Imagining maps

Started by bigben, August 15, 2014, 10:36:11 PM

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bigben

Starting on a project (yes, actually producing something ;)) to show some basic visualisation of GIS data from various sources and experimenting with animating stuff in TG. Starting in the middle (in case i run out of time/motivation for the optional opening sequence) with a hsitorical map and moving down onto the map pulling in modern maps at increasing resolutions along the way before fading in the elvation data and eventually adding atmosphere and surfacing.

PF and colour adjust shader to dissolve between maps. Just working out the right maps for each level of detail

Dune

This is an interesting project. It's too bad GIS data only exist for modern terrain, not ancient. But for your animation, you won't need the old GIS data. I'm about to embark on making a series of scientifically based reconstructions, from post ice age to medieval times of one village + surroundings. I can get GIS data (though never used them before), but the ancient terrain must have been quite different (streams changed their flow, etc).
Looking forward to see you develop this...

Kadri


Ben i don't replay much to your threads about these kind of projects
mostly because they are not the kind of thing i am after much.
But i always like to read you posts.
Curious how this will end.

Hannes

This sounds really interesting! Looking forward to your progress.

bigben

The area I work in isn't directly related to this sort of work but we do find that a lot of our researchers don't know a great deal about presentation of images/data online,so as the resident map nerd I get to play a little at work. This kind of follows on from some of the work I've done georeferencing maps and aerial photos from our library collections: e.g. https://www.flickr.com/photos/digitisation-uom/14015244981/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znx2N1bIeD8 but this time using an assortment of external data/images.

Still tossing up whether to have the camera at the rim of the canyon and introduce the DEM by having the canyon drop away, or having the camera next to the river and having the canyon rise up around it. 

I'm picking off the easy bits first so I can get the renders going and build up some footage while I trudge through the surfacing.

bigben

Also using some idle CPU power at work with remote file sharing via AARNET's Cloudstor+ service (Australian uni use only), and manually starting rendering batches via remote desktop. One nice thing with this is that the assets are synced to a local folder on each machine.  :)

bigben

#6
Atmosphere and terrain fade in test.  The terrain moves both up and down. The initial flat terrain is positioned so that the camera height above the ground is the same at the start and end. For the final, I'll bring the atmosphere in when the map is replaced with surfacing

Dune

Nothing to see, can that be?

Kadri


Not sure why but VLC player didn't played for me either.
Media Player Classic had no problem.

bigben

#9
That one was only short (every 25 frames)... I think I'll just use Vimeo for the test segments.  I've got a sequence with every 5th frame on the go. I'll update it then. Image sequence loaded in QT Pro and exported as H264

[edit] Here 'tis
https://vimeo.com/103634218

TheBadger

THis is cool. But is the camera simply rising, or is the terrain actively being displaced over time? Interesting visual either way.
It has been eaten.

Dune

That is really nice, Ben.

bigben

#12
The camera is stationary for this. Setup: load the terrain and position the camera, noting the height of the camera above the ground. Hide the terrain and add a surface shader, changing the displacement until the camera is at the same height above the ground. Connect both to a merge node using a constant scalar as the merge function and simply animate from 0 to 1.  If you look at the horizon on the left you'll see that the terrain rises.

Still deciding on the flight path. I'll try one near the river because it might be more interesting for it to be more obvious that the terrain develops above and below the camera.

The transitions for fading the maps didn't quite work as expected so I have to tweak the PF bit of that. For the transition from maps to surface shading I'm planning a sloped mask that will sweep across from east to west with the river appearing first and then the rising up the canyon walls as it moves along, kind of like a flash flood.

Kadri

Quote from: bigben on August 18, 2014, 04:23:55 PM
... For the transition from maps to surface shading I'm planning a sloped mask that will sweep across from east to west
with the river appearing first and then the rising up the canyon walls as it moves along, kind of like a flash flood.

I was going to ask if you wanted that kind of effect or a linear one like here and what kind of method you might use.

Dune

I would keep the camera quite still or it would be a very confusing animation, at least no fast movements, as the rest already all moves. Nice idea to sweep the terrain in.  I really look forward to seeing this....