Texture-/Splatmap export ?

Started by Falcon, June 17, 2009, 03:20:01 PM

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Falcon

Is it possible to export a splatmap from Terragen2, i.e. a projected map of the surface textures? WorldMachine can do that, using several output nodes, but I could not find the equivalent nodes in TG2. Is there a node that saves/exports a bitmap of a texture to a file?

cyphyr

Not really ... but you can place an orthographic camera above you terrain/point of interest, turn of the atmosphere  (place your sun at 90deg) and render that out. You'll end up with a "map" of your terrain. Useful in all sorts of ways, not created automatically, but I'm not sure this is really what your after...
:)
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Falcon

No, not really. Thought of the ortographic camera, but that's more a hack than a solution. :-(

Cyber-Angel

Terragen uses proprietary procedural based shaders, there is no way that you can export them for use in another application; with bitmaps you lose the key advantage of procedural based surfaces in that with procedural based surfacing you can move the camera an arbitrary distance form the terrain, and not lose detail, with bitmaps you don't have this.

With the bit-mapped approach (Assuming a game engine is the final use for said image) you need to know how far form the surface of an object it is planned to let the user (Re: Player) get and know that you'd require X resolution for that distance and create your bit map at the required resolution, in you asset creation package in this case TG2.

A small caveat to the above: the problem with bit maps for games (Providing this is the end use) is that they only work a certain distance form the camera before you see pixels; games that are examples Starlancer and Freelancer (Digital Anvil released through Microsoft Game Studios) The Quake Series and Doom 1-3 (Not sure about Doom 4).

Sorry if you know this already, but there you go.  ;D

Regards to you,

Cyber-Angel                   

rcallicotte

This hack has been used by at least a couple of professionals for big-screen films.


Quote from: Falcon on June 18, 2009, 05:07:23 AM
No, not really. Thought of the ortographic camera, but that's more a hack than a solution. :-(

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