Hi all my first posting ;D
Is there away of imporing a Lightwave model as a terrain rather than just an object I've tried altering throught every piece of software on my PC to something I could import E.G Terrain > Add Terrain> Load Heightfield but it only reads ter, bump and tga and the old Lightwave plugin I have LW2TER (it's a very old plugin) no longer works with any versions of Lightwave on my system. Any one any ideas of a work around?
I don´t have experience with this at all, but maybe you could convert the lwo to an obj or something?
If so, maybe this program will be of use:
http://www.tb-software.com/products_2.html
It can convert multiple 3d formats to almost any other format, they say ;)
Hope it will be of any use to you.
Martin
LWO import is natively supported already, although textures don't seem to be imported properly at present.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by importing a LWO model as a "terrain" rather than an "object". The LWO is of course an object, not a heightfield or procedural, so it can't be a "terrain" strictly speaking. If you mean you want to use it with the surfacing system, slope constraints, etc. I believe this should still be possible with an imported object, you just need to create the network manually since the default Node List in the Surfacers layout only deals with planetary terrain surfaces.
So try creating a Surface Layer in the node network and plugging it in to the Surface Shader input of the object.
- Oshyan
Hmm, when I select lwo reader to import a model I don't get a browser menu to import it. It just opens an empty object node.
Ok basically I have a Terrain but it's a Lightwave object BUT I want to import it into Terragen then use it as a terrain so I can texture it add trees to it etc etc....... What I was after was a converter to convert a lwo to a ter file format, yes I can add it as an object but then it's totally the incorrect size seems to be screwed up in camera view and of course I cannot place trees on it using the standard tools as you owuld with a ter file.
Sorry for the late reply did not have subscribe ticked for this thread thought it mould automatically post to me when other people reply ???
hey badllarma;
did http://www.newtek.com/forums/showpost.php?p=474879&postcount=2 (http://www.newtek.com/forums/showpost.php?p=474879&postcount=2) this help at all?
as far as i can tell (and i'd be delighted to be wrong :) ) for the time being, your only option, considering the "newness" of this new system and attendant lack of an sdk and 3rd party plugins, that rendering out with lw a heightfield image may be your only option. do you have v9? the ortho camera could be very useful for this if placed on the y-axis and targeted at 0,0,0.
good luck though if you find another solution!
Hi Robion thanks for your post , I did not quiet get your way of doing it, "heightfield image" how owuld I do that?
At a guess set camera directly above terrain then render that image as a square as Grey scale? If you could explain more that would be of great help.
Sorry i did not reply to your other posting, been busty with all the usual Christmas running about ::)
There may be a basic incompatibility between your lwo terrain and a heightfield that would prevent you from doing what you're attempting. A heightfield is NOT a mesh object, it is a series of height values only, which is loaded as an evenly spaced grid of varying heights.
In terms of a "Y is up" system, a height field is only the Y values, the X and Z values are left up to the renderer to figure out. A mesh object, including a lwo object, has all three (X, Y, and Z) included in the file.
If your lwo has been optimized (merging faces, etc), or if it was created with an object editor instead of as a heightfield, then I don't believe it will be possible to convert it to a heightfield.
Quote from: Badllarma on December 23, 2006, 09:54:15 AM
Sorry i did not reply to your other posting, been busty with all the usual Christmas running about ::)
tell me about it ;)
posted a q&d tute over at newtek as it seemed more appropriate. good luck! have a great holiday weekend.