Middle Earth DEM Project

[mmmmmpig]

what is the pixe resolution (10m right now?) that you are aiming for and are you going after a LANDSAT feel or an Iconos? I am REALLY interested in how this is going!

[monks]

To be honest, I wouldn't know the difference between the two. The terrain is fed through procedural erosion so any of the finer characteristics will be largely replaced anyway. The macro scale features, such as fractal mt range forms, will be preserved- that's something that procedural terrain modellers do very poorly (if at all).

10m, I wish! we are currently at 200m res- but that's the whole NW of M-E. The aim is to get down to around 25m using a set of apps written by RedRobes (member here). That's probably going to mid 08.
We've also got other routes we're looking at- using procedural zooms, etc. We'd like to get to about 2m res for an interactive terrain probably using Ogre. We're hoping to serve the terrain on NASA's WorldWind and get it into Viewing Dale.

We will be doing sections of the terrain as closeups as well for renders, there's always something going on, - so the Misty Mts could easily go higher res.

The biggest headache is managing hydrology. So far we've managed to keep the rivers in check, but it's always very difficult.



monks

[mmmmmpig]

Is this your job or is it just passion?

5 years ago I mocked up the shire using some aerials and photoshop, but during the great computer purge of 06 I lost most stuff on my work hard-drive.

[pyrandon]

These are wonderful! I can't wait to see the progress you achieve!

Thank you for sharing!

[monks]

Thanks!, and sorry for not responding sooner. It's a passion- and it doesn't seem to go away haha very irritating sometimes.

Yeh, you've just summed up why I'd like the ME-DEM project to be a persistent project. So many people have done so much great (and perhaps) overlooked and lost work pver the decades on Middle Earth.

Mapping the Shire will be an absolute treat. Any more info on how you mapped the Shire? Feel free to reg over at ME-dEM at get involved- the site's undergpoing repair at he moment tho.





Here's an update on the Misty Mts terrain in World machine Pro 2.0 beta. After respanning the terrain to the correct heights I've had to re-do the river valleys, so it's taken a little longer than I expected. I've concentrated on the valleys flowing from the Misty Mts. There are others, such as the Grey Mt watersheds, but that's for a later date.

Rivers

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file.../Rivers_01.png


a few shots showing the Gundalok shelf just south of Mt Gundabad, and the Cold Fells on the western flank of the Misty Mts.

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file.../Rivers_02.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file.../Rivers_03.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file.../Rivers_04.png



The plan is to use this terrain for a GeoTerSys test run. All the other river beds will be scored by RedRobes in GTS to control the river flow across flat areas. I'd like to see this at huge res, fully textured! I'm also planning some tests in Geocontrol 2.0 beta, probably on a subset of the terrain

monks

[jezelf]

Hi!

This is all very cool and fascinating. Is there any progress on the Middle Earth Project?

[Redrobes]

There has been some but it has dropped off of late (past two months has been slow). This is something that I plan to get stuck into again in a very short while tho. I have just got a lot on right now and I think the other admins have also - you need a high pain threshold to work on this project as its completely nuts.

The plan is to get GTS (the terrain app I write) to process up the base map to level one and output some files which can be used to render the whole base map. The idea right now is to try to output files that might be compatible with a basic terragen scene and then try to increase the complexity as we go forward.