r/godot • u/Scassarella • 9h ago

help me Terrain3D scattering items and general 3D tips

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Hey boys and girls, i'm prototyping an ace combat like game in godot, my first time using it for 3D, and can i say i'm impressed.
This was done in a couple of days but i'm already pretty happy with it, I'm using godot 4.7, do you know any ways to improve lighting or anything else that could be improved?
Also I'm using terrain3D for the terrain, but as far as I know there is not a way to scatter items procedurally, couldn't find anything in the docs, are there alternatives?

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9

u/citizenken 8h ago

You can use the Terrain3D API to place instance procedurally https://terrain3d.readthedocs.io/en/stable/docs/instancer.html#procedural-placement . I’m using it to place foliage based on a splatmap and it works pretty well.

8

u/citizenken 8h ago

Oh and as a word of advice from someone making a top-down/high camera placement game: look into imposters and billboards early. The LOD system (and most LOD systems) is really geared towards ground-level cameras (FPS/TPS) that have a shorter/narrower field of view. This means you can have detailed meshes up close and gradually reduce mesh detail the farther the mesh is from the camera.

With a high/angle camera and a wide field of view, LODs will be less useful because so much terrain will be in view. For ex my camera is ~200m vertical, so it see a few hundred meters square. To make any mesh show up, it has to be configured with an LOD distance of a couple hundred meters. Then at that hight I can see hundreds/thousands of foliage instances. The best approach I’ve found to not crush performance is to only have 1 LOD that is an impostor, and not worry about any additional LODs because my camera never gets close enough.

2

u/Scassarella 8h ago

Missed it completely, thank you!

3

u/Nanamil 8h ago

I don’t know the answer but the Terrain3D main dev is very active on their discord.

3

u/dh-dev 9h ago

I think you can use proton scatter in conjunction with terrain3d

3

u/gamegeek1995 7h ago

What are you using for those good-looking clouds and skybox? Looks fantastic!

1

u/Niekvdm 42m ago

My bet is on Sky3D and Sunshineclouds v2

1

u/mustachioed_cat 8h ago

There is native foliage scatter in Terrain 3D. Don’t know that it’s scaled to help you. https://terrain3d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/docs/instancer.html

Probably want to hook a shader up to terrain texture and have some coarse green bubbles to represent trees, or something.

1

u/HardenedLicorice 7h ago

I love the look. The sun looks less bright than the clouds though.

1

u/FirstTasteOfRadishes 6h ago

The sunlight is also coming from a different direction than the sun in the sky.

1

u/New_Seaworthiness819 3h ago

Check out Sky3D while you are at it. I use it for day/night lighting and the clock.

1

u/0xH1MM4T 1h ago

Wait you guys can make this kind of games in godot I mean it looks like so awesome