Middle Earth DEM Project

Yeh, they are beauties!

Update. The new quad is back in Global Mapper:

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...bigscreen2.jpg



I've got a real problem with the way I'm working. The roundrtripping between GM and WM isn't working.
When I get the terrain back into GM, the terrain heights are out at the coastline. Caused by a problem I had with getting the first quad back into GM.
That's produced a knock on effect for this new quad and now the coastline in the south is all wrong along that quad. It's out by 68 m.
I can solve it by doing some more work on the quad in Leveller or Wilbur. The problem is I'm going to have this every time now I reimport a new terrain.

I could possibly fix it by altering the coastline contours in GM and running interpolation on those coastlines.

I'm going to try and fix the problems I have and then I'm going to bite the bullet and get the whole terrain into WM or some other app.
That means getting 8GB for starters. The problem with the current way I work is I'm using Leveller and to a lesser extent Wilbur.Leveller is crumby with memory. I get out of memory so easily with that app. 20 K, the current res I'm working at, is never going to go in Leveller, even
with 8 GB, it being a 32 bit app. I very much doubt it will go in Wilbur 64 either.

I'll see how easy and effective this interpolation is. If it's easy I'll consider staying with the current way oif working.

There's also another possible solution. World Machine has a relatively new feature called Render Extents. One can set mulitplie render extents of different resolutions.I've never used it before.I'm hoping that this will allow me to do essentially the same thing as Grome
does. Have the whole 20K terrain in the tmd, but only load the system with the current render extent. I know that I can load 20K into WM, I did it before when I had 8 GB of memory.
I'm enquiring about it now...

I've installed more memory...fingers crossed it doesn't start misbehaving...

I've just realised that some of my layers in Global Mapper are in different projections. Hmmm, that could be the cause of my problems.

monks

Solved most of the problems I was having last week.

Here's some pics.

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...screen3D11.jpg



http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...screen3D12.jpg




http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...screen3D13.jpg

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file.../screen3D3.jpg

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file.../screen3D7.jpg


...onwards...!!

monks

This is looking seriously juicy!!!! Go go!

juicy?...:-D ...

The quad now after removing those edges.

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...s/Edges_01.jpg

Still more to do. I'll have to create a new quad combining the two quads and roundtrip it.I'll give it a go- failing that, it's contours in gm.

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...s/Edges_02.jpg


monks

I've ironed out all of the square edges in the model. There were lots of problems created in water flow.The only way I could do that with any satisfaction was in Global Mapper using contours.

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file.../Mapupdate.jpg

The top left will have to be done in the next modelling phase. That will be either, another roundtrip with a quad covering the whole of the west coast, or the whole terrain in WM.
I'm undecided what to do right now. There are things I need to do in WM which I'm not entirely sure I can yet- with ease anyway. I tend to do those things in painterly progs such as Leveller or Wilbur.

Before I decide what to do, I'm going to improve the model with contours so that the major rivers flow correctly. I'll limit this to the main rivers- if I do it for all of them I'll be here til doomsday. :p

monks

Improved rivers...high vertical exaggeration



http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...rrivers_02.jpg

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...rrivers_01.jpg

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...rrivers_03.jpg




monks

We're currently getting our terrain into a planetary renderer. These are initial test shots.







http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...s/Proland1.png








http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...s/Proland5.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...s/Proland2.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...s/Proland3.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...s/Proland4.png


The software is ProLand by Eric Bruneton. Eric kindly released some code from an early demo. RedRobes is getting our terrain into it.

You can see more about ProLand here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggLYT...eature=related

monks

Yes, this Proland is really awesome. In fact there are a number of these kind of renderers out there very few of which we have any way of getting our DEM into so its very kind of Eric to lend us some API for that. As you can see I lashed it together with nearest neighbor sampling so the normals are all screwed. It was expected but I need an hour or two to fix that up before its really ready.

Incidentally, these planet renderers are in REALTIME. Its really awesome to see it going. The demo Eric has allowed us to integrate with is his old one and were only getting height and colour API calls. His new one has much more in it and, well, its just amazing to be honest. I have to keep expanding where I think we will all be in a few years from now w.r.t graphics.

Now you know what I've been banging on about all this time with flying over it in WM. :) WM has it's strengths in terrain editing. ProLand is way beyond those rt capabilities...I'm looking forward to seeing it in action!
I think a 40K terrain will look pretty amazing in this. No hurry though, we're moving in the right direction ;)

monks