I don't think there is a surface type with 5 channels. But if you want to try this method then I have a question - do you really need the Alpha channel for anything? Terrain usually isn't transparent, so instead of RGBAT where T is terrain type, couldn't you use RGBA where A is terrain type?
Anyway, I would suggest something completely different, if I understand your problem correctly. The term for this approach probably is texture splatting as ryan20fun mentioned. The point is that you have for example three different tiled textures (let's say grass, dirt, sand). Then you have one special texture covering the whole terrain without tiling - this texture defines in its color channels how the tiled textures should be combined. If the color is (1, 0, 0) then only grass will be visible etc. And the huge bonus is that you can blend the textures because (0.7, 0.3, 0) will give you 70 % of grass blended with 30 % of dirt.
This will be much easier to work with and much more flexible, because in your suggested idea you have only one channel defining the terrain type, while here you have a full texture (4 channels). And also - this texture can have different texture coordinates (different tiling) than the subtextures.
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#1Tom KQT
Posted 28 May 2012 - 01:29 AM
I don't think there is a surface type with 5 channels. But if you want to try this method then I have a question - do you really need the Alpha channel for anything? Terrain usually isn't transparent, so instead of RGBAT where T is terrain type, couldn't you use RGBA where A is terrain type?
Anyway, I would suggest something completely different, if I understand your problem correctly. The term for this approach probably is texture splatting as ryan20fun mentioned. The point is that you have for example three different tiled textures (let's say grass, dirt, sand). Then you have one special texture covering the whole terrain without tiling - this texture defines in its color channels how the tiled textures should be combined. If the color is (1, 0, 0) then only grass will be visible etc. And the huge bonus is that you can blend the textures because (0.7, 0.3, 0) will give you 70 % of grass blended with 30 % of dirt.
Anyway, I would suggest something completely different, if I understand your problem correctly. The term for this approach probably is texture splatting as ryan20fun mentioned. The point is that you have for example three different tiled textures (let's say grass, dirt, sand). Then you have one special texture covering the whole terrain without tiling - this texture defines in its color channels how the tiled textures should be combined. If the color is (1, 0, 0) then only grass will be visible etc. And the huge bonus is that you can blend the textures because (0.7, 0.3, 0) will give you 70 % of grass blended with 30 % of dirt.