Fractal Terrains issues

[Master TMO]

As far as I know, sliding a continent around in FTPro is right out. The map elevations are a function based on the fractal function and the lat/long coordinates. Moving it around changes the coordinates. But I have never worked with a burned-in surface before, only randomly-generated worlds.

For filling in the Adriatic Sea, try drawing a selection around it and then setting elevation to 0, rather than trying to paint it by hand. Then you can go through and hand-paint any terrain features you want. You will lose the existing terrain though, so you if you wanted to keep something from it, save off an image and use that image to try and replicate it afterward.

I am not sure using the pre-generated Earth terrain file will do what you are dreaming of though. If I am reading right, you want a map you can zoom in to any piece of and be able to export a clean map, at any resolution. I would be willing to bet (but don't actually know for sure) that the map of Earth is a pixel-based image, and therefore has an inherent resolution limitation. Zooming in won't reveal more detail, just larger pixels. I am trying to get the same sort of result you are, but with a randomly-generated world (see my Gryphii WIP for the project so far). I've gotten as far as exporting map slices that have a 1 pixel = 1 mile resolution at the equator, but haven't yet started assembling them into regional maps, as other projects have bumped it for the moment. You might be able to adapt my work by starting with a flat FTPro world (it's one of the options when building a world) and then using the Pre-Scale editing tools to paint in your continents. You'll probably want to get a copy of the latest beta version from ProFantasy before starting if you haven't already.

Hope this helps, and feel free to contact me with any questions or issues. I'm hardly an expert on FTPro, but I might be able to help, or point you to a resource somewhere.

[Jaell]

For filling in the Adriatic Sea, try drawing a selection around it and then setting elevation to 0, rather than trying to paint it by hand. Then you can go through and hand-paint any terrain features you want. You will lose the existing terrain though, so you if you wanted to keep something from it, save off an image and use that image to try and replicate it afterward.

Yeah, but this runs into the same problem that simply trying to paint terrain runs into: I use the freehand selection tool to select an area, and then when I complete the selection, it's actually off--in the case of the Adriatic, I carefully select the seabed, and then when I complete the selection loop and click, the selection becomes the eastern half of Italy and western half of the Adriatic.

I hear what you're saying about zoom issues. I guess I oversimplified what I was actually hoping to do: I don't necessarily want to be able to zoom to any scale to export maps. I just want to be able to not worry about re-creating base data when making new maps. If, for example, I have a map of the Mediterranean area, I want to be able to create a new map of southern Europe using the same data. I thought that creating the world in FTPro would be the best idea, so I could just re-export different views/scales to CC3 when needed. The more I play with FTPro, though, the less handy it seems for world editing--seems like it's more for random world generation.

It's frustrating to try to select & edit specific areas of the map, only to end up with the tools selecting/editing other areas. Which leads me to try to guess where the edits will actually happen, which leads to weird results (including the aforementioned problem of built-up terrain creating basins, and vice versa).

I'm going to try a few more things, take a look at some of the resources people have suggested, and then maybe give up on FTPro completely. I don't mind so much paying for software that turns out useless, but it does bug me that I won't have my world preserved in a single datafile that I can reproject at any point.

[Jaell]

Phew. Just spent 5 minutes banging my head against this editing wall. More and more, FTPro is annoying me. I try to fill in the Adriatic, and I just end up making the Appenino taller. If I enter a value and try to paint the selection to that elevation (i.e., rather than raising or lowering terrain, simply entering "50" feet and trying to paint the terrain to that elevation), nothing happens. Filling in basins doesn't work.


Then I decided to go nuts and just try raising/lowering terrain, and putting in a value of "100" resulted in filling in 8000 ft-deep oceans with one sweep, and knocking 1500-ft tall hills into 1000-ft deep ocean with one sweep.

How the heck to people actually edit landforms in FTPro?

[Ryan K]

Fractal Terrains, in my experience, is a difficult little beast to master successfully, especially if you have specific outcomes in mind and you're going about it through self-learning. But you'll get there. I used to fight with it a lot with little or no success. Now, I just don't know what I would do without it.

[Robulous]

Phew. Just spent 5 minutes banging my head against this editing wall. More and more, FTPro is annoying me. I try to fill in the Adriatic, and I just end up making the Appenino taller. If I enter a value and try to paint the selection to that elevation (i.e., rather than raising or lowering terrain, simply entering "50" feet and trying to paint the terrain to that elevation), nothing happens. Filling in basins doesn't work.


Then I decided to go nuts and just try raising/lowering terrain, and putting in a value of "100" resulted in filling in 8000 ft-deep oceans with one sweep, and knocking 1500-ft tall hills into 1000-ft deep ocean with one sweep.

How the heck to people actually edit landforms in FTPro?

I discovered the solution to this a few days ago in the "FT Tutorial" at http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/index.html

It shows you how to change to a much higher editing resolution.