Creating 3D contour maps of land

[ravells]

Hi Don,

Unfortunately Bryce and photoshop just don't work together 'that way'.

One way of creating a landscape in Bryce might be as follows:

1. In photoshop, make a 'height map' (I recommend that you use a square canvas of 1024 px), using one of the many tutorials about how to make one - ie. cloud filters etc.

2. On separate layers paint your landscape so that it works with the heightmap.

3. Save the heightmap as a .bmp or .png img and save the detailed map (colours, etc) as a separate image (bmp or png).

4. Open Bryce, delete the infinite ground plane which loads as a default (just click on it and press delete) and then create a terrain object (press the little mountain symbol on the top of the screen). Select the terrain created by clicking on it. You should see a little sub menu of letters on the right hand side of the control cage. The bottom letter is 'E'. Click that.

This will allow you to edit the terrain. On the tabs along the right, click 'New' and then 'Load'. Load the heightmap you've saved. This will give you the landscape shape.

5. Come out of the terrain editor and then press the letter 'M' to the right of the control cage, this opens the material pallette. Load the detail colour picture, and select 'object top' as your projection.

That should do it. I haven't set out the details of loading images into materials pallete (I'm assuming you know how to do this) but if you need any help there are any number of tuts on the web.

Ravs

[RobA]

From the Bryce FAQ:

QUESTION:
What 3D Object File Formats can Bryce Import?

ANSWER:
Importing - Bryce can import objects saved to the following file formats.



TrueSpace (.cob) Versions up to 4.0 are supported. Material properties are supported.

VideoScape (.vsa) All versions are fully supported.

VRML1 (.wrl) Imports all properties relevant to Bryce, including camera, light, and surface and material textures.

LightWave (.lwo or .lws) Both objects and scenes are supported. The camera, lights, and all objects (with material information) are imported. Versions 6 and up are not supported.

Heightfield (.hf) Used to import descriptions of heightfields (terrains).

USGS DEM (.dem) All forms of DEM files are supported.

USGS SDTS (.ddf) This format is the new USGS format which will replace DEM files.

Portable Greyscale Map (.pgm) Used to import descriptions of heightfields (terrains).

3d Studio® Objects (.3ds)

3DMF (.3mf)

AutoCad® (.dfx)

Direct 3D (.x)

Wavefront (.obj)

WCS Elev (.elev)

WorldToolKit® (.nff)

So I think pgm is the one you want. AFAIK photoshop supports it, depending on the version, (but it might not be installed by default - check your EXTRAS folder ion the CD)

...or if not, I know there is at least one 3rd part plugin.

Attached is a zip of a pgm file made from your jpg (and on a side note, stay away from jpg when making heightfields as the compressions algorithms really mes them up).
-Rob A>

[pyrandon]

Thanks a lot for all this info + help! I imported the hf and it looks odd--far too spiky. But that's ok; I'm sarting to realize I do not want to learn a new program at the moment--I have too many ideas to play with as is & so I don't want to take the time. Bryce is much less intuitive than I had expected. I'll come back to it some day (amybe in the summer, when time is more plentiful) and then I'll take the time to arm wrestle with Bryce.

Thanks for all your help, though! You guys are awesome!

[RobA]

The spikes are probably because of jpeg compression artifacts. I should have applied a 3 or 4 px blur before saving it out as a hf.

-Rob A>

[pyrandon]

Don't sweat it, Rob--like I said, I really appreciate it. I just don't have the patience (right now) to figure out Bryce (especially since I'm working from 0 skill level/experience in both that program and any other 3D app--plus only slight computer knowledge in general!)

As a side note, I did use PS's "perspective" tool, the "liquify" filter, a little hand painting to create the image below. Not great, perhaps not even all that good, but this process could serve my needs until I take the plunge into the world of computer 3D modeling. Plus, not bad for about 30 min. work, if I do say so myself! Just need more hand painting, more cut-n-paste, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks again!

[Naryt]

Don't sweat it, Rob--like I said, I really appreciate it. I just don't have the patience (right now) to figure out Bryce (especially since I'm working from 0 skill level/experience in both that program and any other 3D app--plus only slight computer knowledge in general!)

As a side note, I did use PS's "perspective" tool, the "liquify" filter, a little hand painting to create the image below. Not great, perhaps not even all that good, but this process could serve my needs until I take the plunge into the world of computer 3D modeling. Plus, not bad for about 30 min. work, if I do say so myself! Just need more hand painting, some images of trees to cut-n-paste in, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks again!

Beautiful Don, just beautiful! If you keep this up, we'll end up making Fish Seide our home!

[ravells]

That is very cool! How much touching up did it require? Any chance of a shot of the picture before you touched it up?

Cheers

Ravs

[pyrandon]

The attached image is something like the "first step", using just the perspective tool. Touch-up took maybe an hour to 90 min. or so.

The end result looks neat, I guess, and the results are fine in a faux-painterly sort of way, but the problem is that I had envisioned the town being three tiered, each tier being an ascended elevation from the sea. The image I've produced, however, looks quite flat to my eye. This is why I was hoping to do a 3-D model: to convincingly capture that change in height. I know I could recreate that manually in Photoshop if I felt like taking the time to tweak for a lot longer than I did--but since I was just a play-test-goofing around, it'll do.

[RobA]

Wow! that turned out great! That looks like a real nice way to "fake" a 3D view.

-Rob A>

[RPMiller]

I agree! That is a really great "fake", and definitely so for being only an hour or so of work.