Terrain texture blending question

Greetings,

I’ve been using ALE to create terrains for my Blitz3D projects and I’m curious about the blended texturing feature. I’d like to know if it’s possible to replicate the same texture blending effect in Lightwave or 3DS max.

When opening the terrain file in Unwrap3D I can see that the terrain is split up into a separate geometry layer for each texture used. So I assume that each geometry layer of the terrain has its own texture and the vertices of the object layer have alpha blending applied to create the smooth transition between textures.

Has anyone had any success recreating this effect in a non terrain based 3D app?

Cheers.

The terrain is basically a mesh. And since every modeller can create a mesh, you should be able to apply the alpha as needed to each layer. This technique has it's limitations though. Because when rendering with alpha, the tris of the surface become NON z-ordered. Basically, they are not sorted by distance, but, by order of creation, which can produce strange results. I believe also, the graphics card plays a part in how many alpha blended layers a mesh can have, before it's all goes to @#!*.

Thanks for the info Ross, although I need more specific information on how I can get my own terrain meshes out of a 3D app like Lightwave with vertex alpha blending intact. I can export terrains with vertex colors no problem but vertex alpha doesn't seem to output at all :-(

If anyone has had success doing this in any 3D app i'd love to hear about it.

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