Trying to import a georeferenced DEM on Europe area i got several issues to navigate the view to the point because of weird camera behaviour like horizon loss and so on. The heightfield itself shows a misaligned bounding box but it renders correctly lied on the planet surface.
I noticed there is an option to activate orbiting, which doesn't look to have effect while working in default working position but seems to fix a bit the camera behaviour when working on the other side of the planet. I'm I missing something?
Moreover while setting the sun position it looks like it's not camera related but somewhat planet related, which is ok but I to get a sunny scene I must place the sun in night position which is weird to me.
Umberto
With most of these scenarios, unless you are going from orbit to this location, and than another, it's best to just translate the heightfield to the POO at the North Pole (0,0,0). You'll have much more natural control.
I'm trying to match a DEM 10x10m area with the correlated satellite image.
So i placed the DEM at the correct coordinates (by activating the georeference checkbox, which places the DEM in the european area) and now i'm trying to project the satellite image over it. But the satellite image is not geo referenced, i extrapolated the coordinates by hand and they are different from the DEM one as areas don't fully overlap, so i need to input them manually. I had no luck in this operation, even because i don't really understand which coordinated Terragen uses internally. I expected the Pro version would allow me to input geo coordinates as WGS84 or some other standard but the numbers i'm trying to input don't behave as expected.
How could i try to convert WSG84 coordinated in Terragen coordinates?
I believe most TG coordinates are in meters. So you should be able to extrapolate from there. So 1000m = 1km.
Additionally, you image map, is likely not at a 1:1 ratio with your height map, so it probably needs scaling. This should be able to be extrapolated from the area the heightmap consumes.
However projection on Y/X/Z may not work appropriately away from POO so you may need to project from the camera.
Ok, now i placed the planet origin to the geo coordinates of the DEM patch and navigation behaves normal again. I'm starting to understand the mathematical model over which Terragen works.
I'm still wondering how can i place numerically my image over the DEM patch, because i have coordinates expressed in degrees and it's not very immediate to understand how Terragen wants them converted into. Ok Terragen works in meters, but the coordinate system it's using is not really adeguate for a geoid as it looks like it's working on a plane near the planet origin. Some pieces of my puzzle are still missing.
I've tried to place the image projecting by camera, but waiting for the tessellation to define the image after each camera adjustment makes it very difficult. I tried also to pause the view hoping that working with the raytraced picture would work but in this case the pause stops everything.
Should i necessarily proceed by trial and error?
It's really hard to say for sure what projection mode is needed from what point on the planet you're at without a file so I'm unsure.
I'm curious if this could help translate the lat/long of the georeference to distance points in kilometers (and thus finally meters), that you can use to translate the image map.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gccalc.shtml
I can send you the files if you want to look at them. It's just a test.
But I think that, whatever model Terragen uses for its internal computations, it may be added some sort of layer that presents, if required, the coordinates into some real world model. As Terragen is already capable of georeferencing, it means that it understands those models but at the end it converts everything into internal space. Which may be good for the majority of works Terragen has been built for, but makes working with real coordinates very uncomfortable.
I can take a look. I'm pretty sure I understand the problem and tackled with it before with a solar system simulation mockup coming from space to a point on the planet and translating to another.
You can send me the gathered project to jordan [at] nwdastore.com and I'll see if I can figure it out. Trying to find my project now though it was awhile ago and fear it my be on my old PC or corrupted on my failed backup HDD.