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Submission and Results:

Call of Juarez 2 Part 6: Creating Roads and Rivers

November 14, 2009
Category: Call of Juarez 2

Part 6 covers:

Road Tool
Road properties
How to edit roads
Creating rivers
Creating a custom material for water

Call of Juarez 2 Level Design Part 6: Roads and Rivers

CoJ2 Bound in Blood Video Notes:

Road Tool

Create New Road and Name it

Double Mouse Click on your road and open up the properties

Create a new road by placing road control points

Double Mouse Click on your road and open up the properties

Set the way you want your road to look like. Defining width, length, material etc.

Define your Road Material and your Roadside Material

With select tool active, you can move road control points around and reshape your road.

Insert a new control point on the road by select 2 control points and click on Insert New Control Point

Split the road by selecting a single control points and click on Split

Merge the road by selecting two control points and click on Merge

Double Mouse Click on your road name and open up the properties. Check off 'align road to terrain'.

Use the select tool to move the control points up above the terrain.

Select the road then press Adjust the Road to Terrain

Creating Rivers in ChromEd is similar to roads, with few tweaks.

Materials choose: data/shaders/master/templates/river_a.mat

You want to insert a visbox.msh that will control the way water functions when player enters it.

Model Browser --> All --> Mask: visbox

Position and Resize/Scale the visbox.msh to fit into the body of water you created

Custom water material is simple to create. Use notepad and copy/paste the following text

import "liquid.mtt"

sub material()
{
extern float TIME;

float f_wave_0_scale = 0.125;
float f_wave_1_scale = 5.0;
mtx m_nrm_0_xfm = translate( 0.08 * TIME, 0.051 * TIME, 0.0 ) * rotate( 0.0, 0.0, 5.0 ) * scale( 16.0, 0.55, 1.0 );
mtx m_nrm_1_xfm = translate( -0.01 * TIME, -0.03 * TIME, 0.0 ) * rotate( 0.0, 0.0, -2.0 ) * scale( 16.4, 0.52, 1.3 );
mtx m_nrm_2_xfm = translate( -0.081 * TIME, 0.055 * TIME, 0.0 ) * rotate( 0.0, 0.0, -5.0 ) * scale( 14.0, 0.5, 1.2 );
mtx m_nrm_3_xfm = translate( 0.001 * TIME, 0.005 * TIME, 0.0 ) * rotate( 0.0, 0.0, -1.0) * scale( 0.4, 0.025, 0.025 );

extern string s_water_cubemap;

use mtt_liquid(
e_opq_order = or_seetrough_1,
e_nrm_order = 2,
e_trn_order = 2,
e_bdf_order = 2,

f_blend_distance = 16.0,

f_blur_distance = 500.0,
f_blur_falloff = 5000.0,
f_blur_falloff_shift = 500.0,
f_blur_fresnel_power = 1.0,
f_blur_strength = 1.0,

v_deep_color = [0.12, 0.13, 0.08],
f_deep_distance = 379.0,
f_deep_opacity = 1.0,

f_deform_distance = 100.0,
f_deform_falloff = 2500.0,
f_deform_strength = 0.25,

e_shadows = e_shadows_pp_simple,

s_env = "data/mapsextra/yourmapname_rfl.dds",
v_env_factor = [0.22, 0.2, 0.2],
f_env_fresnel_bias = 0.5,
f_env_fresnel_power = 1.0,
f_env_fresnel_scale = 1.5,

v_liquid_clr = [1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0],

s_nrm_0 = "water_waves_n.dds",
f_nrm_0_scale = 2.0,
m_nrm_0_xfm = m_nrm_0_xfm,

s_nrm_1 = "water_waves_2_n.dds",
f_nrm_1_scale = 2.5,
m_nrm_1_xfm = m_nrm_1_xfm,

s_nrm_2 = "water_waves_n.dds",
f_nrm_2_scale = 1.5,
m_nrm_2_xfm = m_nrm_2_xfm,

s_nrm_3 = "water_waves_2_n.dds",
f_nrm_3_scale = 2.0,
m_nrm_3_xfm = m_nrm_3_xfm,

f_spc_power = 555.0
);
}

Save the water material as mapname_water.mat

Place the material file inside the map folder you are working on.

Make sure you replace a line where it says

s_env = "data/mapsextra/yourmapname_rfl.dds", to match your _rfl.dds

Double Mouse Click on your river name and open up the properties.

Under Road Material, input the location of your mapname_water.mat by typing in manually where the mat file is stored. In my case it was

data/mapsextra/lostcollateral/lostcollateral_water.mat

Comments? Questions?

Call of Juarez 2: Bound in Blood Level Design Tutorial List 1. Installing Tools. File Structure of Custom Maps, Support 2. Interface and Navigation Advanced Mode 3. Creating the Initial Environment 3.1. Bonus: Terrain Workflow 4. Adding Objects and Environment Props 5. Custom Objects: Maya to ChromEd 6. Adding Roads and Working with Terrain 7. Detailing and Using Brushes 8. Placing Enemies and AI: 8.1 AI, Waypoints, Fightnodes 8.2 AI Sensors, Action Chains 8.3 AI Scripts and Triggers 8.4 AI Behaviors and Actions Overview 9. Adding Items, Effects and Map Objectives: 9.1 Setting up Objectives 9.2 Setting up Objectives and Quests 9.3 Item Types 9.4 Optimization and Class Types 10. Publishing a Map and Release

 

Comments are Closed. Please Join & Discuss this post in the World of Level Design Forums Comments wookash_b 05 Dec 2009, 14:38 I have a certain problem with water. I created a lake as shown in your tutorial. When I swim in it sometimes in some parts of the lake the road (water plane) disappears. So you can see everything below it, but player is still swimming. Any idea what could be wrong? Groucho 17 Nov 2009, 05:38 Alex, Thanks for the reply and yes I already have the video's from cojmodding.com. They were a huge help and I'm really happy Techland has done them. Yours are a little more in depth and I feel I've learned something different from watch all of them. If you don't wind up doing one on cutscenes I'll figure it out eventually so don't sweat it. I just felt that you have a good way of explaining things clearly and could make it easier. Thanks! keithg 16 Nov 2009, 12:42 nice video editing. clear, quick and to the point AlexG 16 Nov 2009, 09:38 Hey Groucho, Thanks :) No plans as of right now to create a tutorial on cutscenes. But if you go to http://www.cojmodding.com/?id=tutorials scroll down to Advanced Tutorials, Seir created one that may help you out. Groucho 16 Nov 2009, 05:02 Alex, Thanks for the latest video. The river portion really helped me with problems I was having. I'm really enjoying this series it's extremely helpful! Looking at what you have planned for the rest of the series I didn't see anything about creating cutscenes. If your up to adding a video about that I'd reallt appreciate it! Thanks! AlexG 15 Nov 2009, 10:39 I've experienced the same problem. Haven't been able to get the refresh working when it comes to the custom .mat files. I've had to restart the editor as well. Maybe Seir can help on the forums. Sorry wookash I don't have the solution to that. wookash_b 15 Nov 2009, 03:35 Thanks Alex for another video! Regarding working with water materials I have noticed that when I make changes to my water material script file and save the changes (say I change water color) they are not reflected in the editor instantly. I know there is a "Refresh file system" button to reload the script files, but for some reason it does not reload the script file for me. So as a result, whenever I modify the water material script file I have to reboot the editor. Have you also noticed that? Any tips how to get it working without rebooting the editor? Powered by Scriptsmill Comments Script