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[monks]

  Awesome...Middle Earth comes to life!

monks

[Fornad95]

Hey - I've got a similar project going over at www.reddit.com/r/worldpaintingarda. Would it be possible to get a hold of either the GIS files or a 10k heightmap?

I'm going for a more 'hand-painted' method, but some of the formations would definitely be useful, as well as seeing how you guys handled some of the areas that aren't that detailed in the maps.

[Morcrist]

I've uploaded the tiles monks provided to my website, here. They're greyscale BMPs, but they're still 24 bit at present due to the way his World Machine exported them or something. First thing I do as I open each 5000x5000 bmp is turn it into a true 8 bit greyscale. When I've gotten them all converted I'll re-upload the much smaller files. Right now, zipped they're ~170 MB.

Just remember that if you use them, you need to give credit to the ME-DEV ME-DEM project and/or monks/Redrobes. Their "official" website is here. Correct me if I'm wrong, monks!

EDIT: ME-DEM project, sorry. At least I got the link right. Heh.

Anyway, nice screenshots man. Can you tell me what shader you're using? I've got OptiFine installed and SEUS's shaders. I'm using an admittedly older GeForce 9800 GTX+, but still...I can't run anything more than SEUS Lite. It sucks! Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

Take care.

EDIT: What kind of rig are you using? I've only got an 8 GB Dual Core Pentium. Takes a long time to work with one tile. Heh. Are you able to work on the entire 50,000x45,000 map in World Painter? Or do you have to work on chunks of it?

[monks]

Please do not make available our data at full resolution. Our policy is not to give it out- It represents blood, sweat and tears of years work. We are fine with helping people and giving out lower resolution data. For eg, 10K @ 16 bit grey, or 40K @ 8bit. We are fine with you making it available at those resolutions. Hence we don't give out GIS data either.

 Nice project Fornad. Some of the shots are pretty sweet. Our terrain is not canonical. It's not based on the Tolkien map. It's based on the ICE role playing map which has some innacuries. So any GIS data would not be useful to you anyway.

 It's possible that I'll create another map. With the new workflows I've recently developed, the software advancements over the years, and the raw materials we now have. I could do it an order of magnitude quicker. Probably less than a year. Using this workflow it's now possible to create correct hydrology at every point on the map, not just on major rivers, and for the terrain to be highly scalable to higher resolutions, still preserving equal detail, independent of satellite dem resolution.
 
monks

[Morcrist]

Please do not make available our data at full resolution. Our policy is not to give it out- It represents blood, sweat and tears of years work. We are fine with helping people and giving out lower resolution data. For eg, 10K @ 16 bit grey, or 40K @ 8bit. We are fine with you making it available at those resolutions.

I panicked when I saw you wrote this because I don't want to do anything to offend, but my understanding is I'm not doing anything you said I couldn't do.

I don't even have the data at full resolution? What you gave me was 40,000x40,000 at greyscale, so 8 bit. The actual BMPs you gave me may have been 24 bit BMPs, but they only contained 8 bits of data. In other word they were 24 bit image files with only a 256 color palette.

Are we good or do I need to take down my links?

[Redrobes]

Credit is to ME-DEM (not DEV) project. Thats the Middle Earth Digital Elevation Map project.

I think the data you have is 8 bit greyscale even tho the images were 24 bit. I think the RGB were all the same. I think at some point we will export a lower res 32bit DEM and a 10K greyscale PNG as standard but the base DEM is changing a lot at the mo and its not settled so its not great having various versions and copies of something like that floating around.

Just double check with Monks tho. I write the scripts and tools but I always think of the main map as his work.

EDIT - oh yeah he said 40K @ 8bit is ok in earlier post.

