Hi!
I would need some pointers to create a whole realistic planet with rivers, mountains, valleys, flat areas, etc (would like to use alpine for realism!). Is there a way to create this everything in Terragen2? Is there some tutorial on this?
I would need a full bitmap (or RAW, or whatever readable in coding languages - for importing into a DB, don't ask why) heightmap export of the whole planet, too! I'm not really sure how I can do this.
please help?
The simple answer is, such a program doesn't exist outside Star Trek II/III. You have to make compromises and drill your work into the area you'll actually see it.
You can create complex full planets, with displacement-based terrain and texturing, however easy and complete export of the same is not possible at this point. You can only export sections.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Hetzen on July 27, 2009, 04:34:08 PM
The simple answer is, such a program doesn't exist outside Star Trek II/III. You have to make compromises and drill your work into the area you'll actually see it.
That actually exists outside Star Trek. There is Fractal Mapper Pro from ProFantasy but I really don't like the terrains it generates. And then there is a game Dwarf Fortress which generates perfect terrain but it's developer doesn't really want to say anything about his algorithms.
Quote from: Oshyan on July 28, 2009, 02:18:45 AM
You can create complex full planets, with displacement-based terrain and texturing, however easy and complete export of the same is not possible at this point. You can only export sections.
- Oshyan
Export sections? Can you please tell me more about this? Even if I can export the whole planet in sections it can be useful!
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7040.0 this looks like a good start. Now I only wonder how could I do a heightmap export? Doesn't matter if it's part by part.. :)
What do you want to be able to do with the final output. Terragen (and most other landscape apps) generates its features procedurally. This means that their level of detail remains constant no matter how close to the terrain you are so you can have features from meters to 10000's Km or more. To do this with a bitmap or imported height map on a global scale would require an absolutely HUGE file, way up in the Terrabyte reagon!!
I took a quick look at Fractal Mapper Pro and Dwarf Fortress and neither seem to come even close to Terragens Ability.
What do you need the terrain export for, how close will you get to it, is it for an animation, a series of stills or an interactive environment? Answer some of these q's and we'll be able to guide you better. :o)
richard
Quote from: cyphyr on July 28, 2009, 07:17:43 AM
What do you want to be able to do with the final output. Terragen (and most other landscape apps) generates its features procedurally. This means that their level of detail remains constant no matter how close to the terrain you are so you can have features from meters to 10000's Km or more. To do this with a bitmap or imported height map on a global scale would require an absolutely HUGE file, way up in the Terrabyte reagon!!
I took a quick look at Fractal Mapper Pro and Dwarf Fortress and neither seem to come even close to Terragens Ability.
What do you need the terrain export for, how close will you get to it, is it for an animation, a series of stills or an interactive environment? Answer some of these q's and we'll be able to guide you better. :o)
richard
I need the heightmap of the terrain (grayscale image, you know :P) of the whole world that I will read pixel by pixel and insert into a database - if it is possible by any other means I will be very happy to learn! I choose terragen because the realism is unbeliveable. I'll add non-ocean water manually (rivers and lakes) - simulate them by using some of my own climate and waterfall mechanism. So basically I just need a realistic height map that I will be able to import into a database - and I need it for the whole planet (size does not matter).
You still have a scale problem. Just a one acre of 1 yard intervals for a terrain land survey has a ton of data. You want to do this for an entire planet? Good luck and have fun. I know this sounds negative, but you are setting up a dataset which will take years to produce.
Quote from: njeneb on July 28, 2009, 08:33:57 AM
You still have a scale problem. Just a one acre of 1 yard intervals for a terrain land survey has a ton of data. You want to do this for an entire planet? Good luck and have fun. I know this sounds negative, but you are setting up a dataset which will take years to produce.
Nobody said I want to export each CENTIMETER of the world. My current plan is to have something like 100x100 feets per pixel or so..
It is still gigs of data. 1000 x 1000 may work with some form of interpolation between the data points.
