

Paste the next triangle in here:



You shall see that it sticks out at the right end of the path. Now, we don't want this, so we shall fix it.
Select it and go into vertex manipulation mode and do the following:



Here, we are moving this vertex down to meet the top of the other triangle. This will leave us with this:



Looks good doesn't it? However, we need to carry it on up the cliff. So, by once again applying these simple principles, we can carry it on up the cliff. 
Remember that you can have the odd edge of a triangle sticking out with the cliff textures on it to add a rough look to the path.



Here are two screens at different angles of my slope. Looks good, but still isn't done. It doesn't look correct without the cliff on the left side of the path. 
So, add a few triangles onto this side of the cliff and vertex manipulate them to produce something like the following:



Looks pretty decent doesn't it? An uphill walkway with surrounding cliffs. Now, to create a nice effect, here I have taken what we have so far and copied and pasted it. Rotated it by 180 degrees in the Z plane and added a building to show what it can be used for:



Now, because the original path that we had went upwards, the whole path now goes downhill and then uphill with a realistic feeling. Looking in the Top(x/y) view, you can see how many triangles are used for this. If you go to Map > Show Information, you can see that we have used 61 solids that have 309 faces. For what we have produced, this is worth it. We have got ourselves a nice path and added a new dimension to our level. Note that I had to delete a few of the cliff solids to make it fit, or else we'd have overlapping brushes, which cause shattering and increases your solid count.

Further note: Because of the shape of the path you've got yourself an s-bend. So, by raising the height of the cliffs, we have got a great VIS blocker (reduce r_speeds) and is better than those boring old right-angled corners everywhere. 
How this helps to reduce r_speeds is because:



Where the player is standing, they can see everything in between the red lines. He can't see around the whole S-Bend. No matter where you stand, this kind of thing is true. 
So there you go, you should now be able to create realistic terrain for your maps using this powerful, yet error prone tool! Remembering what you can and can't do with certain solids is the key to using it. Then, practising using it, you can come up with almost an unlimited amount of creations.
Here's a crater, which I mentioned earlier:



Just using the triangles, you can create a realistic looking crater. The more triangles you use, the better a circle you can produce from where the shell or meteor (!) made an impact.

You can even go even further and produce a fully detailed landscape using triangles (and nothing but triangles!) with vertex manipulation:



The brown texture is where the terrain is dipping and the green is where it's going uphill. Admittedly, this was done using the Gensurf terrain generator, but the principle is exactly the same. Taking triangles, moving vertices and getting a realistic look.
Gensurf, although a very handy tool, can't always produce what you want, so knowing how to do it is vital. I hope this tutorial (and the other 2) have provided you with some insight of what this powerful tool can do to your levels, and what not to do!

Whether its just reducing polygon counts or creating a full realistic landscape, this tool is an extremely useful one. 

P.S. if you want a copy of the first cliffs made in this tutorial, give me a shout on the jolt forums and ill send the .rmf to you.

Good luck!

By The God

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