Planetside Software Forums

Hi All

[edit]I'm slowly planning an overhaul of my websites which is going to take a while, but I'll use this post to announce additions to my terrains before then. [edit] and while slowly overhauling it, I'm now moving it as well. New terrains will be posted to http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/ (http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/), but don't bookmark anything yet as the site is in a state of flux. [/edit]

Changes to the previous versions include:

• Changing terrain projection to UTM to simplify tiling
• Additional images for creating masks for surfacing or population control
• Files are now compressed in 7zip format. I use ZipGenius (http://www.zipgenius.it/) (free) but most other decompression utilities should be able to handle them as well.

I haven't included the "extra-wide" terrains partly for space reasons but mainly because combining the terrains currently requires the terrains to be flattened. This may change later. To give you an idea of sizes, the Grand Canyon set is a total download of around 400Mb (about half of which is taken up by the landsat images). The files are compiled from a collection of around 10Gb of data.

There are no images associated with the 40km terrains because the images for the 80km terrains are the same resolution as the previous 40km images. Other than that, you're pretty much at my mercy for now as to which files/sizes are released. This is the stuff I prepare for my own use.

Additional information is included on the web pages.

Terrain Sets

Before downloading these, be aware that there is some stepping in the very flat regions of these terrains, probably due to my conversion processes. This will probably not change until I can afford a newer version of GlobalMapper. I now have the latest version of GlobalMapper. There may still be some stepping in terrains on my new site but this will be largely due to stepping in the original data.
http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/ (http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/)

Posted a test animation of the Grand Canyon terrain (http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/grand_canyon/images/gc_flyover.wmv) (1.8Mb) using a quick modification of a 100m resolution landsat image as a texture map. The terrains are not intended to have the camera this close at the outer extremities but it gives you a good feel for the terrain.

While my original intention was to provide padding for higher camera positions, the ease of positioning tiled UTM terrains like this would also make it fairly straight forward to have high res terrains along the camera path with low res terrains for padding.

Go, Big Ben!

:)

I'll check it out as soon as I get a chance. I'm a bit swamped at the moment.

Ben, this is cool, since it puts the canyon in perspective.  I've been there and it's huge and yet now I see how long it is.  So, it's bigger than I imagined.  It's almost unsatifyingly fast, but that's realistic if we were truly flying over it in a jet plane.  Otherwise, I would have liked to saunter around abit inside the canyon looping around and seeing the sites.  "Hey, look, see the donkeys on that trail down there!"

;D

Great job.  You've learned loads.

While looking up reference images I read a lot of interesting stuff on theories about how the canyon was formed. This influenced my choice on whether to release the 160 or 205km terrain.  The latter includes a bit extra to the north that really illustrates the river carving through a terrain that is increasing in altitude, and then dropping off suddenly (and then increasing in altitude again).

The animation I posted was only every 1/8th frame of the actual script, but for demo purposes it wasn't really worth doing more.

Added a single SRTM3 terrain of Scotland centred roughly on Ben Nevis. 

Being a single terrain you can turn off "Flatten first" to provide a curved terrain. The "squashing" of the data from reprojecting to UTM has artiticially increased the horizontal resolution which is why I produced a 50m resolution terrain rather then the original resolution of 90m.

http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/ben_nevis/ (http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/ben_nevis/)

Included a link to my reference info from an old Ashunder challenge.

Quote from: bigben on July 15, 2007, 11:36:43 PM
Included a link to my reference info from an old Ashunder challenge.

Perhaps it's time to revisit that now that TG2 is publicly available? If you'll recall Matt came up with a pretty good approximation of the atmosphere using a then-unreleased "TGD" build. It's come a long way since then, in particular the clouds are much better, and if this DEM is free of holes then we might be able to do a lot better...

- Oshyan

The SRTM3 data set has had the holes filled... and from memory there were a lot in this area in the original data. Looking back at the old TG0.9 stuff you get a good appreciation of just how much anti-aliasing and fractal detail alone do for this low res data. It will be interesting to see how the new atmosphere/lighting model can be used to simulate dawn lighting like this.

The new atmosphere should help a good deal along with *GI*. GI alone may mean the difference for realism really as the original was quite subtly lit by indirect illumination I think. Also the automatic detail enhancement/addition on imported terrains ought to help as you said, and yes the original did have a lot of holes back then. So is that a yes to trying this again? ;D I know you're still working on the next iteration of your "Four Seasons" animation as well as providing terrains, utilities and other great stuff for the community. But since there is no contest going on right now it might be a cool thing to start up again. If I find time I'll try to get that going, unless you have the inkling...

