Do any of you supportive Terragen users have a moment to answer a question?
I was unable to find a decent terrain of Devils Tower to build off of so in the end I've settled for a obj model. Rather then reinventing the wheel this seemed to make the most sense.
However, reinventing the wheel might have been easier? The trouble I'm having is:
Populating trees. I've checked to sit on "Devils Tower" added a distribution shader etc. but I can't seem to find a way to control distribution and the trees are on top and sides of the tower etc. I can forget about a painted shader as well as I can't seem to paint on an object. If anyone has any ideas on how I can distribute trees I believe all my other issues will be resolved as well.
Thanks in Advance,
Jay
One way could be to use camera projection for distribution.
Use the main render camera or if needed make another one and put it higher and pointing towards the landscape.
Use a render of that camera, edit it or just a painted image (black and white) you made etc. and use that image for distribution with that same camera (in the image node "projection type-Through camera") .
The most basic one is using a surface layer restricted by altitude.
Quote from: Kadri on March 13, 2021, 08:13:31 PMThe most basic one is using a surface layer restricted by altitude.
Thanks Kadri! This one seems the least complicated so I'm definitely trying this out. I'll let ya know.
Thanks,
Jay
I have a heightmap on disc, hold on.
For some reason DEMs of this region, 3m lidar dems, 5 and 10m satellite dems, etc, have all been removed from the internet. It doesn't event exist as heightmap data on Google Earth. It's loaded some other way, so if you use Atlas, it doesn't have the region, or even Terrain.party.
I don't know why, and I can't find anything "legal" wise, so I will share it. Mine comes from lidar/satellite mix, and has some minor issues because I think some of the data has trees in it, while the others data didn't.
Hmm. So I may have excluded it because of file size. It doesn't seem to be on either DVD (only 8GB discs with each map highly compressed and poorly named).
Though I wonder if you could convert a relatively high quality object to a heightmap. Use a surface layer with luminosity with min alt. I'll see if I can make one.
Quote from: WAS on March 13, 2021, 09:47:56 PMI have a heightmap on disc, hold on.
For some reason DEMs of this region, 3m lidar dems, 5 and 10m satellite dems, etc, have all been removed from the internet. It doesn't event exist as heightmap data on Google Earth. It's loaded some other way, so if you use Atlas, it doesn't have the region, or even Terrain.party.
I don't know why, and I can't find anything "legal" wise, so I will share it. Mine comes from lidar/satellite mix, and has some minor issues because I think some of the data has trees in it, while the others data didn't.
WAS it's a shame no bare earth data was included on your disc. No tree interference. The Devils Tower (so far as heightmap is concerned) continues to be elusive. Thanks for the attempt though. It would have been nice.
I was forced to forego the lidar route as it was a tiled download of over 200 files in the directory. No grid map stating what was what. I really didn't want to download all of them just to get a small area. It's weird that the elevation data is missing from many sites. I was curious how much of the vertical erosion would have had to been recreated on the DEM too. I can't imagine all those flutes and details would have came out in an elevation model. A model created from Photogrammetry by the Parks service is what I have now. Not bad, but not great either. 😕
Here is a bare bones render of what I'm working with for a clearer picture of what I'm talking about. The signature smashed trees and shrubbery etc.
Ok so you may want to try this.
I used 3D Devil's Tower provided by IMR Geographic Resources Division, so it's CC Attribution-NonCommercial. Probably same one you used as it's best I could find.
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/devils-tower-national-monument-wyoming-f08f4bb0230f4cc899f837f2126db7b7
It's a 1gb 32bit TIFF at around 700x700 meters. Compressed as a zip down to 219mb. The range is 0-1 about because a scalar to scale at 5000 feet above sea level, and an additionaly 480 something meters abouts would takes hours to render, vs a 0-1 range at 2 minutes. Lol
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pc4fiEeRUJCtWG-xc__m88WEbCeA6_27/view?usp=sharing
For the issues with trees I think you could probably just clone stamp out the problem areas in Photoshop/Affinity Photo. You could also load it into the heightmap generator, duplicate, and merge by altitude (distribution shader) and use the smooth heightmap filter to just smooth the base the butte to add your own trees and rocks too. :)
If it needs to be very exact, it might be harder, but if you want something like Devil's Tower, I think it's doable in TG.
WAS this is a fantastic looking DEM! Much, much better then what I had and since it's now a terrain.. I believe things are really looking up for this project.
This was help was far more generous than I'd hoped for. So thank you very much for your time and help Sir.
I'm off to download!
