Texture mapping algorithms

L3DT generates ground texture images, such as that shown below, by blending together a light map and a set of texture materials for each land type (e.g. grass, rock, snow). The distributions of land types are defined in the attributes map, which is in-turn calculated from the terrain slope, curvature, altitude, water-table depth, etc (see calculation details). The final texture for each land type is calculated from a 'material', which is a set of texture and bump-map images, plus a few blending parameters. The material for each land type are set in the land type editor on the 'appearance' pane.

A typical ground texture.

Recent examples of L3DT textures rendered in 3D can be seen in the image gallery.

L3DT can generate massive unique textures (also known as megatextures) with up to 32×32 pixels per heightfield pixel, and a total texture size of up to 4M x 4M pixels. Automatic image-tiling for large maps is a standard feature for all supported image formats¹⁾, and all versions of L3DT.

For information on using L3DT's texture mapping features, please refer to the texture mapping page in the user-guide.