Exporting the terrain?

[KirillK]

I want  to export a hi-res terrain  then retopo and bake it to a normal map in other soft  to be used in a game.
Micro exporter looks like exporting a mesh based on a camera angle and position . It's cool but not what I need so I go to lwo mesh export node.

My problem is  it's exporting a huge amount of small square lwos.    Is it possible to do it in one big obj or something? My goal is to load it into Zbrush then.    Do somebody knows a program that can read and convert multiple lwos at ones?

[Kadri]

Did you looked at the "Render Camera" node and tried the "Orthographic" option with the micro exporter ?
It could be much easier maybe this way. Or using a high placed camera that looks down ...

[Tangled-Universe]

Leave the LWO exporter, it's kind of useless and inferior to the micro-exporter.
That the micro-exporter exports geometry from the camera and the render is actually it's strength and not its weakness
If you want render-view indepedent geometry then simply put the camera up in the air and make it face down, either orthographic or not.

There's quite a lot of info on these forums about terrain export to .obj and the like with the micro exporter:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,14919.msg145287.html#msg145287
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,12506.msg126071.html#msg126071
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,13556.0.html
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,12743.0.html

[KirillK]

Problem is when I try micro exporter it doesn't export anything 'micro'  and takes forever even with 0,5 detail settings with down looking orto camera I tried. 
While with  lwo node it do export pretty hi-res mesh. At least I see streets and buildings in mesh lwo pieces generated from USGS geo tiff.

Not sure if I am still missing something. Tried to microexport with details set higher and just gave up after waiting for several  hours. 

[Hannes]

Don't use the orthographic camera first. I tend to use a camera looking forwards with a field of view of 90°, render four passes with a rotating camera (90° steps of course). So in the end I have four parts that can be stitched together as a "cake". The closer to the camera you are, the more details you have.
When you're using the micro exporter, make your first tries in low resolution. Sometimes the mesh is already quite dense even in quick render settings. When you need more detail, carefully increase the detail in the quality settings of the render tab. And take care of the farthest distance setting. The default value is quite far away from the camera. Make your first tries with lower values.

[Tangled-Universe]

Problem is when I try micro exporter it doesn't export anything 'micro'  and takes forever even with 0,5 detail settings with down looking orto camera I tried. 
While with  lwo node it do export pretty hi-res mesh. At least I see streets and buildings in mesh lwo pieces generated from USGS geo tiff.

Not sure if I am still missing something. Tried to microexport with details set higher and just gave up after waiting for several  hours.

Did you go through the links I have posted? It seems you didn't

The exporter exports at rendertime polygons, which means that it will export polygons with the same size as you generate them when rendering.
One reason TG renders in buckets is because all the geometry can't be kept in memory when you use final render detail settings.
So if you try exporting your mesh with same settings as your final render, yes...then you'll and up with possible maaaany GB's.

The step by step process is in the links I provided you.
I have explained it a couple of times before in detail so I'd like to refer to those links or the search engine here
Search for micro exporter together with my username and you'll get there.

[KirillK]

Did you go through the links I have posted? It seems you didn't

I did actually. Thank you for your help.  Still  don't understand things very good I guess. I actually followed your step by step instruction in one of the links  and did exactly the same I hope.
Although the transform shader just does nothing on my end . Tried to connect it at right and left sides , no difference, the terrain does not  any shift at all.  I tried that transform shader before for other tasks and never had any luck with it.  Would be appreciative if you could post a tgd or a screen.
  Maybe because of that  but what I get with microexport is not very hi-res ( except in a small patch very close to camera)  and somehow messy. And since I don't actually need a  frame based surface triangle with degrading geometry  but rather a normal square piece of a terrain   I decided I should go for down looking orto camera. And that way it just doesn't work or takes forever.   

I believe that what Hannes  suggested is only possible way.   Is he right or we are still missing something?   Even that way I still can't find an optimal resolution/details combination while lwo export does just fine for my current task.   Only problem is that I need to load step by step hundred lwos into Blender  to export them  further as a big single obj for Zbrush.

Actually the only reason I try to use Teraggen for now  is to get a precisely displaced terrain mesh from a USGS geotiff.  Is it somehow possible in other soft?
 

[Tangled-Universe]

Here is a tutorial-tgd.

In the node network you can see bookmarks which indicate the steps you need to go through.

Be aware that transforming/translating to the 0,x,0 coordinates isn't absolutely necessary if you're feeling comfortable with adjusting those manually after importing them into Maya/Max/whatever...
Anyway, this simple example shows how.

Hope this helps!

[Oshyan]

For your purposes there is probably better software that is more directly oriented to simple geometry export of DEMs. Perhaps Global Mapper.

- Oshyan

[KirillK]

Thank you very much, Tangled-Universe.  I think one thing I missed is that transform shader works only with fractal based things, not an image.

Thanks Oshyan. it's good to know.   

[Oshyan]

You can change the position of images directly in the Image Map shader.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

The transform shader works with images as well.

[Tangled-Universe]

It does work with everything but heightfields. Since you can move heightfields it isn't a real issue, but technically you can't transform a heightfield using the transform shader.
As far as I know this is also in the bug/feature tracker of the dev team.