Try exporting a 100000 x 100000 height field from Terragen2. It is a huge file. That's why fractals come in so handy for this type of thing. You can get pretty accurate detail without so much data.
Quote from: njeneb on July 28, 2009, 08:41:27 AM
It is still gigs of data. 1000 x 1000 may work with some form of interpolation between the data points.
Try exporting a 100000 x 100000 height field from Terragen2. It is a huge file. That's why fractals come in so handy for this type of thing. You can get pretty accurate detail without so much data.
I can make a smaller planet or a smaller heightfield export. As I said it's not about the amount of data - it's about how do I get such data at all? Though thank you for your concern, but I will solve scaling somehow (hopefully), and as long as it's under a 100gigs I'm OK with it.
I really wish you the best with this. Let us know how things are working. This forum has some people who are smarter than I (thank God). You might get better insight when you project gets going. This will help with more questions...
Quote from: njeneb on July 28, 2009, 08:47:50 AM
I really wish you the best with this. Let us know how things are working. This forum has some people who are smarter than I (thank God). You might get better insight when you project gets going. This will help with more questions...
Thank you. But I wonder is it possible to get a heightfield export at all? :S
NHF njeneb, sorry if I offended you in any way..
I already have such a system working (importing an heightmap export from Fractal Terrains Pro) with huge amount of data. All in all I exported the whole planet as a 1000000x1000000 (as smaller parts!) bitmap and was reading parts of that pixel by pixel and writing into a database.. That was only a test and worked so I don't see why couldn't it work with terragen if I could get the heightmap for the whole planet somehow - either in one .bmp or several images or some other means..
How to export a heightfield: :)
Create your fractal terrain...
at the end (bottom) of the chain of nodes used to create your terrain add a "Heightfield shader", this has attached to it a "Heightfield generate" node. Into this plug your fractal chain of nodes.
Now if you right click on the "Heightfield shader" you can export the file as a .ter of a .exr
Good luck
Richard
Quote from: cyphyr on July 28, 2009, 11:06:44 AM
How to export a heightfield: :)
Create your fractal terrain...
at the end (bottom) of the chain of nodes used to create your terrain add a "Heightfield shader", this has attached to it a "Heightfield generate" node. Into this plug your fractal chain of nodes.
Now if you right click on the "Heightfield shader" you can export the file as a .ter of a .exr
Good luck
Richard
The only export I found here was on the Heightfield generate node. Did you mean that? What if there is a ton of shaders after that?
I have a huge number of shaders that define the planet. Is it possible to get the heightfield from the shaders? For some reason the "Heightfield from shader" node does not export anything (an "empty" 92 bytes file)..
So there was a lot of progress today:
I got this tgr file from here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7040.msg74868#msg74868 and connected a "heightfield generate" node to the most bottom shader and generated it and exported as TGR. Is this now a random heightfield or one generated from the above shaders?
I was concerned that you might be offended. I was not. It's nothing to worry about.
Basically, a heightfield is an ordered collection of vertices. Each vertex describes the height information of that point. The procedurals manipulate this data, causing the vertices to adjust their positions slightly. So all you have in a heightfield is raw terrain data.
The procedurals are power fractals, displacement functions, color information, all of which are/can be combined to output the final render. So, if you wish to use these in an external application, they will have to be converted/changed into information the external application could use.
You know about the link to nvseal's planet, which is excellent. He's really onto a new way to make planetary bodies in Terragen 2.
Hope this helps! :)
Quote from: vooood on July 28, 2009, 01:19:03 PM
So there was a lot of progress today:
I got this tgr file from here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7040.msg74868#msg74868 and connected a "heightfield generate" node to the most bottom shader and generated it and exported as TGR. Is this now a random heightfield or one generated from the above shaders?
