So basically, I am experimenting with ROBLOX Smooth Terrain and I stumbled across some few unlogical problems regarding the structural and non-structural materials of Smooth Terrain.
The following problems are:
Terrain materials blending into each other:
As you can see, two different materials are bordering each other (Bricks and Concrete) and for some odd reason the texture of one material (Concrete) is transitioned into the other material (Bricks)
Random Terrain chunks being added when 2 different materials touch each other:
As you can see, when 2 materials border each other, random chunks are generated.
These chunks can only be removed with the erode-tool which is very annoying to do.
I’m not sure how I would go about fixing that terrain material blending issue. However, the reason why the terrain chunks appear to be “blobbing out” is due to Roblox’s level of detail system. As you go away further, the terrain is adjusted so that it takes less performance to render it, which helps increase performance when using terrain.
I would not recommend using smooth terrain to build rigid, manmade structures. You should use parts instead. Smooth terrain is intended for smooth terrain, and has several performance optimizations and quirks that can cause unsightly or annoying issues when trying to be precise.
I agree that smooth terrain is intended to be… smooth terrain and due to this, has several performance optimizations that can cause annoying issues like the ones I’ve stated above
But if you take a look at the Smooth terrain materials you will see there are structural materials like Bricks, Concrete and Wooden Planks, rigid materials used in manmade structures.
I think it’s pretty odd for ROBLOX to include these materials inside smooth terrain because it contradicts… well… smooth terrain …
Personally, I think that a structural terrain-material system should be added so we developers can create rigid manmade structures.
And it’s not like this is an entirely new idea either, back when old terrain and personal servers where still a thing, people were able to create enormous villages, bridges, statues… from terrain!
Structural materials in the smooth terrain palette are a mystery. They work well in some places, but they’re still somewhat of an oddity.
A method of building rigid manmade structures already exists and it’s called Parts. What benefit do big fat voxels bring to building these structures?
That blend could be a feature.
Though, when it comes to building structures, you really shouldn’t use any smooth terrain, it looks pretty bad and weird. Smooth terrain should be used for terrain, terrain itself. A house for example with smooth terrain in it will look pretty unpleasant.
The bugging out is the render, which is in ROBLOX.
About those geometrical chunks, which I didn’t fully understand what you meant by that, could be fixed by growing more or substracting the same terrain there.
I’m expressing my opinion, but there are probably different solutions which you can learn from.
That is not realistic, that looks weird, very weird. You’d probably pull off a better piece of work with parts. Try out parts before you try making a building out of smooth terrain. But again, I’m expressing my opinion.
I’m sorry if the caps went a bit wrong there, I clearly did not intend to mean that in a bad way.
But the main thought is, that you should try with bricks first and see how that goes. Painting terrain works too.
Terrain is…terrain? It’s meant to be dynamic, changing in texture, shape, and dynamics based on loads of different stuff.
This is very impractical to use. Very. Using it for cobblestone road outlines, or even as a wall is one thing, but as a replacement for parts? Doesn’t really work.
Reminder that you can make meshes, and then apply your own textures to them, which then creates something a bit more unique that CSG and Roblox default textures.
ROBLOX did think about shipping APIs to give developers more control over the LOD system, but as of right now I don’t think theres anything available yet.
Yea. I would prefer just building with regular parts. I’m pretty sure you can find the same terrain textures and apply them the parts if you want the same/similar look.
That LOD system appears to be adding more triangles than it removes - which is counter productive I think.
Anyways, on the topic of Smooth Terrain & instead using parts for buildings, the Terrain materials look a bit nicer & more realistic than the part materials. If anything, Roblox should add in the Smooth Terrain materials to part materials - but that might defeat the purpose of smooth terrain. In general, you’ll want to create buildings out of parts - since they can be skinnier, and you can also rotate them quite easily. The same smooth-terrain textures can be applied to parts, but they may appear to be washed out due to specular maps not working, and the simple fact they’re squished down by Roblox.
Smooth terrain in general has never really been good for anything, due to the clunkiness of the tools making it impossible to create realistic-looking terrain, unless you want to spend a few hours scuplting a single part of the terrain. I’ve found that using a part to terrain converter is quite good to solve this issue. Though, classic terrain tools were a bit better since you were able to create mountains quickly.
The LOD system doesn’t add more triangles. I think what its doing there is just morphing the pillars into one basic shape that takes a lot less to render than each pillar individually.