- Oshyan

Well there's so much to learn, I'm mainly using TG2 for brain fodder at the moment. I learnt a lot during the original challenge and it was one of the reasons why I made this terrain. It's very applicable to my four seasons project as lighting with a low sun was definitely one of the most difficult aspects of the first animation, and at least I have a reference pic (and a memory of the original situation... or is just that it's going to snow down to 0m today)

I'll also be looking at rocks with lichen for this one as well.

Here's a test render I did yesterday with the fractal detail beefed up just to see what would happen, and a landsat overlay to help interpret the image for masking.

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Wow... that snow is incredibly realistic!  I love the overall detail here.  If only you could now apply that level of realism to where the landsat overlay is, and I think you would have a darn good image.

Thanks, although the terrain is a little "square" to really show the snow at its best. I used a modified version of cbalaska's snow (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1419.0 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1419.0)). There'll be more snow in the final render to match the reference image, but it should be relatively straight forward to get some realistic distribution with a combination of altitude/slope/face restrictions.

Hi Ben,

The links to the TER and SlopeMap on the Ben Nevis page appear to be wrong, although it's still possible to get to the TER via the directory listing.

Matt

Thanks. I'll fix those tomorrow when I'm back at work.

Posted 2 new terrains to complete the 3 Peaks. (Ben Nevis, and now Snowdon and Scafell Pike) Landsat images still to come.

They're only SRTM3 resolution. For now I'm using them to compare terrain displacements on different TGDs at this resolution.

Google Earth provides a good reference for Scafell Pike, but unfortunately Scotland and Wales only have low res imagery. This terrain would also be good for practising some basic surfacing on as it's pretty much just grass, rocks and heather (and maybe snow).. no trees to complicate things ;)

I'm going to repeat some early experiments I did on masking non-flattened terrains using some extra masking tricks I've picked up since then. From memory I managed to at least get 2 terrains merged successfully so this would make it possible for me to add a 400km terrain to each set. If I can get more than two merged nicely then I'm going to go nuts with my other terrain sets but I'll wait and see first  ;)

PS. Added the sea to the TGDs provided to make things a little easier. At least I now know that the sea level is consistent at -0.5 x terrain spacing for my workflow. I've set the water level at 1m above this.

Hi Ben, yes went up to the English Lakes a couple of weeks back. It strikes me that a vast amount could be learned about surfacing from a study or two of those fells. I've got a lot of ref images actually of the Lakes. I only wish I had a better camera- a *real* camera that is.

monks

I have a couple of major database projects that will be slowing me down over the next few weeks, but I'll still be plugging away with something  ;)

Collecting some more data for another terrain set in the northwest US. I know there's a lot of terrains already available for this area, and some people have higher res data than is available to me but my approach is perhaps a little different.  As I also include the projection and coordinates for the terrains there is some scope for some collaborative terrain sets with higher res portions at a later date.

The terrain set will be centred between the 3 peaks in the test render below (2049 preview terrain produced from 30m NED, non-flattened terrain) and will extend to the west coast (and 90m SRTM3 for Canada of required)... longshot.jpg is Mt Rainier from the coast

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Finally filled in the gaps in my data for my US 3 peaks terrain set. I still have some more files to make but there's enough there now to formally announce its availability. Filenames and locations should be stable now.

http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/us_3peaks/ (http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/us_3peaks/)

Any unlinked text is to remind me what I still need to prepare. There are no canopy/landcover images for the high res terrains because the 160km version is close enough to the full resolution of the data.

I've also been working on a terrain set for the Swiss Alps but I've just encountered another limitiation to my data conversion process.  I'm currently exporting geotiffs from GlobalMapper 4.78 and then loading them into 3DEM to convert to TER. This gets past GM's 2049 TER export limit with only some minor data degradation. 

3DEM, unfortunately is a little sensitive about just how big an area of data it loads. It doesn't like corner coordinates to stray too far out of a UTM zone, or too far into the negative. For the latter you can get more terrain by choosing a UTM zone to the left of centre, but go too far left and it eventually doesn't like the coordinates that are too far to the right. I have a bit more exploring of the limits of these restrictions, but it looks like my 820km terrains will be as big as I can go for now. For the Alps, I'm trying to create larger terrains around the Matterhorn, but it's a long way from my central reference point (from which I can cover the full length of the Alps).

I'm saving for a new version of GM but it's pretty hefty for something that's just a hobby.

Nice. 

Formally announcing the availability of my Swiss Alps terrain set. There are still a few gaps in the supporting data and additional files, but the terrains are done. This is by far my biggest yet in terms of coverage. The widest terrain is a 2049x2049 terrain covering about 2,050km i.e. most of Europe. This set is broken up into two substes, one centred on the Alps and another centred on the Matterhorn in the east.

http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/swiss_alps/ (http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/swiss_alps/)

I guess I should also formally announce the completion of terrains sets as well  ;)

Enjoy

Awesome.  For whatever reason, I didn't realize you were doing this.  Maybe I've been too busy.  Thanks!    :o

Thanks a lot ... I really appreciate your effort, results and share.

You're welcome guys.  It's easy sharing when your the server admin.  ;)  ;D

Preparing them is relatively easy now that I've made some extra data management tools.  Almost finished adding a clip file generator to my database to simplify the process of compiling TGDs.

Collecting the data is the most time consuming part, but it's not really hard work. I have about 1/3 of the globe as SRTM3 and Landsat now and am slowly chipping away at the USGS downloads. Luckily external hard drives are cheap  :)

Now all I need is a new version of GlobalMapper to make use of some data I have the GM4 doesn't support... bathymetric data will make for some really cool orbital renders when water transparency is available.

---

you certainly want to upgrade Global Mapper to the most recent version, to quote Mike at Global Mapper on the yahoo mailing list
" The latest release of Global Mapper should include support for
generating custom sized .TER files. We also have a build available that adds
world and PRJ file export for Terragen .TER export if that is useful to you."

  Add that to the ability to easily export properly format and georeferenced World Wind format tiles for imagery, which one could whip up with with orthographic renders in TG, and you have the ability to texture the whole globe( if you have the time and disk space) for 3d viewing in World Wind.
Here is a link to some testing we have done at me-dem.org using custom imagery overlaid on custom terrain of Middle Earth's Anduin Vale,,
http://www.me-dem.org/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,43/func,view/id,2396/catid,8/

and this is a link to a blog I have on the easy way (so far) to get custom terrain, as in  terrain you create in TG , GeoControl,L3DT, WM and so on in to World Wind

http://wwterraintiling.spaces.live.com

Imagine a complete fantasy world heightfield custom textured inplace of the Earth in World Wind, in time it could be done. SeerBlue
;) if the idea of custom texturing the World Wind Globe, even a small section, pushes you over the edge and you go for upgrading Global Mapper, tell Mike me-dem sent you ;D

Nice pitch but it wasn't really needed  ;) 

While there were some minor drawbacks to my TER creation process, I was relatively happy with the end result and couldn't really justify the hefty price given that I had acceptable workarounds for everything I was trying to do.. With the latest update to TG2 removing the biggest obstacle to my large terrain sets I've now reached the point where my TER creation software is now the limiting factor... to the point where I can't complete some of the projects that have been waiting for this to happen.

I spent most of the weekend reorganising my data storage before going to rework some old data for a flyover of the Great Dividing Range (east coast of Australia, north to south)... a basic repeat of my very first TG0.9 animation. Unfortunately I couldn't get a 4097 TER out of my data as 3DEM didn't like the coordinate range.  After a bit more rearranging I'll be updating GM very soon...  ;D

This may also mean that some of the terrains I've already posted may get updated if there are significant differences in the flatter portions of the final terrains.

Things are a bit chaotic at the moment, but I have a new terrain set available for download on a preview of a new, new site (clarifying any potential conflict of interest issues at work ;)) The design of the site is still very much under development so bear with me...

Monument Valley and Goosenecks... yes that's right, two terrain sets for the price of one.
http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/?p=8 (http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/?p=8)

Downloading the roads for this area, and will post them when they're ready ... although there aren't that many of them here ;)

Ho, Ho, Ho and all that sorta stuff  ;D (it is still OK to use that phrase here??.... the political correctness madness has struck Australia and Santa's not supposed to say that anymore)

Quote from: bigben on December 08, 2007, 09:21:02 PM
Ho, Ho, Ho and all that sorta stuff  ;D (it is still OK to use that phrase here??.... the political correctness madness has struck Australia and Santa's not supposed to say that anymore)

Say what now?   :o   ???   ::)  And I suppose PETA bitches about the reindeer, too...   :)

Ho, Ho, Ho... while kids used to use "hoe" for a variety of gardening-based santa jokes, it seems that a derogatory piece of american slang is supposedly so prevalent here that kids might think that santa is being demeaning to women rather than just being jolly...   so to be politically correct, store santas have been advised not to use the phrase... go figure???

Oh, my freaking god. (Or spaghetti monster - take your pick.) You'd think that if that were to be an actual problem anywhere, it'd be in the States, but I haven't heard of that particular sort of lunacy here yet. So this wasn't just one HR/Marketing idiot, you say? More than one place is doing this? What a bunch of spineless sheep.   ::)

Unfortunately so. The recent case that's spread across the internet was following a news story on this, and it has been taken out of context as the sacked santa in question also did other bad things, like sing christmas carols and give people personal compliments...   

and back on track, I've also been cleaning up my clip files a bit to reduce the clutter. My new terrain blending mask has just the inputs and outputs showing in the group with all of the processing nodes moved to the internal network of the group... a bit easier to maintain than moving all of the processing nodes to one spot. I'll produce a help page for it and include links to both with each terrain set rather than create a tgd loading all of the terrains in a set.

Cool. Looking forward to it. I've thought about cleaning up my clip collection, too, but I figured I'd wait till after the next rev release in the hopes there'd be some new macro capability.

:)

Slowly making some more progress on the new site. Completed the Goosenecks and Monument Valley terrain sets with their various supplementary images. Some of the images are converted to JPEG, but other than that they're the same files I use for my own projects.

• Landcover map
• Canopy map
• Roads
• Hi-res landsat
• Level 5 blue marble texture (200m res)
• Slope map

http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/terrains/usa/monument_valley_terrain.html (http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/terrains/usa/monument_valley_terrain.html)

Reworking the Grand Canyon set next with a "chain" of 10m terrains to make for a longer high resolution terrain for fly throughs.

Disabled "pretty" permalinks on the site for now because it broke the download manager links... something to look into   :-\

Construction has begun on another reworked terrain file set. This time I'm extending my Grand Canyon set to allow for longer animations along the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. 5 x 10 resolution terrains plus a 90m padding terrain so far. I may possibly add an extra 10m terrain at the northern end to extend it up to Lake Powell.  Additional files will be posted as they become available.

<http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/terrains/grand-canyon-terrain-set.html (http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/terrains/grand-canyon-terrain-set.html)>

Attached image shows the extent of high resolution data along both rivers. The blue marble texture looks a little odd here because it has a shadow that does not match the lighting angle in the render. It was done purely to demonstrate the size of the terrain set.

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For the one keen person who downloaded the terrain set ;)  there's been a slight change to one of the terrains. West2 has been moved and a new terrain (NW) added to fill a small hole. The screen grab below shows the location of the 6 x 10m terrains. The files are uploading now (including a TGD) and the download page will be ready within the hour.

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cool :)

They're ready  :)  Slope maps are also up.. landsat will be next.. combined these are really useful for creating a river mask. Given the length of river it may make sense to segment any masks and combine them in a similar way to the terrains. That way you can minimise the area of the mask images (ie RAM usage)

i'm planning to spend my weekend with this, my gf will be sooo mad at me  ;D
nice dl-speed btw

edit: there seems to be a problem with registering, at least i've got no mail since like 2 days now, i'll try again later this day

#The e-mail could not be sent.
Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function...#

this is the error when trying to fetch a new password, don't have this kind of problems with other websites

Am looking into this one. I've had the same problem.

Landsat images are up now, that should keep you busy.

just to let you know, everything is working now, thx for fixing this.

Quote from: bigben on January 15, 2008, 05:06:47 AM
For the one keen person who downloaded the terrain set ;)  there's been a slight change to one of the terrains. West2 has been moved and a new terrain (NW) added to fill a small hole. The screen grab below shows the location of the 6 x 10m terrains. The files are uploading now (including a TGD) and the download page will be ready within the hour.

Very very cool!
For the patient artist this a really big and fun challenge to texture the whole canyon according to references like google earth, bbc's planet earth and photography.
Great potential in these files, thanks for sharing!

Martin

Quote from: child@play on January 17, 2008, 12:34:34 PM
just to let you know, everything is working now, thx for fixing this.

Thanks for letting me know about the problem in the first place. now that it's working I'm also getting emails of what's going on...
Big Ben/Brother  ;)

... and shouldn't we be up to "Terragen - get set". It will soon be "Terragen - go!"  :)

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on January 17, 2008, 01:40:53 PM

Quote from: bigben on January 15, 2008, 05:06:47 AM
Very very cool!
For the patient artist this a really big and fun challenge to texture the whole canyon according to references like google earth, bbc's planet earth and photography.
Great potential in these files, thanks for sharing!

And patience may be required ;)  From my own experience if you're just doing single renders from this terrain set I would recommend that you only use the high resolution terrains that you really need. Given that many renders here will include the horizon the render times can get longer if you're looking across a few high resolution terrains. There's probably no point having a 10m terrain that's 40 or more km away, and the padding terrain will still fill any visible gaps....