This is going to sound extremely weird, but can anyone give me a clear explanation on what these are, and how they work? The manual is extremely vague. I played around with one tonight, and it edited just like a normal terrain I guess, so I'm not sure what I am doing wrong, or if I am doing it wrong, etc etc Why do we have them, and what would we use them for? beck's -=dumb question for the day=-

Well, I don't think you're gonna like my answer any. ;) I don't know, LOL! Actually, whatever you do to one side of a symm terrain, the same thing happens to the other side, like a mirror effect. I think they're mainly of interest to people who use bitmaps for creating models with the terrain editor. Hey, Bryce has had them, so you know Vue had to eventually.... They make nice rocks. :)

LOL @nice rocks. Sounds interesting Mike...I might have to play with them some more. Thank you sweetie :)

:)

Hi Beck !

here is a little example of what can be done with symmetrical terrains.

Eric

Looks cool Eric :) Definitely need more info on symmetrical terrains.

hmmm, looks like I need to go back to school again. Sharen

Folks, if you want to get a good grip on what you can do with symetrical terrains, I would suggest look at the bryce tutorial sites, as there are no tutorials for exploring this in Vue... There are several tutorials out there and they get saem results as in Bryce minus the textures... Although, the Vue terrains do not map textures as easily as the Bryce, the principles are the same... here are some simple to follow ones... http://calyxa.best.vwh.net/pearl/clipart.html http://www.pinhead.robbes.com/tutorial/door/Door0.htm http://home.attbi.com/~paulvlos/Tut/lattice.htm http://www.alteredstate.net/tutorial1.htm Very advanced stuff http://users.pandora.be/roobol/tutorials/framestutorials.html http://home.attbi.com/~paulvlos/Cloud_Tut/Combinationsky1.htm

Also, I should clarify, when I say textures don't map as easily, I'm referring to is you're going to be using jpg textures that generated the greyscale in the first place...

Attached Link: http://www.petes-oasis.com/hummingbird.html

Also, Pete's symetrical terrain tutorial with some math for figuring out how to scale a bitmap texture to match the greyscale that generated the mesh in the first place...

Yes, I actually did mean to mention having a look in the Bryce forum. I had thought though that Pete's was for a regular terrain, though, and not a symmetrical? In any event, he did go to an extreme to figure it out, and that was very cool! Thanks for the additional info Paul. :)

Well, it's supposed to be for a symetrical terrain, since that's where the original idea came from... Reason being is that when you get the figure from the greyscale, you have to shrink it next to nothing along the z plane, which you could not and get the desired effect with a regular terrain, in this particular case... And yeah, he did add some very valuable info to mapping textures to terrains, symetrical or otherwise... :) But tha'ts some impressive work that Eric has demonstrated on top... Let's hope he shares some of his experiences as well... :)

Thanks Eric and Paul for the great example and links. And thanks Beck, too, for asking the question. :D

heyas; okay, this is the simple explanation: you know that vue tutorial/sample thingy, the landscape arch? like where you draw the arch on the terrain, and then clip out the low altitudes, and then flip the terrain up on its side, so you have the arch arching over the landscape? right, okay, what happens when you turn the arch or fly the camera around behind it? you get the flat, chopped off back side of the terrain. the symmetrical lattice makes the flat, chopped off back side of the terrain a mirror image of the nifty, un-flat side of the terrain, and thus makes your terrain thingy all 3 dimensional from all sides and all. the only problem (unless the later patches fixed this) is the vue symmetrical terrain isn't solid all the way through, so if you clip a lot of lower altitudes, or have terrains with high sides, the top doesn't match the bottom, and you get two mirrored terrains with a big hole between them.