Realistic planet and heightmap export

Started by vooood, July 27, 2009, 02:07:33 PM

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vooood

Hi!

I would need some pointers to create a whole realistic planet with rivers, mountains, valleys, flat areas, etc (would like to use alpine for realism!). Is there a way to create this everything in Terragen2? Is there some tutorial on this?

I would need a full bitmap (or RAW, or whatever readable in coding languages - for importing into a DB, don't ask why) heightmap export of the whole planet, too! I'm not really sure how I can do this.

please help?

Hetzen

The simple answer is, such a program doesn't exist outside Star Trek II/III. You have to make compromises and drill your work into the area you'll actually see it.

Oshyan

You can create complex full planets, with displacement-based terrain and texturing, however easy and complete export of the same is not possible at this point. You can only export sections.

- Oshyan

vooood

Quote from: Hetzen on July 27, 2009, 04:34:08 PM
The simple answer is, such a program doesn't exist outside Star Trek II/III. You have to make compromises and drill your work into the area you'll actually see it.

That actually exists outside Star Trek. There is Fractal Mapper Pro from ProFantasy but I really don't like the terrains it generates. And then there is a game Dwarf Fortress which generates perfect terrain but it's developer doesn't really want to say anything about his algorithms.

Quote from: Oshyan on July 28, 2009, 02:18:45 AM
You can create complex full planets, with displacement-based terrain and texturing, however easy and complete export of the same is not possible at this point. You can only export sections.

- Oshyan

Export sections? Can you please tell me more about this? Even if I can export the whole planet in sections it can be useful!

vooood

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7040.0 this looks like a good start. Now I only wonder how could I do a heightmap export? Doesn't matter if it's part by part.. :)

cyphyr

What do you want to be able to do with the final output. Terragen (and most other landscape apps) generates its features procedurally. This means that their level of detail remains constant no matter how close to the terrain you are so you can have features from meters to 10000's Km or more. To do this with a bitmap or imported height map on a global scale would require an absolutely HUGE file, way up in the Terrabyte reagon!!
I took a quick look at Fractal Mapper Pro and Dwarf Fortress and neither seem to come even close to Terragens Ability.
What do you need the terrain export for, how close will you get to it, is it for an animation, a series of stills or an interactive environment? Answer some of these q's and we'll be able to guide you better. :o)
richard
www.richardfraservfx.com
https://www.facebook.com/RichardFraserVFX/
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Ryzen 9 5950X OC@4Ghz, 64Gb (TG4 benchmark 4:13)

vooood

Quote from: cyphyr on July 28, 2009, 07:17:43 AM
What do you want to be able to do with the final output. Terragen (and most other landscape apps) generates its features procedurally. This means that their level of detail remains constant no matter how close to the terrain you are so you can have features from meters to 10000's Km or more. To do this with a bitmap or imported height map on a global scale would require an absolutely HUGE file, way up in the Terrabyte reagon!!
I took a quick look at Fractal Mapper Pro and Dwarf Fortress and neither seem to come even close to Terragens Ability.
What do you need the terrain export for, how close will you get to it, is it for an animation, a series of stills or an interactive environment? Answer some of these q's and we'll be able to guide you better. :o)
richard

I need the heightmap of the terrain (grayscale image, you know :P) of the whole world that I will read pixel by pixel and insert into a database - if it is possible by any other means I will be very happy to learn! I choose terragen because the realism is unbeliveable. I'll add non-ocean water manually (rivers and lakes) - simulate them by using some of my own climate and waterfall mechanism. So basically I just need a realistic height map that I will be able to import into a database - and I need it for the whole planet (size does not matter).

Henry Blewer

You still have a scale problem. Just a one acre of 1 yard intervals for a terrain land survey has a ton of data. You want to do this for an entire planet? Good luck and have fun. I know this sounds negative, but you are setting up a dataset which will take years to produce.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

vooood

Quote from: njeneb on July 28, 2009, 08:33:57 AM
You still have a scale problem. Just a one acre of 1 yard intervals for a terrain land survey has a ton of data. You want to do this for an entire planet? Good luck and have fun. I know this sounds negative, but you are setting up a dataset which will take years to produce.

Nobody said I want to export each CENTIMETER of the world. My current plan is to have something like 100x100 feets per pixel or so..

Henry Blewer

It is still gigs of data. 1000 x 1000 may work with some form of interpolation between the data points.
Try exporting a 100000 x 100000 height field from Terragen2. It is a huge file. That's why fractals come in so handy for this type of thing. You can get pretty accurate detail without so much data.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

vooood

Quote from: njeneb on July 28, 2009, 08:41:27 AM
It is still gigs of data. 1000 x 1000 may work with some form of interpolation between the data points.
Try exporting a 100000 x 100000 height field from Terragen2. It is a huge file. That's why fractals come in so handy for this type of thing. You can get pretty accurate detail without so much data.

I can make a smaller planet or a smaller heightfield export. As I said it's not about the amount of data - it's about how do I get such data at all? Though thank you for your concern, but I will solve scaling somehow (hopefully), and as long as it's under a 100gigs I'm OK with it.

Henry Blewer

I really wish you the best with this. Let us know how things are working. This forum has some people who are smarter than I (thank God). You might get better insight when you project gets going. This will help with more questions...
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

vooood

Quote from: njeneb on July 28, 2009, 08:47:50 AM
I really wish you the best with this. Let us know how things are working. This forum has some people who are smarter than I (thank God). You might get better insight when you project gets going. This will help with more questions...

Thank you. But I wonder is it possible to get a heightfield export at all? :S

vooood

NHF njeneb, sorry if I offended you in any way..

I already have such a system working (importing an heightmap export from Fractal Terrains Pro) with huge amount of data. All in all I exported the whole planet as a 1000000x1000000 (as smaller parts!) bitmap and was reading parts of that pixel by pixel and writing into a database.. That was only a test and worked so I don't see why couldn't it work with terragen if I could get the heightmap for the whole planet somehow - either in one .bmp or several images or some other means..

cyphyr

How to export a heightfield: :)
Create your fractal terrain...
at the end (bottom) of the chain of nodes used to create your terrain add a "Heightfield shader", this has attached to it a "Heightfield generate" node. Into this plug your fractal chain of nodes.
Now if you right click on the "Heightfield shader" you can export the file as a .ter of a .exr
Good luck
Richard
www.richardfraservfx.com
https://www.facebook.com/RichardFraserVFX/
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Ryzen 9 5950X OC@4Ghz, 64Gb (TG4 benchmark 4:13)