Exporting TG2 heightmap to 3dsmax?

[Cromfel]

Ok, I just jumped to TG2 from 0.9 Could someone tell how to export heightmap from Terragen to 3dsmax?

I found LWO exporter from the block menu, but that dont really help, as 3dsmax cant read LWO.

Is there any ways or possibilities to export OBJ from TG2?

Thanks in advance if anyone can help 

[Moose]

Hi Cromfel

You could look into using Blender (free) as an in-between. This will let you import lwo and export as obj.

[Cromfel]

Very nice!

I will immediately go test it. Thanks a lot mate 

[Cromfel]

Ok, now I got the conversion going. The polycount from TG2 is around 2 million tho.

Could you also tell how to properly export heightmap to contain minimum amount of faces?

[Moose]

You can play with the first two settings on the heightfield generate node. In the past I've gotten differing poly counts by adjusting these settings but cant remember if this changed the scale of the terrain aswell.

Another option to the Heightfield Export LWO node, is to use the LWO Micro Exporter ("Sequence / Output" tab of the render node). With this, you render the polys of your mesh through the view of a camera. Depending on what you wish to achieve this can be the preferred option. You can specify the 'detail' of the resultant mesh with the detail setting in the render node.

[Cromfel]

I now reduced the heightmap TGA from 1024 to 256 and the exported heightmap LWO is still 2 million faces 

[JimB]

If you're looking to have highly efficient poly meshes from your .ter files you need to use or invest in a decent poly reduction tool, or use one within an app. Leveller has a superb plugin that can export hugely reduced meshes in .wrl format while retaining edge detail.

And if you look hard enough you'll find a converter from .wrl to .obj somewhere, somehow.

[Cromfel]

So TG2 grabs the amount of faces from nowhere? It cant be selected or altered anywhere?

No "quality" options for the heightmap generation?

[Cromfel]

I used 3dsmax Optimize, what reduced the polycount with default settings from 2 millions to 2 thousand. 

[JimB]

So TG2 grabs the amount of faces from nowhere? It cant be selected or altered anywhere?

No "quality" options for the heightmap generation?

It's all in the initial heightfield setup node IIRC. Or, if generating from camera in the render settings, in the render's quality settings and resolution.

[Oshyan]

So TG2 grabs the amount of faces from nowhere? It cant be selected or altered anywhere?

No "quality" options for the heightmap generation?

It's all in the initial heightfield setup node IIRC. Or, if generating from camera in the render settings, in the render's quality settings and resolution.

I believe this is correct. I posted elsewhere some other ideas for making this workflow easier and/or more flexible as wel.

- Oshyan

[Cromfel]

I just learned trough the hard way that process for importing Terragen heightmap to 3dsmax will break the models (1000+ errors). Nasty, and unfortunately visible only when all the hard work is done 

I had wrong expectations of using TG in heightmap/landscape making for games. Seems to be total pain in the...

[Tangled-Universe]

So TG2 grabs the amount of faces from nowhere? It cant be selected or altered anywhere?

No "quality" options for the heightmap generation?

It's all in the initial heightfield setup node IIRC. Or, if generating from camera in the render settings, in the render's quality settings and resolution.

I believe this is correct. I posted elsewhere some other ideas for making this workflow easier and/or more flexible as wel.

- Oshyan

Could you maybe point me to that post Oshyan?

I want to use the LWO micro-exporter to export a piece of displaced terrain, but I don't get the micro-exporter to work properly. At least, I think. Importing in blender doesn't work (crashes) and also not in poseray (model has no faces/vertices).

Maybe someone can give a short elaboration on the proper workflow?
Thanks in advance.

Martin

[Mohawk20]

Exporting the camera view in stead of the heightmap is not pretty anyways, because what ever you do, you will never capture all the faces or polygons. I once did a 360 area shot, dit it in 8 pieces, with wide camera angle so everything would be covered at least twise. Merged with a topview shot, I still missed about 15%...

Abandoned that project!

[Moose]

Exporting the camera view in stead of the heightmap is not pretty anyways, because what ever you do, you will never capture all the faces or polygons. I once did a 360 area shot, dit it in 8 pieces, with wide camera angle so everything would be covered at least twise. Merged with a topview shot, I still missed about 15%...

Abandoned that project!

Yeah, it depends really on what you intended usage is. The advantage of using the micro exporter is that you can render, for instance, many terrain chunks at high resolution, and because the mesh has absolute coordinates, they'll precisely import to the correct location in another app where you can then do further stuff with (ie have other geometry interacting with the terrain). The fact that there may be gaps here and there shouldn't be a problem if you're using the terrain merely as a collision surface for your geometry which you then composite with the TG rendering. The micro exporter also captures lateral displacement which could come in handy.