Generic Earth?

Started by Rob Allen, January 29, 2007, 06:58:38 PM

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old_blaggard

It looks like this is really coming along.  Could you possibly do a couple of test renders at some point and post them for us to see?
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

Rob Allen

Yeah, was getting around to it but kept getting side-tracked.  Here are some test renders.  Note the exaggerated coloring, which I was using to determine biome distribution easily from orbital views.

After taking some time off from working on this, and thinking about it from a distance, so to speak, I think that my current approach may not be the best.  The altitudes are becoming difficult to manage and rather unrealistic, and several other factors are becoming too random to be manageable.  I have decided to apply my experience with this version to a new, more simplified version.  This should be more efficient and produce better results.

But here are the test renders from v0.1401:

dhavalmistry

nice ocean reflection...would you mind tell me (us) how to get it please??...
"His blood-terragen level is 99.99%...he is definitely drunk on Terragen!"

Rob Allen

Nothing special, that's the default TG2 water shader.  Just use a water shader as your surface and there you go.  What I did exactly was create a sphere with the same center coordinates and radius as the planet, and gave it a water shader.  Pretty simple, but I'll have to think of another way when I get to the point where I need to put in rivers as they are above sealevel.

BTW, something fun to do with water shaders: try applying a green one to a fake stones shader.  Attack of the blobs!

BPauba

I am impressed with the macroshapped terrain. I was expecting a less realistic looking coastline and oddly shapped continents... Cool stuff :D

Rob Allen

Ok, been playing around with the new simplified system and it works much better.  I still have alot to do, like re-implementing the biome maps, but here are some shots showing the new continent shapes:


Will

neat, I can't wait to see where this will go. it already look very useful.

Regards,

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Rob Allen

#37
The project is growing into something interesting already.  I've gotten some interesting inspiration from it and have decided to call it "Terracell", with the intent of creating something like Flaming Pear's Lunarcell, but far more powerful via Terragen 2.  The name Terracell is a combination of Terragen and Lunarcell.

I just love it when a project I'm working on takes on a life of its own...  heh.  I'll start a new thread for Terracell and link to it here.

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=754.msg6501#msg6501

monks

#38
Interesting stuff!

Sethren said:

QuotePerhaps if there was a feature inside Terragen 2 were we can paint the shaders over the planet-size sphere then it would be easy to have specific elements of a planet's features were we would want them to be rather then second guessing for days on end using the current system of setting up shaders over an entire planet.

Hey Sethren, I had the same idea a while back.  :) Apparently Joe Slayton implemented an inverse projection (which is what you need to paint on curved surfaces- I can't remember the exact details of the conversation offhand) in Fractal Terrains (Pro Fantasy). It really is a very nifty program -before its time I suspect.
Yes, that was it- the inverse projection would project back from the sphere to a flat plane.

Another idea is to wrap an image shader around a a planet but I seem to remember that this eventually leads to the requirement of painting on a sphere because you still have to be Holbein to reproject while painting! Joe did release a prog that reprojects an image so that it shows you what you have to draw in 2D in order for it to look like that  on a sphere...tricky but doable  :D

monks

Rob Allen

With Terracell, the planet will be made up of a number of shaders each of which you enable/disable, and use your own imagemaps in thier place.  There is a global topography shader which is responsible for the shapes of the continents, oceans, and islands, and a mountain shader which will give the continents depth with hills, valleys and peaks, as well as providing coastal islands, archipelagos, and ocean trenches.  Seperately there will be biome maps which will distribute biomes across the planet according to altitude and randomness.  The biomes are more than just coloring.  They will determine where things like grass fields, wheat fields, bushes, trees, cacti, quartz veins, etc, will appear on the terrain.  One of the important elements of the biome distribution system will be finding a way to determine latitude so that climate zones can modify biome distribution.  An arctic desert would become a tundra, whereas a tropical forest would become jungle, and so on.  If anyone has any ideas about how to create a latitude system, it would be much appreciated.

Oshyan

Hi Rob, looks like you're already getting some great continent shapes and whatnot. Simple but very effective, as it should be.

Although there is no real "latitude" system at present, fortunately there *is* a working alternative. Simply turn on "Use Y for slope" in a Surface Layer under the Slope Constraints tab, then adjust min and/or max slope to get the distribution you want. Very easy to create polar zones, etc. this way.

- Oshyan

Rob Allen

Aha, very clever!  Thanks for that tip.  I'll try it out once I start working on biome distribution.  Getting the mid and low level terrain sculpting to work in synch with the continent-level is a bit time consuming, but proving to be a very interesting excersize.