Outerra Worlds Forums
Middle-Earth World => General Discussion => Topic started by: monks on February 23, 2013, 10:10:50 pm
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Come say hello! We'd love to hear from you, whether you're just stopping by to see what we're up to, are working on a similar project, or want to contribute to ME-DEM itself. :)
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Hey folks,
I've got no special skills to contribute something usefull to the project, I just registered here to tell you sporadically how awesome the stuff is you do and to keep track with the further development! To start my fanboy-work: The demo you guys released is already quite impressive. Can't wait to roam through Middle Earth when biomes and lakes/rivers are implemented in a later release :-)
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Hey Marky good that you could join us, even if its for the reading ;D
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Hi Markey, thanks, good to see you! ;)
monks
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Hey, I run the server behind the ME-DEM webmap. My username on the old forums was Skystrider.
http://66.172.33.110/openlayers2.html (http://66.172.33.110/openlayers2.html)
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Hi Jeremy- yes should have spotted that straight away! ;)
monks
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There's a guy asking for the links to the GIS data. No response as yet...
Anyway, I've been trying to reacquaint myself with the Global Mapper core data...I think I need to do that soon because it's all getting a bit murky as to where all the files are heh. Basically I have two projects which cover almost everything. I've found one of them which covers the terrain export to Outerra. The other one should be all of the shp files. I do have the shp files backed up so in an emergency I could fairly easily reconstruct the project but I'd prefer to locate the working file. I'll have a look tomorrow.
monks
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Hello everyone!
Big LoTR/Fantasy fan here. Just thought I'd hop on your forums to see what all is going on and soak in some of the neatness.
~Tharros
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Hi Tharros, that's cool ;) If there's anything you ever want to get involved with or comment on just say.
monks
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Hi everyone
Just wanted to say this project is awesome and look forward to seeing it evolve
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Hi Gandalf, thanks for dropping in on our little world!
monks
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Hi folks, you're all very brave taking on this huge task. Tolkien was at it his whole life! I can't run the demo but the video is stunning. Keep it up. I can't do any modelling but I can do research if anyone needs it. (Big Tolkien nut)
I saw somewhere that the world is dated around the 1600s T.A. is that right? Amon Hen was still in use then, lots of other buildings around too.
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Hey boro, nice to meet you. Shame you can't run the demo, it's great fun. Thanks for the offer of helping- we might just take you up on it ;) Anyway, feel free to chip in at any time with anything you think might help.
Yeh, T.A 1600s. We've still got release the next terrain build which wil make it easier for models to go in.
monks
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Hi all......
yannick/babayaya from france.........
what to say............stunned? awed? i'm wordless about the task and the job done...
I'm a roleplayer for 30 years now and just began 3 weeks ago to plan a 4age campaign in Middle earth involving the remnants of evil still on arda....
Going on the net to find a Good sized map i just fall on your forum and this outerra project....
Errr the only thing i can say is that there is a Valar for game masters????
I you want all i can tell you the tale of my 8 characters beginning the 17th of august... i can perhaps help forthings but i'm not a programer or a drafer as monk to say the last...
thanks again all!!!
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Hi Yannick, welcome to the forums and thanks! :)
I think we can give you a map. It would be cool to have you post your tale here as it
happens. I used to do something similar in my "log book".
What kind of map were you thinking of? I can give you the full ICE map no problem. Giving you a contour map of the very latest terrain version might be a bit more difficult because it requires that I re-import the latest terrain into Global Mqapper, my GIS software. Since the terrain is currently about 1600 tiles, rectifying them individually is a no go. However, we have a couple of other options whcih I'll look into. I need to get the terrain back into the project anyway.
I won't be able to do it though for at least 4 days as I have a deadline coming up for a terrain I'm doing for a studio.
Btw, what roleplaying system are you using?
monks
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Hi,
It looks like this is a generally quiet forum, so that's cool.
I stumbled upon some of Monk's maps about a year ago on Cartographer's Guild, while looking for topographic maps of Middle Earth. I'm really impressed by the scale of this project, and congratulate everyone on a job well done so far.
Eventually, I'd love to have a giant 4'x4' high res map of ME, with all the labels and as much 'real world' detail as possible. If there's any way I can help with this, I'd love to do so.