That should give you a heightfield of the region specified in the heightfield generate node, including all the displacements from the shaders which is what you want. The problem is that heightfields nodes in Terragen only work well near the top of the planet (or north pole, depending on how you look at it). To export portions from anywhere on the planet we would need some other mechanism, and I'm afraid that it doesn't exist right now.
I know that exporting global heightmaps and textures is a valuable feature and it's extremely difficult in Terragen at the moment. I hope we can add some tools to help with this in the not-too-distant future.
Matt
If you have some mathematical understanding of projections and some coding ability, it's theoretically possible that you could render multiple views of the planet, with a greyscale shader attached to the surface which corresponds to surface altitude, and then extract data from those renders.
Matt
Would it be possible in future too convert a procedural landscape (Power Fractal and Alpine Fractal) too a high resolution mesh (Quads not triangles please)? If this could be done then importing that terrain should be no problem into another application, the problem you'd then only be faced with is surface shaders I cannot see a problem with displacement as you could capture that in the exported mesh.
Its a shame that there is no universal standard format for the transfer of procedural data between applications, .tgd and .tgc files as discussed else where are based on XML that is a start now all you need is to work with the vendors of the other key applications on the market three of which (Lightwave, 3DS Max and Maya) are all done by just one vendor, too be able to read and open .tgd and .tgc files.
Maybe one day there could be away of been able to automatically update changes between TGxx (Future version of Terragen yet to come) and the target application and it would also work in reverse with changes in the target application been updated in TG2: such technology is already in use the makers of Zbrush have such technology and so do Adobe they call theirs Adobe Bridge (TM).
Any way all that is a long, long way off if ever. ;D
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Quite honestly I'm not sure Terragen is the right application for your needs. TG2 does create very nice terrain, but a big part of its value and the quality of its output lies in its procedural detail and rendering engine, neither of which you will benefit from if you simply export a heightfield. If the heightfield is all you need, I would suggest instead a dedicated heightfield modeler like World Machine, L3DT, or Geocontrol, all of which are capable of generating large, seamless textures, potentially up to planetary scale. World Machine and L3DT are particularly capable in this area. Not only do they have better technology purpose-built for outputting multiple tiles of large-scale terrain, but they also tend to have more powerful terrain editing tools for heightfield-specific terrain. TG2 has the advantage of displacement, but you lose a lot of the benefit of that in a heightfield format since there can be no overhangs and the resolution is very limited by comparison.
I hope that helps.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Matt on July 28, 2009, 07:29:44 PM
I know that exporting global heightmaps and textures is a valuable feature and it's extremely difficult in Terragen at the moment. I hope we can add some tools to help with this in the not-too-distant future.
Matt
This would be a most valuable feature!
Quote from: Oshyan on July 28, 2009, 10:51:59 PM
Quite honestly I'm not sure Terragen is the right application for your needs. TG2 does create very nice terrain, but a big part of its value and the quality of its output lies in its procedural detail and rendering engine, neither of which you will benefit from if you simply export a heightfield. If the heightfield is all you need, I would suggest instead a dedicated heightfield modeler like World Machine, L3DT, or Geocontrol, all of which are capable of generating large, seamless textures, potentially up to planetary scale. World Machine and L3DT are particularly capable in this area. Not only do they have better technology purpose-built for outputting multiple tiles of large-scale terrain, but they also tend to have more powerful terrain editing tools for heightfield-specific terrain. TG2 has the advantage of displacement, but you lose a lot of the benefit of that in a heightfield format since there can be no overhangs and the resolution is very limited by comparison.
I hope that helps.
- Oshyan
L3DT seems nice enough while World Machine is too expensive for me right now. I still like the most what I saw in TG2 and it would be most fortunate to see a heightfield export of any form.
I was just wondering if it would be possible to set up a script/batch that would move the camera around the planet and render stuff with a grayscale shader so I get only the heightfield?
What am I up to actually?