Jay
It would appear that I'm more of an amateur then I (or perhaps you) thought. When I load the terrain it's only a small bounding box cross hair like the attached. In the past when I've had this issue I've copied the terrain coordinates into the planet Lat long at apex coordinates and it's resolved the issue. Not in this case. What did I do wrong?
This isnt a geotiff, just a tiff. It has no location data. So you'll probably want to use the image map shader and transform input shader to translate and rotate.
If you want it close to scale you'll want it at about 700-800 meters on X and Z. File didn't mention its actual dimensions so I compared to national park maps with distance rulers.
Try this project file out, replace the image map with your version on disk and generate the two heightmaps. The Smoothed base of the heightmap seems to remedy the point spikes from where trees were.
You can change the first heightmap shaders points to 8196 x 8196 to match the heightmap. I just did a quick test, though at 700m it should be quick doing 8k.
WAS I can't tell you how happy I was to see that you posted a project file after reading you previous post.
My eyes glazed over reading what I would have to figure out to make this work. Thanks for your help, sorry I missed that this was not a geotif.
Jay
No problem. Honestly, I wish the heightmap load / geotiff also had just normal scaling options to override any data to not have to do anything special.
PS to put in distance terrain around the scene plug a PF or what not into the Main Inputs of both heightfield shaders being merged. Or you could pipe the merge shader as a child of a surface layer and apply terrain to the surface layers Main Input.
PPS Heightfield smooth is slow on large heightmaps, and since we want it smooth for our own trees/rocks you can leave it at 1000x1000 points.
Thanks for the tips WAS. Also good to know that the smoothing progress bar is actually doing something.
Hmm to add further, for some reason the merge by height doesn't seem to work. It works in the shader preview, if you add a surface layer to the smooth side and apply testing colours. The base is smooth. But in render, the whole thing is smooth. I don't understand what's up there. It's using final space, and I used to use this method.
Well that's further then I've gotten. After crashing the first few times I tried opening it, it finally opened and progress on "HeightfielSmooth: Smoothing (0%)..."
I'm patiently waiting. :D
Additionally, I'm wondering if it's doing anything at all based on the lack of processor activity. Hmm
Ah. This is a headache of heightmaps. The auto generation is on, which happens at opening, which is prone to crashes.
I have a fixed TGD I'll upload in a moment. I am baking out the 3D Objects texture to delight and see if it can be used to at least texture the sides of the stone.
Ok so here is an updated TGD that should load and allow you to generate the heightmaps manually.
Also here's a texture that came with the 3D object that I tried in the project. It has shadows so not great unless mimicking the lighting of the textures. Delighting was not possible with such a blurry muddled texture, and such hard shadows.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lmayKVLNzYHaP5vJqatxaAWv7pQr2dtM/view?usp=sharing
I had a thought of bypassing some of the extra steps maybe? While possibly creating additional steps?
I plugged the tif into world machine and generated a Terragen terrain. If you are interested in the terrain here is a link.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vnhKcxpe2MDO69w36BgYL6KgGQpA-cue (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vnhKcxpe2MDO69w36BgYL6KgGQpA-cue)
Quote from: WAS on March 14, 2021, 03:13:42 PMOk so here is an updated TGD that should load and allow you to generate the heightmaps manually.
Also here's a texture that came with the 3D object that I tried in the project. It has shadows so not great unless mimicking the lighting of the textures. Delighting was not possible with such a blurry muddled texture, and such hard shadows.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lmayKVLNzYHaP5vJqatxaAWv7pQr2dtM/view?usp=sharing
thank you WAS! It looks like I posted after you'd posted this somehow. Thanks for the share and the generous time you've put into helping! I'm off to give this a whirl.
You can also directly save the generated heightmap (from the first one) and save it as a TER/EXR too. Right click the green nodes down arrow on the node and save file.
You could also use a third generate and plug the merge shader in it, generate at 700 x 700 meters with points at 8196 x 8196 and save that heightmap to have the completed setup, with smoothed terrain and all saved as TER/EXR.
I think I will go that route. After opening this new version it looks fantastic. I'm amazed on how much of those vertical eroded flutes came through!
Thanks again WAS!
No problem. See my update to that post about obtaining the whole finished setup with smooth base as a TER/EXR. Maybe reduce stitchable borders to 0 in the first two original generates to gete a solid map at 700x700.
Quote from: WAS on March 14, 2021, 03:37:43 PMNo problem. See my update to that post about obtaining the whole finished setup with smooth base as a TER/EXR. Maybe reduce stitchable borders to 0 in the first two original generates to gete a solid map at 700x700.
Thanks again WAS
QuoteFor some reason DEMs of this region, 3m lidar dems, 5 and 10m satellite dems, etc, have all been removed from the internet.
Apparently the anthrax scare wasn't sufficient.