User Guide: Atlas Terrain
Contents |
The TGEA version of AFX contains a number of features that work with Atlas terrain. For the most part, AFX handles Atlas style terrain transparently, but following are the main AFX features which are Atlas-aware.
Zodiacs
Terrain zodiacs render on Atlas terrain as well as legacy terrain. If you are mixing Atlas and legacy terrain in a single mission, there is currently no way to target one or the other style of terrain. A zodiac will be rendered on both styles of terrain depending on the setting of the afxZodiacData field, showOnTerrain.
Light Illumination Masks
With the lightIlluminationMask field, afxLight and sgLightObject lights can target specific object types for lighting. Usually this feature is used to target terrain with different lighting from what is used on dts and dif objects, however, there are separate masks for Atlas terrain ($AFX::ILLUM_ATLAS) and legacy terrain ($AFX::ILLUM_TERRAIN). This allows you to specifically tune your effect lighting for Atlas or legacy terrain situations.
Geometry Morph Snapping
When portions of Atlas terrain change their level-of-detail, the changes happen gradually. This avoids visual snapping and also helps when atlas is paging data from disk. However, when the camera is suddenly moved discontinuously, such as with a camera cut or a character teleportation, the resulting geometry morphs can be distracting and unrealistic. (It looks like the terrain is inflating or deflating into place.)
The console function snapAtlasGeometryMorph() can be used to temporarily override geometry morphing on sudden camera changes. It should not be used when making very long distance camera moves that are likely to result in large amounts of terrain paging in from disk.
With TGEA 1.7.1, Atlas is no longer doing geometry morphs. Therefore, snapAtlasGeometryMorph() no longer does anything, although it does exist.
Terrain Conforming
The vertical placement of effects can be conformed to the height of the terrain using the GroundConform transform modifier. It conforms to both Atlas as well as legacy terrain.
In a similar manner, afxMagicMissile projectiles can be configured to follow the terrain, and this behavior recognizes both Atlas and legacy terrain.
Finally, afxCamera, when in third person mode, will avoid placement below terrain level and this works with both terrain variations.
Previous: User Guide: Materials and Shaders
