Newbie to Terragen and have been a Vue user for a number of years. Downloaded the Mac Terragen 4 trial version to try out prior to possibly purchasing it and was curious as to the process for modeling real world location/terrain data using Terragen.
Vue allows import of GeoTIFFS and wondering if Terragen has that capability. I would assume it did but thought I'd ask experienced users.
Thanks much for the help.
sgtslick
Quote from: sgtslick on June 27, 2017, 09:14:35 PM
Newbie to Terragen and have been a Vue user for a number of years. Downloaded the Mac Terragen 4 trial version to try out prior to possibly purchasing it and was curious as to the process for modeling real world location/terrain data using Terragen.
Vue allows import of GeoTIFFS and wondering if Terragen has that capability. I would assume it did but thought I'd ask experienced users.
Thanks much for the help.
sgtslick
http://www.archer-designs.com/tutorials/usgs-elevaton-data-with-terragen-2/
Thanks much for the quick response and link bobbystahr. Have a great day.
Quote from: sgtslick on June 28, 2017, 07:35:08 AM
Thanks much for the quick response and link bobbystahr. Have a great day.
my pleasure, and as my pal doc Balley says,"It's the most I can do" heh heh
Quote from: sgtslick on June 27, 2017, 09:14:35 PM
Newbie to Terragen and have been a Vue user for a number of years. Downloaded the Mac Terragen 4 trial version to try out prior to possibly purchasing it and was curious as to the process for modeling real world location/terrain data using Terragen.
Vue allows import of GeoTIFFS and wondering if Terragen has that capability. I would assume it did but thought I'd ask experienced users.
Thanks much for the help.
sgtslick
Noteworthy is Terragen can naively import many different formats of elevation data .. ArcGrid, GridFloat, and IMG. I am not sure if there is a complete list on Wiki or not. I mentioned only these formats because I have used them often and with 0 issues. They are generally speaking of much better quality then Geotiff which of course TG supports. There's a bunch of sites listed here --> http://www.nwdastore.com/links/ (http://www.nwdastore.com/links/) that have some really high res data for free download
That Archer Designs tutorial is quite old, though still useful. The main thing you need to know is just to use Heightfield (load DEM) from the Add Terrain menu in the Terrain layout. That supports all the GIS data formats that Terragen can load (including MOLA and lunar data). As far as I know Terragen's built-in real-world data support is better than Vue's, although they have improved it in recent years.
Note also that GeoTIFF as a format has little to do with quality, in fact it's one of the highest quality "DEM" formats you can get, supporting up to 32 bit data accuracy (the most you'll find). The quality of the data that gets stored in the format (i.e. the quality of the source material) is really the main determinant. This is most often expressed in terms of the resolution of the data in meters or "arc seconds", but even this can be an inaccurate measure if the data collection process is error-prone or otherwise problematic. The best thing to do is look for the highest resolution data and then load it up and see if it looks good to the eye.
"DEM" is also not a format, although .dem was used in some cases for older data; DEM just means Digital Elevation Map and was often used to refer to real-world data, though obviously the acronym's literal meaning doesn't restrict it to that. In practice "DEM" still refers to real-world data in most cases, but the formats used vary widely, from GeoTIFF (common) to ASCII to ArcGrid, BIN, BIL, and others. Terragen natively supports many of them, and can load any of the heightfield data from the USGS, which covers all of the US at high detail, and most of the world at lower detail.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on June 28, 2017, 05:14:26 PM
Note also that GeoTIFF as a format has little to do with quality, in fact it's one of the highest quality "DEM" formats you can get, supporting up to 32 bit data accuracy (the most you'll find).
- Oshyan
I tend to disagree, generally speaking to the eye I find Terragen handles other formats better than GeoTiffs, I use less terragen displacement to get the look I want. It all depends whats available in the areas you are looking. I spend an awful amount of time with data sets. This is my opinion as a user