Export Terragen terrains as vector displacement map

Started by digitalguru, March 14, 2016, 10:50:55 AM

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digitalguru

QuoteILM are using Terragen now too.

Nice, do you know what they used it on?

QuoteI think you brought this up before, but I don't know much of anything about it. I guess this is something a compositor would understand well?

It's like a zdepth map on steroids  :) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19w3vkFp5X0
https://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-art-of-deep-compositing/

QuoteAnd to export the texture is that possible ?

Yes, once you've set it up with according to the tutorial it's just the output of the render that gets used as the vector map.


Oshyan


digitalguru


paq

Thanks digitalguru, that's indeed very useful to know !
Gameloft

TheBadger

Quotemaybe setting up a "pipeline" thread

This will be good. Lets collaborate after the contest. I think there are lots of little things that I am seeing that could be used in many different ways. I think that others would have some great Ideas too.
Also, just straight from one soft to another info will be useful to document.

Having a blast with this. Anything I can't do or just don't know how to do, I can do in other soft and bring it back to TG. lol, I no longer am sad and ashamed I can't use blue nodes cuz I can just get what I want another way ;D ;D ;D
It has been eaten.

bla bla 2

And if of object in populate we can export the plant, without move again in software ?

digitalguru

not sure exactly what you mean, but if you mean exporting population objects, then no.

this only exports anything that can be created  by displacement (terrain , fake stones)

TheBadger

when exporting a terrain as an obj, if you turn off RTO, then the plants and stuff you added to the terrain will also export as part of the terrain. I have not tried this yet with the vector, but I am guessing that it would be the same.

Has anyone done that yet?
It has been eaten.

Dune

I very much doubt that, as it's not part of the planet.

TheBadger

Which part?
I know for a fact that you can output an object like I said. This goes back to the Ivy Gen threads. When I was importing the terrain to Ivy gen I sometimes saw that ivy I had already placed was displaced into the mesh, It took me a while to understand that sometimes I had RTO on and sometimes Off when rendering out the mesh.

You would have to explain why exporting a vector Vs a obj of the terrain are different for us to understand why you highly doubt it. Because that would be where the difference must be.

When Matt explained before about how he was thinking about implementing the vector output, he mentions some various ways, including a way that was similar to how an object is exported. But he hasn't yet written about what he actually did since putting the option in.

It had sounded like it worked in a similar way at the time, but I don't want to dig up the threads now to refresh my memory.
It has been eaten.

Kadri


I tried to export an object population in the past, it didn't work.
No time to test it now. Curious too.

Dune

Objects are separate from the planet (they are not part of it as fake stones are, e.g.), and a pop is a series of instances. I'm pretty sure it would mean (a lot of) work under the hood to export that as an object or grouped object or (let alone) vector.

AP

Are not instanced objects just only stored in RAM memory anyways? So only one true object is of a real 3d model to be exported and imported alone. Even if it were possible to export an entire population, one can only imagine the massive file size for the amount of polygons generated and saved for exporting.

Oshyan

It's true that for the Micro Exporter, if Raytrace Objects is turned off, it can and will export other geometry, including populations. I don't think this would work for the vdisp export method described in this thread though as it's not using the normal rendering process, which is the reason the micro exporter "trick" works with RTO off. It's not that useful a trick anyway as the geometry is not properly differentiated, i.e. the populated objects are not separate from the terrain in any clear, meaningful way. It's kind of like getting a DEM with tree heights included, rather than bare terrain. Can be useful, but probably not what you're looking for if you want "population export".

- Oshyan

TheBadger

QuoteIt's true that for the Micro Exporter, if Raytrace Objects is turned off, it can and will export other geometry, including populations. I don't think this would work for the vdisp export method described in this thread though as it's not using the normal rendering process, which is the reason the micro exporter "trick" works with RTO off.
Thank you, Oshyan.

And yes they are huge files.
It has been eaten.