[monks]

Nah, it's ok Morcrist I just thought that maybe I'd given out the full res data by accident. I don't mean to be mean spirited mate, but over the years we've received very little help whatsoever from anyone, and had some rebuffs too along the way. What's mine is mine, etc. As I said the GIS data wouldn't be useful anyway, but Fornad can have the 16 bit grey @10K no problem. In fact I could separate out the mountains for him if that would be more useful. @Fornad, you could shape the mountains to your map by using the warp tool (or better still puppet warp tool in Photoshop). I can also give you the topo map we used, and you could try interpolate the extra information into your map.
 Our map is not canonical as I said, but it's really been a fascinating journey and the stuff I've learned and people I've met, has been fantastic. All power to your elbows- I just wish you could come over here and team up, but hey that's no problem either! I think both of you will make inspiring worlds- Fornad is already well on his way.

 Robes always says that, but we're a team! I could never do the things he can do with code!

 This new workflow is potentially a vast improvement on what we could do (IF we can pull it off), but it's not as elegant as David Genevaux's () I'm talking to this guy and believe me, we are in for some VERY interesting times ahead.

monks

[Morcrist]

Ok, whew. Good to know. And you don't come across mean spirited at all. I completely understand this project is like your baby and I feel absolutely honored that you've given me anything at all!

Until Mojang updates Minecraft to support more than 256 height, I don't think anything greater than 8 bit resolution would be helpful.

Thanks again guys.

[Morcrist]

Just an update.

10,000 x 10,000 Greyscale of the entire 40k.

With my outdated software I can only make up to 32,768 x 32,768. And even then I don't have enough memory for it. With GIMP 2.8 I was only able to create two 40,000 x 20,000 images. When I tried to stick them together to make a 40,000 x 40,000 I kept getting crashes.

World Painter Image of the same greyscale exported as an image. I think I set the dirt level way too high, but it's only at 40 so *shrug*.

Meanwhile I talked with bearman from the Massive Middle-Earth Map project (the one who inspired me to start all of this). We got on Skype and he actually showed me his desktop as he played with the 40k data in World Machine. Where of course it looked sweet. While talking about exporting from World Painter he noted that there're two Offset fields you can use which ended up making it painless to break the exports up into smaller (10,000 x 10,000 for example) chunks. Now I just need to start importing/exporting in WP and get this puppy generated in Minecraft and uploaded to my server.

Take care.

[monks]

It looks cool. It's interestin to see and alternative view of it in another app. I can see so many problems with it though- the terrain modelling..hehe...but that's just me. People in the world will not notice such things!

 Update with the biomes: http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Outerra2/gallery.htm

monks

[Morcrist]

I've finally managed to get some work done. I finished converting the original 40K 8 bit data you gave me from 24 bit greyscale images to 8 bit. They take 3x less space on disk, ~50 MB less zipped.

The link is the same.

I also finished running my Highlight/Midtone/Shadow color filter on all of the tiles AND making an 80K version of them. I simply converted each 5K tile to 10,240 x 10,240 - the extra 240 is so it fits into World Painter perfectly, which uses 128x128 tiles. The color filter, again, was to stretch the water/plains down while keeping the mountains high. My water level in Minecraft is 17 now, plains are down to about 30. It looks nice, image wise and in-game.

My new cpu finally arrived. My gpu should be here tomorrow. I look forward to increased rendering/import/exporting capability! Heh.

And speaking of which, yeah. That's what's next. Importing and exporting all the tiles to Minecraft.

Take care!

EDIT: Now running with my new cpu and gpu. Exports from World Painter seem to take half as long now, down to 20-25 minutes from 45-50. And I can run SEUS shaders in Minecraft!!!

[Morcrist]

Monks, Redrobes, what did you guys use for overlays? I'm wondering if it's just me, or if it's the map I'm trying to use. I can't for the life of me get my overlay to line up with the terrain.

[monks]

I did tell you that the map was not canonical.. I'll upload the map we used later for you.

monks

[Morcrist]

If it isn't too much trouble, you once mentioned river/forest overlays? If you had those on a per-tile basis (the 5K tiles you sent me) that would be stellar. That's what I'm trying to use the overlay for in any case, painting the rivers and forests.

[monks]

yeh, no probs...topo going up...you'll have to cut that up though. It's 20K- and probably non square- something like 1 pixel out- 20,008 x 20,007. I can export tiles from Global Mapper...I tell you what I'll do...I'll export the files again from Global Mapper and then tile them for you in World Machine in a new project

monks