Procedural terrains
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Always a tough call for SU, landscapes have always been hit or miss and very frustrating to do. Normally one would use an app like terragen or one of the $$$ softwares to get close to accurate landscapes. Even though Vue is great at landscapes it is not good at accurate representations of actual relief, but for a fantasy scape it rocks.
SU's sandbox tools are pretty decent to achieve basic results, but partnered with subsmooth for certain features and FFD to morph other features one can actually achieve satisfactory results with only poly limits as a downside and SU's crappy UV mapping.
Complexity was added with bumped textures.If anyone has had much success with accurate landscaping with SU please jump in as I would appreciate any input out there.
This is just an exploration, I do have an actuall project on the horizon where I need to map approx 2km worth of terrain in the Cayman Islands and would like to get familliar with the best technique possible.
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Now that is great to share Pete.
Great landscaping!
I was wondering if you could point me to a tutorial for texturing/uv-mapping (in general) in Vue 6.
SU's texturing is a real pain....so I am thinking trying Vue demo and texture my freeforms in that app. -
Thanks Chris, the above was textured in SU and rendered with Podium (you can see the stretching textures due to SU's limited mapping abilities)
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@solo said:
... the above was textured in SU ...
I know, that's why I asked about Vue
(Very nice Podium render by the way)
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I've found the book "E-on Software's Vue 6 Revealed" to be a good reference source. Changing or tweaking the materials applied in SU in Vue is easy - just click on the material in the browser on the left, and the material editor opens - and you switch between the basic editor and the advanced editor. For the most part, the controls are self explanatory. And you can see the changes real time in the preview window. If a bumbling renderer like me can use it, a pro like you shouldn't have any probs. If I were you, I'd just download the eval version and play with it.
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Thank you Daniel. I will have a go with that.
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Okay, my bad.
I will look out for a few tutorials, I have never used nor seen one yet (havent looked either)
I am trying something different now (details to follow) using a Google aerial map and converting the image to a 3d mesh.
I took a piece of scotland as seen below and converted the .jpg to a .skp. The problem i need to overcome is file sizes due to poly limits, but accuracy seems spot on (a few elevation adjustments may be needed and can be achieved using FFD or scale tool).
I had to reduce the file by 80%
and still the .skp is 47MB
GE image.
The SU model with hidden lines on.
No lines and shadows on.
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LOL@myself.
look at lower right corner of last image (the google logo is a mountain)
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Solo, how did you convert the GE jpeg to the 3D SU model?
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@daniel said:
Solo, how did you convert the GE jpeg to the 3D SU model?
Indeed
How does one do that? (Zbrush?) -
Daniel, I will do a kinda tutorial once I have all the kinks worked out and there are a few. The Google earth image gets changed into an extreme bump or better word a displacement map which is then used as a map on a flat mesh to create a physical relief. I want to see if I can map the actual image as a texture and then use it also as a displacement map in oder to give a better 3d representation.
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This is simply AMAZING, Pete..!!
Looking forward to learn more about this...
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Fantastic stuff Solo...looking forward to see the way you do it.
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This is a cool progress to watch.
I can imagine using the displacement-to-mesh idea for lots of different things as well. -
St. Andrews golf course in Scotland.
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Looks good. What happens with buildings. Do they come up accurately?
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reduced poly version.The houses do not raise right due to google image had shadows that screw with the displacement.
fast render (20 seconds due to image being texture)
Still needs tweaking, but this could be a new way of doing terrains, may need a code expert to make this a ruby idea however. -
My god, this is amazing. Still don't understand how this is works though..
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haha... me neither.. i understand how the bump maps or displacement maps work in the renders.. but how are you achieving that complex sketchup mesh?? awesome stuff.. i just recently saw someting on the maxwell forums where someone had just taken a google earth image and used it as a displacement map.. wasnt accurate at all, but was really cool and simple..
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[Off Topic]: I tried texturing a freeform in Vue...and didn't succeed .Seems as Vue doesn't really has real UV-mapping tools (only cilindrical,spherical, etc..which results in distorted soup). Next step: Zbrush?
Sorry for the OT. Now please continue with this nice landscaping process
!
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