-William
www.williamfairaday.com (http://www.williamfairaday.com)
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Hi Fairaday, welcome to the boards!
I noticed you regged on the old forums as well. Not sure how you did that since the front end appears broken to me, but hey, you'll find a lot of old discussion over there, but over here is the place to be.
There's a chap who contacted RedRobes about making a woodcut or a poster?...or something. I'm not sure where we are up to with that.
At the moment, at least for the next month, I'm very busy with a game project and I can't render out anything, or get at individual map layers until I swap out the hard disk. I did render out a pretty cool map but it's actually a bit innacurate and based on the old terrain. The latest terrain is a lot better.
RedRobes has a render too from his software which we use in the make process. Hopefully he'll chime in. I'd like to create a map with contour lines in a more modern style, using map layers. Robes version is more an artistic render- we use his software to create the texture maps. So we'll combine the output from his to get the vegetation maps and they'll go into any final renders we make.
monks
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Hey there. You guys are awesome, the work you've done and the time you've taken to do it. Massive kudos! Bringing alive Tolkien's world...there's just something so incredible about being able to immerse yourself therein.
And speaking of massive, that's what brought me here. I'm a big Minecraft fan. Me and my 3 daughters have been playing it for years. I'm a bigger Tolkien fan, having first started on the Hobbit/LOTR back when I was 10 or 11. I also got my first ICE MERP module at that time, Isengard, and later got into Rolemaster and picked up many more modules. Unfortunately I had a...not a mid-life crisis but a early-life crisis? heh, and ended up actually throwing away tons of Rolemaster/MERP stuff when I was 16.
After I grew up and got a job I was on eBay about 15 years later and saw that there was an active market for the old RM/MERP sourcebooks and modules so I bought a few for nostalgia. Well, I found myself buying a couple more and then when a 'lot' came up which contained pretty much every single ICE/MERP book they put out I bought it for $1500. The guy selling it to me happened to know Terry Amthor, and was actually able to get him to sign a copy of Ardor for me. /blissfulsigh
Anyway, massive. I encountered the MCME project in Minecraft a while back, got on their server, and looked around. They had done some impressive things. Of particular interest to me was Moria. Probably the fact that I'm a purist combined with a huge dose of anal resulted in me being left a little less satisfied than I should have been (their work is super epic, without a doubt). More recently I found thebearman (http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/massive-middle-earth-map/ (http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/massive-middle-earth-map/))/BEskind (http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1691501-wip-massive-middle-earth-map-with-sample-downloads/ (http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1691501-wip-massive-middle-earth-map-with-sample-downloads/)) and his massive middle-earth project (http://massivemiddleearth.com (http://massivemiddleearth.com)). He appears to be using source from ICE as well, at least for topography. I got interested in adding other people's structures into his massive Minecraft map (it's roughly 24000 x 24000 blocks and takes up ~10gb) since he's only working on the landscape.
Which brings me here. I was starting to get a little dissatisfied with his map. Sound familiar? Heh heh. Basically I'm now looking for a heightmap of NW Middle-Earth I can use to get a starting point for some terrain in World Painter. I'd like to make my own topograhical/landscape map for use in Minecraft and was hoping you guys could help.
I've spent a couple hours trying to find some data I could use to generate said heightmap the last couple days. No luck. I'm an Outerra supporter as well but I don't know if that would be helpful in the way of getting the data I need from the OTX file(s). I installed Global Mapper (2 week trial) so I can convert probably anything I would need to use to export a heightmap from.
I'll go ahead and make a post in the other thread that's already started, but that's me in a nutshell.
Thanks again for the huge amount of time and effort you guys have put into this project and I look forward to more wonderful things from you guys in future!
Take care.
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Hi Morcrist, sounds like a very similar story to mine. :D Sounds like a great idea. Yes I've seen the Minecraft projects. They're pretty amazing. I think the plan is to have vector line input into Outerra for tunnels, and a procedural engine to flesh them out at run time. Don't quote me on the exact details though. It's going to need something like that for extremely large enviroments.
You approached us at a bad time really. We've had a few people ask us over the last 6 months and I've had to say the same thing to them as well. I'm in the middle of a game project for a studio and all of my me-dem projects are on a backup hd because I ran out of space on my computer. So I can't render anything out. The old renders are nowhere near the finished state of the latest terrain, it's not worth using to be honest. I can have a look to see if I still have the original output files from the last render before it got converted to the Outerra native format. Other than that, folks will have to wait a couple of months- could be a little as a few weeks- before I can go again.
