Terrain Generation from a Side Profile

[jaf]

I was thinking of this during a camping trip last week.  Is there a method or application that will generate a terrain from a side prospective?  I mean, you look out to a mountain(s) and trace a side (I guess front may be more appropriate) profile.  Or trace a profile from a photograph?

I know the terrain wouldn't fit the real thing because of no distance and slope information, but as a background setting for maybe archvis, it would be nice.

[rcallicotte]

I'm not sure I understand.  Would you go to the trouble of explaining?  Maybe I'm too tired and it's sort of late for me. 

[Will]

I think it would be like a line graph but that would be converted into height.

[inkydigit]

like a profile only?....maybe use a 2d backdrop instead?

[sonshine777]

A profile/section will only give you information at the cut line and nothing in the foreground or background. It would be hard to produce a 3D terrain fron that alone, you would have to have many sections in each direction to get the information you need.

[jaf]

When I get some time I'm going to try a few things in Lightwave.  I did a bit this morning by setting a front background image in Lightwave and generating a sketched outline.  Then converting the points to a poly and doing an extrude.  Then moving points in the side view to get some slope and finally importing into TG2 as an object.

However, I what I was really thinking off, was a utility that one could trace the front as an x/y profile and then using the max/min y as a reference, draw a side z/y profile (fitting within the max/min y.)  Then generating points, say starting from max plus x, min y, and plus z and proceeding to max minus x, max y, and max minus z.

I think that would result in a 3d point object which would then need to be converted to polys.

Probably a waste of time, but I think the method would work, but may not be worth the effort.

[Oshyan]

There are several tools like World Machine that allow you to use a filter in which you can draw a "side" profile, but it cannot generate terrain, only modify existing terrain. A side profile only gives you 2 dimensions, you need 3 for the terrain to be fully created. So if you create a base terrain with smooth contours you could then adjust the side profile slope with such a tool, but not actually generate it. There may be some ability to generate custom falloff profiles in World Machine 2.0's new spline tools as well, although I'm not sure. That seems like it would be the closest thing to what you describe.

- Oshyan

[moodflow]

I shared some 3D models of breaking waves a long time ago on here that were created using this method.

I don't exactly remember which 3D app I used to create them (though I think it was Rhino).

I created multiple 2D profiles over regular intervals which adds that extra dimension for 3D and the app generated a 3D model from this.

The thing is, you could easily create an overhang this way, so I don't think a heightfield image could be generated from it.  So it would have to be imported into TG2 as a 3D object (which do not directly blend into terrain in TG2).

[Cyber-Angel]

I think I understand the concept been discussed here. The feature wanted I would guess work in the following manor.

1. Acquire requisite photographic source martial and use a tool that would be the landscape terrain modeling version of the Magnetic Lasso tool in Photoshop, which you would acquire 2d profiles from the source photograph.

2. The profiles I would guess would work after a fashion like the profile tool in some CAD software where if you wish to model some part like a cam or other such part you would draw its profile and then lath around an axis to get the desired part: the system as I understand it would go a stage further then this and could be seen as 2d contours describing part of a landscape in 3d space.

2.a. This method would require sophisticated discrimination and inference routines to fill in the missing data (Information not seen be the camera due POV and soon) though it would be largely guess work, and would more than likely be computationally and memory allocation expensive.

3. The 2D profile(s) so gathered would then be sent to the terrain generation engine and the profiles would shape a Power-Fractal or what ever into the desired landscape.

3.a Alternatively the 2d profiles could be gathered outside Terragen in say (Insert name of image editing program here) and then imported into the node designed for purpose and then (3) would apply.

Thats my guess how the requested feature would work and would require considerable development work to implement. Thats my two Cents any away. 

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel