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Starting on a project (yes, actually producing something ;)) to show some basic visualisation of GIS data from various sources and experimenting with animating stuff in TG. Starting in the middle (in case i run out of time/motivation for the optional opening sequence) with a hsitorical map and moving down onto the map pulling in modern maps at increasing resolutions along the way before fading in the elvation data and eventually adding atmosphere and surfacing.

PF and colour adjust shader to dissolve between maps. Just working out the right maps for each level of detail

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This is an interesting project. It's too bad GIS data only exist for modern terrain, not ancient. But for your animation, you won't need the old GIS data. I'm about to embark on making a series of scientifically based reconstructions, from post ice age to medieval times of one village + surroundings. I can get GIS data (though never used them before), but the ancient terrain must have been quite different (streams changed their flow, etc).
Looking forward to see you develop this...

Ben i don't replay much to your threads about these kind of projects
mostly because they are not the kind of thing i am after much.
But i always like to read you posts.
Curious how this will end.

This sounds really interesting! Looking forward to your progress.

The area I work in isn't directly related to this sort of work but we do find that a lot of our researchers don't know a great deal about presentation of images/data online,so as the resident map nerd I get to play a little at work. This kind of follows on from some of the work I've done georeferencing maps and aerial photos from our library collections: e.g. https://www.flickr.com/photos/digitisation-uom/14015244981/ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/digitisation-uom/14015244981/) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znx2N1bIeD8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znx2N1bIeD8) but this time using an assortment of external data/images.

Still tossing up whether to have the camera at the rim of the canyon and introduce the DEM by having the canyon drop away, or having the camera next to the river and having the canyon rise up around it. 

I'm picking off the easy bits first so I can get the renders going and build up some footage while I trudge through the surfacing.

Also using some idle CPU power at work with remote file sharing via AARNET's Cloudstor+ service (Australian uni use only), and manually starting rendering batches via remote desktop. One nice thing with this is that the assets are synced to a local folder on each machine.  :)

Atmosphere and terrain fade in test.  The terrain moves both up and down. The initial flat terrain is positioned so that the camera height above the ground is the same at the start and end. For the final, I'll bring the atmosphere in when the map is replaced with surfacing

Nothing to see, can that be?

Not sure why but VLC player didn't played for me either.
Media Player Classic had no problem.

That one was only short (every 25 frames)... I think I'll just use Vimeo for the test segments.  I've got a sequence with every 5th frame on the go. I'll update it then. Image sequence loaded in QT Pro and exported as H264

[edit] Here 'tis
https://vimeo.com/103634218 (https://vimeo.com/103634218)

THis is cool. But is the camera simply rising, or is the terrain actively being displaced over time? Interesting visual either way.

That is really nice, Ben.

The camera is stationary for this. Setup: load the terrain and position the camera, noting the height of the camera above the ground. Hide the terrain and add a surface shader, changing the displacement until the camera is at the same height above the ground. Connect both to a merge node using a constant scalar as the merge function and simply animate from 0 to 1.  If you look at the horizon on the left you'll see that the terrain rises.

Still deciding on the flight path. I'll try one near the river because it might be more interesting for it to be more obvious that the terrain develops above and below the camera.

The transitions for fading the maps didn't quite work as expected so I have to tweak the PF bit of that. For the transition from maps to surface shading I'm planning a sloped mask that will sweep across from east to west with the river appearing first and then the rising up the canyon walls as it moves along, kind of like a flash flood.

Quote from: bigben on August 18, 2014, 04:23:55 PM
... For the transition from maps to surface shading I'm planning a sloped mask that will sweep across from east to west
with the river appearing first and then the rising up the canyon walls as it moves along, kind of like a flash flood.

I was going to ask if you wanted that kind of effect or a linear one like here and what kind of method you might use.

I would keep the camera quite still or it would be a very confusing animation, at least no fast movements, as the rest already all moves. Nice idea to sweep the terrain in.  I really look forward to seeing this....

Replaced the video with a longer test. A couple of obvious ones.... gotta get me some camera path tools and there are some small mask artefacts that have to be cleaned up. Not quite sure why they're coming through but I'll just add a an extra adjustment to make sure they're gone.  Same URL: https://vimeo.com/103634218 (https://vimeo.com/103634218)

Gotta start work on a timed story board too ;)

This is going to look very good. Will you be texturing from the front to back or vice versa, or maybe from bottom up?

Back to front (matching the direction of the river flow), bottom up.

The initial map will fade in from a blank white page, possibly starting with some live video of someone unrolling a blank "map" on a desk/table. That fade will use the elevation data as well, but of course the terrain will still be flat. Right to left for that one and haven't decided whether to go high to low or vice versa. Conceptually I can see both working so I'll probably wait to see how they look. Given the "low" accuracy of the first map I'll use a 100m DEM for that mask.

The initial surfacing will be static and when completed I'll "start the clock" and get the clouds and sun moving. 

Saving up for a scan so I can make a cameo appearance in a fly by over a ridge/cliff edge ;)

Hoping to do 1920x1080 but the frames with surfacing will take longer to render.  The DEMs and image maps are pretty quick (750 frames @ 1080px wide on 2 PCs in <12 hrs)

This reminds me quite a bit of a TG feature marketing video I have been working on. It's a cool idea. :)

- Oshyan

Concept-wise there's probably not much difference between demonstrating different data visualisations and TG features.  I'm using a wide range of TG features to try and get researchers to see some of the things that are possible to do with their data.   Came across another aerometrex video in my browsing.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8HLKXziRu8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8HLKXziRu8) If they can do it on that scale, there should be no reason why we (my uni's researchers) can't do this on a smaller scale.

Have to get my butt into gear on the surfacing. Just got a (relatively) kick arse VM at work for testing on photogrammetry: 16 vCPU cores and 64 GB RAM + equivalent to Quadro K5000 GPU (dedicated).  This is gonna require a lot of learning on my part as cool displacements have never been my forte. Ditching the fractal detail to start with (or maybe reducing it to very low amounts) and trying some of the presets. The canyon walls have always been my nemesis but it's already looking better than I had before.

[edit] Holy cow... render on sad old PC at home (3ghz i7, 8Gb RAM): 15:30. Remote desktop to work, PCoIP to VM, render 3:40  ;D

I wish I had a link to that VM, I'm 'stuck with my sad i7'  :o  That's awesome to have available, Ben. Good on you.