Our "policy" for want of a better word, is to not give out the terrain at full res. We could give you a 10K terrain and you could always upsample it.
monks
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Hi there
First, sorry for my bad english. I´m from Germany and work as a Traffic-Planer (don´t know if this is the right Job Title :))
I´m Geograph and work in my Job with ArcGIS for a long time.
And, of course, I´m a Great Fan of Arda and all the things there (Read Lotr and Silmarilion minimum onetime every Year since the last 20 Year). Creating Maps from Middle Earth is long time a Hobby, but not in this fantastic way you did :D
kr
Fala
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Hi Falasion, welcome to the boards!
We looked into this about 4 years ago, along with using NASA's Google Earth equivalent; Worldwind. We found that Google Earth did not support user defined heightmaps- not even the Pro version. It supported everything else, but not the terrain itself. Maybe that's changed, I don't know.
Worldwind on the other hand does support people using their own terrain data. Although it's not got the following/resources GE has. We did have a guy over on the old boards who knocked a map up (without terrain) : ME-DEM topo map in NASA's World Wind. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtcjHxCYvcI#ws)
Outerra has a Google Earth map which you can invoke in the lower right of the screen. It will show the corresponding GE maps for the current location in Outerra. Cameni said that it would be possible to make a similar thing for ours.
I can output kmz, and GE formats from Global Mapper where all the core project data is. I've never tried it though, I'm sure it's not that difficult. Global Mapper also supports the 3D kmz format.
We have a guy on here who creates the online map. He's called Skystrider...Jermemy van Gelder.
Hmm, yes, traffic planner is good :)
monks
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Hi all,
I'm new to Outerra/Anteworld and MeDEM, but I expect I'll be sticking around for quite some time. It's truly amazing what can be achieved with this technology.
I'm also VERY new to 3D modelling, but have a keen eye for detail and would very much like to aid in this development. Tolkien's lore is my favourite of all (aside from the ancient stories of my nation) and I feel that P. Jackson realised many of the finer details of Middle Earth, and would love to bring some models to this project if I can.
I hope to become involved in the community in whatever way I can, and would appreciate any tips on the software and use of software for modelling!
Thanks to everyone involved in this monstrous achievement and sharing with us all ;D
I'd like to thank monks for sending me this way, I'm grateful for the welcome.
GodotWaits
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Hi Everyone,
First off I have to say that this is an awesome undertaking! I can't wait to see how this project changes and grows. I am somewhat familiar with 3D modeling as well as GIS software and would be more than willing to help with whatever is needed! Good luck with everything!
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Hi guys & welcome,
Yeah I think the 3D modelling is the thing that were most lacking. The terrain side is well tedious and involves a lot of memory, harddrive, set up etc but the 3D modelling side we would like to get some places modeled.
I dont think they need to be at all fine detail. I think right now we would settle for some boxes and cones and stuff just marking out the size and scale of the places. The scaling does need to be right tho so anyone with a keen interest in the books is more valuable right now than great 3D skills. Enthusiasm and perseverance are the killer traits for medem because it does get a bit tedious at times and we make no progress for months before getting a surge and new demo material out.
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Hi guys & welcome,
I dont think they need to be at all fine detail. I think right now we would settle for some boxes and cones and stuff just marking out the size and scale of the places. The scaling does need to be right tho so anyone with a keen interest in the books is more valuable right now than great 3D skills.
Seems like an idea - going trough all the cities/villages overlays and marking whyte a semi-transparent box (just placing that correct shape-size box there) all the structures placing. At one, it would show people, what structures need to be done to future, and at second would give some open-hand to slight terrain adjustments and road-building.
As for models, its thought at OT to make a website for placing OT models (free and payware) for users to choose/buy and select to add to your OT. A separate section there for MeDem models wont be much of problem to do ... But now, is the focus on weather and a way of rivers(-vector based) implementation (also i think they will do the multiplayer before it too, to give it a little push). So the site has to wait a little. (thats why those vehicle/object-sections were made at their forum)
As Redrobes says, it would be nice getting close to the books looks of the structures. So if you got the books read and some idea of some of those buildings, you could put yourself to work. Going trough various forums for info and sketches would not be a bad idea. ;)
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Hi folks, welcome to the boards! I think instead of boxes and cones we could try import some Minecraft locations to get up and running. But whatever gets the job done really.