I'm working on a browser based MMORPG that needs realistic terrain. The terrain will be kept in a database as locations (height, climate, steepness, coordinates) where each location is a pixel from the heightmap. I know you might say that TG2 is an overkill here but I need very realistic terrain as the game tries to be very realistic.
I would like to use TG2 for this as it generates most realistic terrain that I ever saw in any generator and I'm not happy with results from other generators. The closest one is Fractal Terrains Pro from ProFantasy (which I also have) but I really don't like it's fractal procedures. To be hones, I'm in love with the alpine stuff TG2 does..
I don't have to export the WHOLE planet as several continents will do, too. And the map will be imported into the game slowly as more and more players join so time is also not an issue here. The only issue is if it is really possible to get a normal (tiled) heightfield export of the planet?
EDIT:
A plan for the future is to also have terrain transformations with ongoing erosion and changes to the terrain by either climate or players.
Quote from: Oshyan on July 28, 2009, 10:51:59 PM
Quite honestly I'm not sure Terragen is the right application for your needs. TG2 does create very nice terrain, but a big part of its value and the quality of its output lies in its procedural detail and rendering engine, neither of which you will benefit from if you simply export a heightfield. If the heightfield is all you need, I would suggest instead a dedicated heightfield modeler like World Machine, L3DT, or Geocontrol, all of which are capable of generating large, seamless textures, potentially up to planetary scale. World Machine and L3DT are particularly capable in this area. Not only do they have better technology purpose-built for outputting multiple tiles of large-scale terrain, but they also tend to have more powerful terrain editing tools for heightfield-specific terrain. TG2 has the advantage of displacement, but you lose a lot of the benefit of that in a heightfield format since there can be no overhangs and the resolution is very limited by comparison.
Don't down play TG2 capabilities as terrain generator. I made a few tests and found that the erosion functionality did create very realistic features, much much more realistic than L3DT ones (try it using strong erosion on a flat terrain and you will see a slew of obscene artifacts) probably better or on pair with WM 2 and only somewhat inferior to GC2.
Obviously terrain generation is not TG2 main mission, but this does not mean that it can be a real contender in this arena.
Bye!!!
While terragen 2 does seem to do better then L3DT, world machine and especially geo control is far superior with erosion.
Terragen 2: Alpine (Procedural Planet-Wide)
Heightfield Erode (Local Only)
Smooth Erode (Local Only)
World Machine 2: Erosion Node (Fluvial/Sedimentary structures like the Alpine Shader but more convincing flows and even alluvial fans)
Thermal Erosion Node
Rigid Erosion Device Node
Geo Control 2: Hard Fluvial
Hard Fluvial Terraces
High Sedimentation
Soft Fluvial
Soft Fluvial wide
Thin Flows deep
Thin Flows sediment
Thin Flows sharp
Thin Flows Smooth
plus inverted versions of all the above.
River Tool (creeks, rivers and streams, lakes, ponds, water reservoirs, complex channels of
flowing water, glacier erosion, waterless valleys and even volcanic flows.)
I would like to see the capability of feeding additional nodes into the alpine shader to allow different effects to occur with the displacement and erosion disposition, flow etc. settings themselves. Should produce some unique fractal features i'd think.
Looks like I will have to create a different workflow than planned:
- Generate terrain with libnoise
- Create heightmap with libnoise
- Export the heightmap as either tiles or one huge image
- Have erosion done in a tool (GC2 or WM2) or code my own erosion????? (this is what bothers me)
- ???
- Render in TG2
- Profit!
Have you looked on SourceForge? I think someone worked on a terrain generator for games. I was using Stumble Upon and it came up. I was not really interested so I stumbled again. Download.com may have something as well.
Quote from: njeneb on July 30, 2009, 11:48:32 AM
Have you looked on SourceForge? I think someone worked on a terrain generator for games. I was using Stumble Upon and it came up. I was not really interested so I stumbled again. Download.com may have something as well.
