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1

General Discussion / Re: Monks - terrain-making guidance? THX

« on: November 21, 2013, 03:39:18 am »

Thanks so much for the reply.  Looks like I have to acquire a few more tools and carefully parse through your response. luckily my terrain will be 1/4 the area yours is.  Its also an island, so that helps.  I think I can probably get most of the dem data I need by downloading a couple of carefully selected mountain ranges and island chains.   Cool that you are working on a game project... is your work terrain based?  Anything as neat as middle earth? Confidentiality notwithstanding.

2

General Discussion / Re: Monks - terrain-making guidance? THX

« on: November 20, 2013, 01:55:38 pm »

Ok, so i played some more and have run into different problems.  I am attempting to make a 20k x 20k heightmap, and I figure using the Aster worldwide V2 DEMs at 30m resolution, I will be able to make a neat 600km world.  I really want to use 30m spacing instead of 90m for my source data, and this is the only worldwide coverage I have found that is free at this resolution (am I right)?  So I think I have found that this data isn't streamable into Global Mapper, and the most usable site I have found for downloading the data is the LPDAAC site.  Unfortunately, their map browser is low resolution, and I have found that it isn't useful for identifying terrain I want to copy, paste, and splice together.  Also, only 20 one-degree tiles can be downloaded at a time.  Anyone have any advice?
 

3

General Discussion / Re: Monks - terrain-making guidance? THX

« on: November 19, 2013, 03:44:24 am »

Well I did some digging into the old forums, as well as the new Outerra ones.  So i guess it looks like the first couple years of the project were putting together a rough 40kx40k hand-crafted heightmap using various products like leveller, world builder, etc.  Then the team began focusing on Outerra, and it was determined that the existing height data was not realistic enough.  Monks has a quote about his current workflow, talking about how he uses DEM info to select mountains and other features, and uses Photoshop, and predominantly the warp tool, to process the data., then stitches the tiles together in Leveller.  I have Global Mapper now, and I am learning how to use it.  So basically I have the ASTER 30m worldwide DEM data.  I identify a mountain or something I like, export the tile, lasso the feature, and copy/paste the data onto a base photoshop map.  This map has a certain grayscale set to sealevel, a coastline, and maybe some noise.  Once the features are added, I use either photoshop or Wilbur to correct the screwed up areas, run some erosion filters, add some noise.  I guess this all makes sense, though a concise tutorial would certainly be welcome.  A few places I am still fuzzy on are how coastline features are created, how heights are managed given the various sources of terrain info, how the terrain textures are sourced, and how the data is managed and stored, amongst others.  I hope this project once again generates some discourse, because  basically I have found nowhere on the web  where people are attempting to hand-craft realistic terrain in large scale.

4

General Discussion / Re: Monks - terrain-making guidance? THX

« on: November 12, 2013, 02:37:49 pm »

ok, thanks.  I looked at Global Mapper; so it is basically a GIS program?  So you go in, select some mountains you like, export, cut and paste into a heightmap?  That actually sounds incredibly complicated to pull off, getting things to align and such. This is where I envisioned photoshop being useful, but I imagine it is probably easier in a terrain painting program.  Well I have been toying with L3DT, and although i can imagine it being useful for quickly generating a 2048x2048 map for a shooter like unreal, I am not finding it useful to create a unique, realistic, hand-crafted look in large scale.  Interested to hear what Monks has to say.

5

General Discussion / Monks - terrain-making guidance? THX

« on: October 22, 2013, 02:33:20 am »

Hi,
Congrats on your success with Outerra; the new stuff looks great.  Believe it or not, I have been following your progress on/off for almost 7 years.  I finally got inspired to do a similar project for another non-tolkien realm.  It looks like the tools you are using have come a long way. I recall the old site having a lot of useful material on the painstaking process of creating the terrain with a mix of l3dt, world machine, probably Wilbur, and I am sure some others.  I found the old defunct forums, and much of this data is still there, but the bulk of it is 5-7 years old.  This discovery prompted a few questions:
Can you please lay out what the current work flow looks like, still the same?
Is most of the rough forming done, and now you are just polishing?  Or are you still creating new land? 
Are you actually using real DEM data, or is it just for reference? 
If so, how do you stitch it?
If you were starting from scratch, how would you do it? 
I have Wilbur, CS6 and L3DT Pro.  Any others?
I understand that Outerra can handle a range of terrain grid spacing.  is there a sweetspot?  What are you using?  I think i recall your project being 40k x 40k.  Am i correct?
thanks!!