Some DEM processing help, please

[Midgardsormr]

Yeah, my first displacement resulted in over 2 million tri's, but I was able to simplify it down to around 400,000 or so, which was reasonably light enough to deal with. Getting resolution out of Maya isn't a problem; mostly what I'm concerned with is increasing the resolution of the DEM so that I don't have to try to model a larger scale by hand, which won't look convincing. I was thinking I might dive into Bryce or Vue for the 3d, but I've only poked around in each of those for a few minutes a long time ago, so I'll have an additional learning challenge ahead of me.

Another problem I anticipate is that erosion isn't going to get me where I need to go in this particular case, since the plateau is shielded from the wind and receives less than an inch of rainfall per year. There's just not much going on, which is why the Nazca built their lines there to begin with. I'm hoping su_liam and Waldronate will have some input there.

As an update, I have a 16-bit PNG into Wilbur now, and I'm starting to play around. I am noticing a couple of areas where Wilbur seems to assume a square section, and I am wondering if I should recrop my DEM?

[Redrobes]

What res DEM have you got then ? I reckon the SRTM3 at 3 arc second is about the highest I can get. 3 arc sec is about 100m or so per sample.

Another interesting way to get higher apparent res than what you have is to get a normal map of the DEM and lay that on top of the lower res mesh. Still, if res is not what is holding you up then this is not so good. Mention it if this would help tho.