colour output of terrain? how/possible?

[carbon_adam]

Ive tried reading though some threds of exporting using the lightwave thingo..I pretty sure I can get that to happen but what I really didnt get from the threds was if this supports the colour information aka shaders of the terrain.  I dont mean shaders as material files just a colour image thats going to match a heightfield(as in UV's) or .lwo mesh that I export.  I guess what I was to make sure I can do is load up the model files and have the texure i see in TG2 and that it fits.  In the end I dont need my model to be high poly but the colour is the thing thats going to make it look good for my 3D skybox for the source engine(yes 3D skybox not a 6 sided cube)..anyway i fthere is a post about let me know if now..some clarity pretty please.

cheers everyone
Adam

[carbon_adam]

what nobody knows or is it so obvious that you feel you dont need to say anything

[Tangled-Universe]

As far as I know it is not possible to export the color information with the .lwo along.
You can render a top-down view of the exported area to get a color image which you can hook into your .lwo model later, but it won't 'fill' all the shapes/angles of the model because there are a lot of overhangs and displacements.

Martin

[carbon_adam]

yeah thats what i was afraid of, Im not sure if I want to spend time trying to match up image renders from a tg2 camera to match a terrain even if the terrain had no overhangs. And its seems then I have hit a wall with terragen 2 until maybe it has that feature, I know its hard to export procedural terrain as ive read in allot of other threds but I guess thats why other apps have implemented mega texures and areas of intrest to handle small sections for export ect, but hey I love what I have seen so far with this app and I will keep my eye on whats going on..
ad

[Oshyan]

Correct, the textures do not export with either of the LWO exporters. Presently TG2 is optimized more for internal rendering rather than texture generation for other applications. But interoperability with other systems will be a future priority.

- Oshyan

[carbon_adam]

I really hope like you said that export gets better   I mean I am developing for games so while terragen is fantastic at creating images its not really usful for what I have to come up with for work except for skyboxes.  So what about the system that l3dt has with mega textures and terrain files..is there any plans for that? the moment its working email me and Ill be happy to spend some money on terragen 2.
Oshyan I know you work hard on this and its allot to develop im just a little disapointed cause I cant get these fantastic terains in the games we are woking on

[carbon_adam]

what about to render out a simple heightmap greyscale image froma camera as in Z depth? - almost every app ive working in 3d with can do this.  And im not really working with proc terrains im only working with heightmaps ive made in worlmachine then on top of that the surface shaders, I dont mind loosing the overhangs because really I dont have overhangs..well not big overhangs anyway. 

[JimB]

Why don't you match up an orthographic camera (pointing down 90 degrees) to the output .ter terrain's export area settings? If the terrain is 1000x1000, the camera needs to be positioned above the centre of the square at 500, 500.

[carbon_adam]

you mean output the mesh though lightwave? Because my machine even though its not bad 2 gig of ram simply runs out of memory to export the area of terrain im dealing with..I just want to see if i can get a plain old dirry heightmap from a camera view..a rendered grey scale image.  Again if you have ever tried to match up a model to colour information for terrain u will probably know its not that its not easy and is a huge waste of time..so if output of a heightfield .ter is possible froma camera view....how?

[JimB]

No, export from TG2 as a .ter and create an ORTHO camera matching to the output area. Search the forum for how to do it - you can specify the area and the resolution to export as a .ter. Take the .ter back into World Machine if you want, or use another app to convert from .ter to another format (there are ones that will do that).

[carbon_adam]

well i did plenty of searches for getting out heightmaps and I didnt find anything that matches the problem or someone who has actually done it..I am at a loss  ..If someone was to point me to the thred that sais here use this node and do this then i could play with it..but i have no idea which node i should be conecting to what..doesnt make sense to me..id love to give it a try though if someone knows. In the end im now working with Vue(adam feels like trator), but i mean its quite simple in Vue to output colour height and alpha within the same render job..and then its done, I mean Vue doesnt look as good to me but I have to go with workflow here...that is until i find a solution for tg2.
thanks for the help so far

[JimB]

Check this thread:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?PHPSESSID=b5a26f6048f4a1705a2b574c3085572a&topic=2493.0

And these:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?PHPSESSID=b5a26f6048f4a1705a2b574c3085572a&topic=894.0
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=3684.msg38115#msg38115

[carbon_adam]

cool thanks jimB
i will try it when i get home from work..and let everyone know how it goes..i mean I really want to get it to work..
cheers again
ad

[gregsandor]

Leveller has a useful terrain mesh optimized .obj output.  Load a .ter, export and optimize at your desired resolution.

[Oshyan]

Terragen 2 is primarily a renderer. It is not explicitly intended as a terrain modeler for other applications. In other words while it has great tools for creating realistic terrain, the focus is on rendering those terrains within TG2, not exporting them to other systems like games, or other renderers. Data interchange will be more of a focus in the future, but even then we will be aiming more at other high end 3D applications like Maya, Softimage, etc. rather than game purposes. The effects industry is just a larger, more immediately applicable market.

That being said, if all you need is normal heightfield output (grayscale), right-click on a heightfield node and choose Save As. Give it a .ter extension. Then use TerraConv to convert 16 bit TIFF. You should then be able to convert this to any format you need.

- Oshyan