What if we offer that guy who made the Minas Tirith model some $...see if he'll bite. ;D
Pyton, everyone here, do you want to take something on? A site?
monks
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Pyton, everyone here, do you want to take something on? A site?
... future OT project development stuff talk there. :D ... Dont worry doe, i think the community grows nicely, we will stand behind you, wowing, as at the ME planet gets better step by step.
What if we offer that guy who made the Minas Tirith model some $...see if he'll bite.
Stuff fundrise ! 5 bucks on Gimli - we just need that shorty, beardy, ancient butt kicking funny guy. :D :D
But back to topic session. :D (... i have a part at OTs but why the heck not)
Im an chemistry student from Svk. Crossed OT around 2-3 years ago and sticking at them for some time now. Was a big paper-craft modeller, so now im poking into 3D modelling in free time. Interested in all engineering and sciences. A fan of LotR too ( just as half of the planet :D ) and have a thing for dragons n fantasy worlds. Planning to contribute in the future by few buildings here too ... and yes - hi there all ! :D
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We need someone to get these models into Outerra quickly. Is anybody game for volunteering? All it need is for downloads with the help of Morcrist and for someone to convert them to obj. I could do it but I'm slow -not had much experience with getting models into Outerra. Besides I'm tied up running an improved biomes tex off for the next release and vid. The vid will follow the story across the map so we need as many of those models in as we can. We have a bit of a timeframe on this as well because we're doing this for an magazine article. All help will be credited of course.
So if you're up for it let us know!
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We need someone to get these models into Outerra quickly. Is anybody game for volunteering? All it need is for downloads with the help of Morcrist and for someone to convert them to obj. I could do it but I'm slow -not had much experience with getting models into Outerra. Besides I'm tied up running an improved biomes tex off for the next release and vid. The vid will follow the story across the map so we need as many of those models in as we can. We have a bit of a timeframe on this as well because we're doing this for an magazine article. All help will be credited of course.
So if you're up for it let us know!
Wow ... when is the deadline ? (hope at least month and half) ... will try to run across 3D model pages and see if some people have something or a free-time interest.
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Thanks Pyton, all help appreciated! Uhmmm, I can't say exactly when, but I'm thinking less than that really. I think if we have the following we'll be good....
Just get as many as you can. We can decide which ones to use once we have them.
Minas Tirith
Barad Dur
something for The Shire...I think MineCraft is the place to go. Reg over on planetMinecraft and have a look I think.
Bree would be nice. I saw one on MineCraft.
As would Weathertop. A single tower will be good enough for that.
Rivendell is a tricky one. There's one on MineCraft but there's a lot of terrain in it. It'd be worth trying.
Argonath. I've seen models on Google Warehouse I'm sure. Minecraft as well.
Isengard. That's a popular one.
Helm's Deep. Morcrist posted one..will take a look shortly.
PatB posted some in the min ME-DEM thread on Outerra.
monks
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I don't think the deadline really applies now. We have a new release coming up, biomes 1.2, and after that we'll have the final terrain we can commit to for 3D models. that will be weeks, not months. ASAHP
monks
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Good day,
I am thomas from Leipzig, which you can find in germany/saxony. I know LotR the half of my live (i am 28 now) and i am a huge fan by the first second. Contributing something is my biggest goal here, because this project unites everything i like: Outerra and ME. So i will stay curious to see which progress is going on here.
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Hello everyone! I`m John from Greece. I`m a big fan of LOTR style worlds and I immediately got hooked in Outerra, since detail is also one of my weak spots!
I will contribute with 3D models if I get round to it. I mainly model for trainz simulator right now. Basic stuff!
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Hi John and welcome. Its been a bit quiet of late around here. We did some work on the Outerra MeDem terrain and textures but I have not seen it released yet so I think there is some new stuff out soon - ish. But for the 3D modelling we have not done a great deal. Would like to see some more 3D models in MeDem but Monks and I are both pretty tied up with other stuff at the mo.
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Hi John...nice to meet you!
Yes, things are in a bit of a lull at the moment but it'll pass. We have a long history.... ;D
monks
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Hi, my name is Marius from Germany.