Those are 101% of the time not enough realistic.. :(
Quote from: CCC on July 29, 2009, 08:45:13 PM
I would like to see the capability of feeding additional nodes into the alpine shader to allow different effects to occur with the displacement and erosion disposition, flow etc. settings themselves. Should produce some unique fractal features i'd think.
Definitely :)
Matt
Quote from: Matt on July 30, 2009, 06:12:14 PM
Quote from: CCC on July 29, 2009, 08:45:13 PM
I would like to see the capability of feeding additional nodes into the alpine shader to allow different effects to occur with the displacement and erosion disposition, flow etc. settings themselves. Should produce some unique fractal features i'd think.
Definitely :)
Matt
So would you think it would then be possible with such features to create new type of erosion like deep flows, alluvial fans, long winding flows etc,?
The Alpine Fractal Shader is not really capable of that sort of complexity, because basically it's just a certain type of noise which is analytically combined in a certain way to attempt to look like eroded mountains. I can only do this with a noise basis which works a particular way. One of the most important things that's missing is narrow erosion channels. A different approach would be needed for that.
What I meant is that sedimentation, local amplitude and maybe erosion power and some of the other parameters could be modulated by functions/shaders on a point by point basis to give you some really interesting variety if you choose good functions, but essentially the shader would still be limited to the kinds of shapes that are already possible by changing the parameters.
It's a lot easier to do this stuff with raster heightfields, hence the reason why my Heightfield Erode node does a better job of creating narrow channels.
Matt
Interesting. Well, all the same at least some interesting variations could occur with what is already there in the alpine shader and just to make it plugable should be nifty. I agree about thin erosion channels but that is serious stuff procedurally speaking of course. ;D
One more thought. Do you think that certain type of alpine shader noise you have for the erosion look could be modified in the future to achieve length, width (incl. tapering) and turbulence variations?
And I still don't know how to export heightmaps :(
What did you not understand in my mini tutorial ... ?
richard
Quote from: latego on July 29, 2009, 01:09:23 PM
Quote from: Oshyan on July 28, 2009, 10:51:59 PM
Quite honestly I'm not sure Terragen is the right application for your needs. TG2 does create very nice terrain, but a big part of its value and the quality of its output lies in its procedural detail and rendering engine, neither of which you will benefit from if you simply export a heightfield. If the heightfield is all you need, I would suggest instead a dedicated heightfield modeler like World Machine, L3DT, or Geocontrol, all of which are capable of generating large, seamless textures, potentially up to planetary scale. World Machine and L3DT are particularly capable in this area. Not only do they have better technology purpose-built for outputting multiple tiles of large-scale terrain, but they also tend to have more powerful terrain editing tools for heightfield-specific terrain. TG2 has the advantage of displacement, but you lose a lot of the benefit of that in a heightfield format since there can be no overhangs and the resolution is very limited by comparison.
Don't down play TG2 capabilities as terrain generator. I made a few tests and found that the erosion functionality did create very realistic features, much much more realistic than L3DT ones (try it using strong erosion on a flat terrain and you will see a slew of obscene artifacts) probably better or on pair with WM 2 and only somewhat inferior to GC2.
Obviously terrain generation is not TG2 main mission, but this does not mean that it can be a real contender in this arena.
Bye!!!
I took your word for it and for the first time I tried out the erosion node on the imported DEM files I was working with. It is indeed a very cool tool. The more I see of Terragen 2 Deep the more deeply impressed I become. Thanks for the tip;
(http://www.zewg.net/dump/photo/HeightfieldErosionTerragen.JPG)
If only you could turn your .ter files into .obj files and then create a normal map or displacement map with a retopologized base. But even that would be frikkin huge.
I don't know if this fits into the discussion or not, but Wilbur does a pretty good job of making heightfields for entire planets. You can then add erosion, but there is a problem with erosion that you should be informed of: if you do it on a planetwide heightfield, you'll have a pinch-pole effect with the erosion.