Devils Tower

Started by pixelpusher636, March 13, 2021, 06:50:33 PM

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pixelpusher636

Do any of you supportive Terragen users have a moment to answer a question?

I was unable to find a decent terrain of Devils Tower to build off of so in the end I've settled for a obj model. Rather then reinventing the wheel this seemed to make the most sense.
However, reinventing the wheel might have been easier? The trouble I'm having is:

Populating trees. I've checked to sit on "Devils Tower"  added a distribution shader etc. but I can't seem to find a way to control distribution and the trees are on top and sides of the tower etc. I can forget about a painted shader as well as I can't seem to paint on an object. If anyone has any ideas on how I can distribute trees I believe all my other issues will be resolved as well.

Thanks in Advance,
Jay
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.

Kadri

One way could be to use camera projection for distribution.
Use the main render camera or if needed make another one and put it higher and pointing towards the landscape.
Use a render of that camera, edit it or just a painted image (black and white) you made etc. and use that image for distribution with that same camera (in the image node "projection type-Through camera") .

Kadri

The most basic one is using a surface layer restricted by altitude.

pixelpusher636

Quote from: Kadri on March 13, 2021, 08:13:31 PMThe most basic one is using a surface layer restricted by altitude.

Thanks Kadri! This one seems the least complicated so I'm definitely trying this out. I'll let ya know. 

Thanks,
Jay
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.

WAS

I have a heightmap on disc, hold on.

For some reason DEMs of this region, 3m lidar dems, 5 and 10m satellite dems, etc, have all been removed from the internet. It doesn't event exist as heightmap data on Google Earth. It's loaded some other way, so if you use Atlas, it doesn't have the region, or even Terrain.party.

I don't know why, and I can't find anything "legal" wise, so I will share it. Mine comes from lidar/satellite mix, and has some minor issues because I think some of the data has trees in it, while the others data didn't.

WAS

#5
Hmm. So I may have excluded it because of file size. It doesn't seem to be on either DVD (only 8GB discs with each map highly compressed and poorly named).

Though I wonder if you could convert a relatively high quality object to a heightmap. Use a surface layer with luminosity with min alt. I'll see if I can make one.

pixelpusher636

Quote from: WAS on March 13, 2021, 09:47:56 PMI have a heightmap on disc, hold on.

For some reason DEMs of this region, 3m lidar dems, 5 and 10m satellite dems, etc, have all been removed from the internet. It doesn't event exist as heightmap data on Google Earth. It's loaded some other way, so if you use Atlas, it doesn't have the region, or even Terrain.party.

I don't know why, and I can't find anything "legal" wise, so I will share it. Mine comes from lidar/satellite mix, and has some minor issues because I think some of the data has trees in it, while the others data didn't.

WAS it's a shame no bare earth data was included on your disc. No tree interference. The Devils Tower (so far as heightmap is concerned) continues to be elusive. Thanks for the attempt though. It would have been nice.  

I was forced to forego the lidar route as it was a tiled download of over 200 files in the directory. No grid map stating what was what. I really didn't want to download all of them just to get a small area. It's weird that the elevation data is missing from many sites. I was curious how much of the vertical erosion would have had to been recreated on the DEM too. I can't imagine all those flutes and details would have came out in an elevation model. A model created from Photogrammetry by the Parks service is what I have now. Not bad, but not great either. 😕
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.

pixelpusher636

Here is a bare bones render of what I'm working with for a clearer picture of what I'm talking about. The signature smashed trees and shrubbery etc.
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.

WAS

Ok so you may want to try this.

I used 3D Devil's Tower provided by IMR Geographic Resources Division, so it's CC Attribution-NonCommercial. Probably same one you used as it's best I could find.
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/devils-tower-national-monument-wyoming-f08f4bb0230f4cc899f837f2126db7b7

It's a 1gb 32bit TIFF at around 700x700 meters. Compressed as a zip down to 219mb. The range is 0-1 about because a scalar to scale at 5000 feet above sea level, and an additionaly 480 something meters abouts would takes hours to render, vs a 0-1 range at 2 minutes. Lol
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pc4fiEeRUJCtWG-xc__m88WEbCeA6_27/view?usp=sharing

For the issues with trees I think you could probably just clone stamp out the problem areas in Photoshop/Affinity Photo. You could also load it into the heightmap generator, duplicate, and merge by altitude (distribution shader) and use the smooth heightmap filter to just smooth the base the butte to add your own trees and rocks too. :)

Dune

If it needs to be very exact, it might be harder, but if you want something like Devil's Tower, I think it's doable in TG.

pixelpusher636

WAS this is a fantastic looking DEM! Much, much better then what I had and since it's now a terrain.. I believe things are really looking up for this project. 
This was help was far more generous than I'd hoped for. So thank you very much for your time and help Sir. 

I'm off to download!
Jay
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.

pixelpusher636

It would appear that I'm more of an amateur then I (or perhaps you) thought. When I load the terrain it's only a small bounding box cross hair like the attached. In the past when I've had this issue I've copied the terrain coordinates into the planet Lat long at apex coordinates and it's resolved the issue. Not in this case. What did I do wrong?
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.

WAS

This isnt a geotiff, just a tiff. It has no location data. So you'll probably want to use the image map shader and transform input shader to translate and rotate.

If you want it close to scale you'll want it at about 700-800 meters on X and Z. File didn't mention its actual dimensions so I compared to national park maps with distance rulers.

WAS

#13
Try this project file out, replace the image map with your version on disk and generate the two heightmaps. The Smoothed base of the heightmap seems to remedy the point spikes from where trees were.

You can change the first heightmap shaders points to 8196 x 8196 to match the heightmap. I just did a quick test, though at 700m it should be quick doing 8k.

pixelpusher636

WAS I can't tell you how happy I was to see that you posted a project file after reading you previous post. 
My eyes glazed over reading what I would have to figure out to make this work. Thanks for your help, sorry I missed that this was not a geotif. 

Jay
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.