Building Topography of a Planet from Scratch

[Gruga]

Hi, there.
I am interested in building the topography of a whole planet from scratch.
What is the default diameter of the planet used in TG2? Can it be altered?
And is it a practical plan to sub-divide the planet surface into blocks for detailed building?

[Henry Blewer]

Here's a link to a running dialog about this. This looks quite promising as a technique.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7040.0

[rcallicotte]

There is no way to subdivide the main planet in TG2.  Its size is seen by the listing under its node.  This is in meters, but I don't remember the exact number.  It's a big number.

[Elegy]

The radius of the planet is 6378km, which is the radius of Earth.

[Gruga]

Though I have tried a bit on the old free version, I am new to TG2.
I mean, is it practical to build up the whole planet surface with individual .ter blocks for close camera views?
And have a way to register their relative positions on the planet?
I would like to create a virtual world that I could re-visit places, say for sake of storylines.
And not just build a nice looking but stand alone scene.

[Cyber-Angel]

Can I ask what your use of the final assets you create will be? If its for production why do you require to build a planet by hand in the way you describe it sounds expensive in terms of asset creation time, computation time (To render, Surface and so on the necessary terrain elements) time for delivery of the created assets and expensive in storage and asset retrieval times.

The Planet in TG2 is as far as memory serves is procedural based so having to load in multiple .ter files seems to be unnecessary, t=you have not be clear as too you intent as too why you wish too do and the intended outcome thereof, it is therefore that persons here are not able to offer assistance that you may require to do what you want too do but in a way that is possible within the technical limitations of the software.

Also do you have any other constants (Assuming production) such as live plate photography (matching shoot lighting, camera height etc.) and/ or miniatures and the like?     

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel                  

[Gruga]

It is nothing of that grand scale of production.
It is just for my own silly and humble interests.
I am a fantasy fiction lover and a prototype-figurine hobbyist.
What I want to do is to create a virtual fantasy land of my own, and maybe think up some stories here and there.
I am not aiming at finishing everything all at once.
I just need a general distribution of topography.
Then I would concentrate on detailing, say a little village or town, which I could load back up the same each time.
But I need to be able to maintain the relative positions of each places of interest.
I probably need to figure out a coordinate system to do that.
I am no way an experienced user like you people.
So please forgive me if I cannot express clearly what I want to achieve.

[Gruga]

Hmm... maybe I am picking an inappropriate tool for my goal. My bad.
Just that what TG2 renders looks so good and attractive. *snap*

[cyphyr]

Hi Gruga and welcome to the forum

You have chosen a task for yourself that is perhaps one of the most difficult to achieve in Terragen (or any other package), that of creating a believable world that works at both planetary scales and right down to individual landscape features such as hills, canyons and different types of mountain etc.

Good luck !

So in no particular order think about the following (a few ideas of the top of my head):

If your trying for an "Earth" type planet do some research, take a look at google images or pop down your local "end of run" book shop and look at some satellite images. You'll notice that in any image where you can see the whole planet there is NO displacement visible AT ALL!! You cant see mountains from far out in space! Images from the ISS (International Space Station) and Space Shuttle only just pick up on the height of mountain ranges and they are orbiting at about 350km.

I would abandon the idea of using individual .ter blocks, you will end up with a very larger number of them and they wont be particularly noticable untill your close enough to not see the rest of the blocks.

Concentrate instead on building a procedural approach, building up your landscape features from Power Fractals with very big scales (500000 > 1e+008) and use similarly scaled blend shaders to define areas where your mountain regions, plains, canyons etc sit.

Will your planet have oceans? If so you'll need to define a coast line beyond which there is little terrain modification. Try a warped high scale, low octave, high contrast power fractal to define your coast.

Populations (trees, rocks, buildings etc): These are only vertical to the planet at the north pole, the closer you get to the equator the more the trees etc start to lie flat! You can place objects at any point you like but populations behave much more predictably at the north pole (I think pop's at the south pole will stand on their head?).

This is by no means exhaustive and there are many other threads on the subject. I hope this little bit helps, please do ask if you have any more questions and once again, good luck!



Richard

[Gruga]

Thanks Richard, and actually everyone that have replied, for your advices.
I'll surely try my little wit to learn and explore.
Best reagrds.