Gaea Terrain

[sjefen]

Hi,


Not sure if there's any interest of stuff like this, but I'm sharing the heigtmap for this
terrain I've made with Gaea.

It includes masks for flow, deposit, wear and also a color map, but I'm still learning this software, so I'm
not sure how the color map is gonna work out as I have not tested this is TG.

Hope someone finds this useful 

Here is the link to the files on Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lc4nc53p3wpp60a/Old%20Volcano.7z?dl=0


- Terje

[WAS]

Ohh, thank you! This is a beautiful landscape! Lots of detail here it looks like.

[sjefen]

No problem 

I wanted to get it in 8K, but it doesn't work for now. Gaea is still in development so I was
only able to do 4K. More details next time maybe 


- Terje

[WAS]

Still looks pretty good, better from a distance. Did a quick test.

[sjefen]

Try turning of fractal detail in the heightfield.

[WAS]

I'll give that a shot, also Terje, what displacement multiplier would you suggest for the heightfield? It seems by default it's near flat. I used 5 for a close approximation.

[sjefen]

I always turn of fractal details when importing a heightfield. Otherwise I'll end up with details that is not intentionally for that terrain. If you turn it off, you'll see the terrain as it is 

I have no idea of how to get it exactly the same height as in Gaea, but I often end up with 8-10.

[WAS]

From what I've understood from conversations is World Creator is already in Meters but there is also a full range clamp to exporting, by default I believe it's off? And meters by default start at sea level (0m) which should be about right for TG.

What is the meter height of the scene in Gaea?

[WAS]

I did a quick 7m render with no fractal detail, and upped displacement multiplier to 7, which does look more like your preview, however their are weird anomalies in the terrain, which I believe is because the original heightmap is not at the right range for TG, so low ground details are being multiplied with the rest of the terrain beyond what should be their maximum.

[sjefen]

Yeah, somethings not right here. I'll look into it.
I don't know the height of this scene, but I'll check later or tomorrow.

- Terje

[Oshyan]

Not sure what you mean by the "right range". Terragen doesn't care what resolution or height range is represented in the file, generally. The reason you need to multiply is because this terrain (image) format doesn't have built-in scaling values. .ter does, and others can too (.tif with georef data, i.e. geotiff). EXR can be used too, with meter values instead of 0-1 color values, but that's not a standard.

Anyway I would guess these artifacts are part of the original heightfield. That could easily be checked in e.g. Wilbur (free terrain editor/viewer).

- Oshyan

[sjefen]

Thanks Oshyan. I'll check out Wilbur 


- Terje

[WAS]

Not sure what you mean by the "right range". Terragen doesn't care what resolution or height range is represented in the file, generally. The reason you need to multiply is because this terrain (image) format doesn't have built-in scaling values. .ter does, and others can too (.tif with georef data, i.e. geotiff). EXR can be used too, with meter values instead of 0-1 color values, but that's not a standard.

Anyway I would guess these artifacts are part of the original heightfield. That could easily be checked in e.g. Wilbur (free terrain editor/viewer).

- Oshyan

The range are clamped values, which do effect even a TIFF output.

Take a look at Quadspinner's documentation: https://medium.com/quadspinner/terrain-scaling-33e6fc35c7a9

From what I'm looking at here, compared to a 4k heightmap in TIFF format from the same application, his heightmap is clamped and not full range.

In TIFF format, this will effect the desired scale range because of inherently how TG reads it expecting it to be 0-1 range.

Edit: That being said, small, low scale details will not be appropriately represented in a 0-1 range when clamped in TIFF format.  Being barely present and/or clamped/cut off, they will be exponentially effected by scaling up the terrain in Terragen beyond it's read 0-1 range.

[Oshyan]

The clamping is the issue in that case, which is an (optional) Gaea output setting.

- Oshyan

[Matt]

The heightfield renders just fine for me. Maybe there's some displacement happening in your shaders? Start from just the heightfield and re-enable your shaders one by one to find the culprit.