Two Friends and I did a little video for a university project using MeDem. We really enjoyed this Masterpiece of 3D Middle Earth. We imported some SketchUp models at some places to give the viewer some eye candy and a point to hold on as we are flying pretty fast. The way we traveled in Outerra is based on the Aragorns journey through Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings. We also added some of our favourite scores and movie sequnces. We would have loved to fly a little slower to let the viewer enjoy the view, but we had a little time limit :)
I hope you guys enjoy our little Video as much as we enjoyed doing it!
Big thanks for MeDem
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G4AxKJ6Udk (make sure you watch in HD :D)
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Hi Marius, That looks great and its brilliant to see that MeDem has been an inspiration for people to make things from it. I haven't seen any video yet of MeDem using Outerra where it has had the clouds showing so this is a bit of a first.
I think when Outerra can support lakes and water features without having to use textured polygon models for them then I think we will try to export some more of the data we have to enable that feature. I think then we will see Anduin and some more of the famous features within the land come to life.
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Hello,
I'm observing the ME-DEM project since more than three years. As a tolkien fan (and playing pen and paper rolepaying games with middle earth settings) I'm really fascinated by the maps of the ME-DEM project. In my opinion ME-DEM is true reference standard for middle earth maps. I watched all the Outerrea demo videos, but as a Linux guy, I'm not able to use Outerra :'( (I know a Linux version is announced since years, but I lost the confidence that this will ever happen).
I registered in this forum because this seems to be the official forum for the ME-DEM Project and the forum thread at cartographers guild seems to be dead.
For a "non-Outerra-compatible-user" the "best" result of the ME-DEM project is the monks' posting of 03-31-2012, 10:33 AM, sharing the topographic map generated in Global Mapper, split into 4 tiles at 5000 pixels. I really would like to use this map as a reference for my P+P RGP campaign, but as a campaign map it has not enough details. Monks wrote that the 5k tiles represent only one quarter of the map's original resolution. Therefore I hope that some "veterans" in this forum can give me a hint, how to obtain the full resolution of the ME-DEM topographic map.
Cheers
skol
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Hello Skol,
I guess technically the forum posts at the guild are still live but not a lot has been happening with the MeDem for a while now.
We have seen that there is an alpha release of some functionality in Outerra that now supports rivers and lakes but its not quite official but it looks promising. I expect that we will be able to export some more layer information we have into something that can be applied to the Outerra engine to make it show these rivers and lakes.
I run a lot of Linux too and so I have only limited capability to run Outerra. I think it might get a port to Linux one day but I expect it will be a long time coming. They seem to have a lot of graphics driver issues to keep on top of without going to open sourced ones as well.
The MeDem native format is at 40K square but its very very large and usually not something that we can upload. Monks keeps the original set done in Global Mapper. I don't think its changed a great deal since 2012 but I am not sure about the dates when the last set of big changes went in. I am not sure that from an RPG perspective that you would get a lot more out of it even if it were 4x the res. We still don't have any towns and cities in it. What we could have done with were places put down in 3D models for some of the more prominent places. Outerra does a wonderful job of generating fractal wavelets when the terrain data runs out so it looks a lot better in Outerra videos than we have natively. But Monks is the guy who is custodian of the data. I write the tools to make it into something we can export to Outerra.
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Hi, I am about to start CNC machining wooden terrain models of fascinating places around the world, but I would really like to make some out of middle earth as well. Is it possible to get a terrain map of middle earth into Arcmap? I would take specific areas of the map and export a dem file of it to Google SketchUp. Once I get it into SketchUp, I can then get it into my CAM software to machine it out.
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Hey, gang.
I'm obsessed with Tolkien's world since childhood, so this forums is like my dream come true!
I was aware that this data exists, but since I couldn't get the outerra demo working and I thought it's only available in some proprietary Global Mapper format, I kinda forgot about it until I've found that there are shapefiles on github.
I'm afraid i'm kind of “late to the party”, but I hope that there are still some people who would be willing to answer some of my questions.
If you're interested, check out a blog-post about a Middle-earth related project I did few years ago: https://hellricer.github.io/2015/04/30/genes-in-middle-earth.html (https://hellricer.github.io/2015/04/30/genes-in-middle-earth.html)