Manage Large World

[PeanutMocha]

Is there a tutorial on how to create and manage a continent-size chunk of world?

Most of the tutorials I have seen deal with a scene much smaller than that size.

[FrankB]

what do you actually mean by "managing" an area?

The "creation" part of your question is both easy and complex to answer. Generally, everything that is procedural in TG2 spans the entire planet.
What you would do (in a nutshell) is create a powerfractal that has feature scales and largest scales that match a continent in size. You'll use this as a blendshader for the next smaller scales, such as large plains and mountain ranges. You'll probably add a second planet or sphere which's radius is perhaps just a meter longer than you main planet, and add a water shader to that, so that you'll have oceans, too.
You need to go on with this method and experiment until you have something that you like, and that has enough variety across the continent that matches your expectations. From here on, it becomes more complex, as you can go into endless detail if you so wish.

Regards,
Frank

[PeanutMocha]

Thanks for the quick answer!

I'm just getting started so perhaps don't understand all the details, but here are the things I don't understand right now:

- How do I confine an effect (mountains vs. plains, green vs. white vs. desert) to a specific part of the globe?  Or do I have to shade the entire planet the same way?  I tried creating two different heightmaps, but they both combined into the same ComputeTerrain node before the whole thing went off to my Shaders node set.  What if I want different shaders for different regions, with some sort of transitional blending?

- Let's say over time I have 30-40 regions that I want to go into and add detail by hand above and beyond what the global procedures create.  Will I have one enormous network of nodes and connections?  Is there a way to break the node network up somehow to make it easier to maintain?

- Given the same 30-40 detail regions, will it impact rendering performance if a bunch of them are principally in the scene but many miles off?

[cyphyr]

Its a little ropey, but it works

link

You might also want to check out nvseals procedural planet at NWDA.
His work is outstanding and may work on a different principal to mine, I'd love to know

- Let's say over time I have 30-40 regions that I want to go into and add detail by hand above and beyond what the global procedures create.  Will I have one enormous network of nodes and connections?  Is there a way to break the node network up somehow to make it easier to maintain?

Yes. You can put separate node networks inside a "group" node. That way you can define a group called Desert1 and another called Desert2 and unless you go inside the group (right click on the group title>internal network) all you'll see is the group.

Richard

[PeanutMocha]

That looks very, very cool.  I'll spend some time dissecting your approach to try and fully understand it.

If I wanted to start the continent out with a certain general shape, could I do that e.g. with a low-res heightmap instead of procedurally generating the continent landmass?  I'm trying to bring over an existing fantasy world from 2D maps.

Are the full docs available anywhere without purchasing the full version?  I'm still working with the free version to make sure it's the right tool for my needs.  I found one chapter from the docs available online but can't seem to find the rest.

[cyphyr]

Docs are still in the works at the mo as far as I know
take a look at the docs section on the forum and the terragen wiki.
My method is entirely procedural, so unfortunately its just a matter of clicking until you get something you like.
There are heightmap generators out there that will let you precicely sculpt a landscape to your own specifications but they will be severely pushed to work on a global scale. That's the great advantage of the procedural approach. Can you imagine the size of a bitmap that will work at less than meter level and also at a global size, it would be huge!!!
Richard

[PeanutMocha]

My basic thought with using a low-res height map was to provide the general shape of the land, which is then refined using procedurals as inspired by this post http://www.nwdanet.com/terragen-tutorials/45-terragen2-casestudy.html.

[cyphyr]

Yes but that's still only a dem of a small area of the globe, you wuld need tens of thousands of dems to cover the entire globe. You could of course make a very much smaller planet ... .. .

Good luck and keep us posted
Richard

[TheBlackHole]

Try Terracell:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=754.0
You'll need to add your own starfields, though. dandelO should have one.

[PeanutMocha]

Looks like Terracell has died, or perhaps more appropriately morphed into nvseal planet pack http://www.nwdanet.com/buy-packs/7-preset-packs/48-nvseal-planets-pack.html

[TheBlackHole]

You can still get Terracell on Page 4.

[Oshyan]

What you want to do is certainly possible. Your idea of using a low resolution, *large-scale* heightmap as a basis is a good one, and will work. Depending on the size, you may just want to create a spherically projected map for the entire planet and then add detail from there. TG2 would probably not be the best tool to begin the process in, but once you have the shape roughed out, you can import it using an Image Map shader and use that for base displacement as well as (possibly) masking.

Ideally you would create several images, starting with a base heightfield with accurate (albeit coarse) heights described in grayscale. Then create masks of different areas for varying terrain types, e.g. deserts, mountains, etc. Use the base heightfield for displacement, and the masks to control distribution of procedural effects. Used in combination with something like NVseal's planet pack, the results could be excellent across a large scale. You can then use Painted Shaders for additional smaller-scale, localized changes in terrain shape via displacement (positive and negative). Alternatively you can drop-in higher resolution heightfields created in other apps into specific areas and blend them in.

- Oshyan

[PeanutMocha]

Thanks for confirming that this is possible in principal.  I'm looking into this one step at a time.  It seems to me that a blended approach of heightmaps and fractal refinements will best meet my needs, but we'll see how things develop.