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Thread: World Pictures

  1. #31

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    Thanks!

    It looks like it does not include the subsea elevations. Is that right?
    Is a version available which includes the full extent of the heights?
    I realize that its resolution in altitude would be quite a bit lower.

    ImageMagick's identify utility reports that it's an 8bit grey-scale image. Is a 16 bit version possible? That would help with the vertical resolution, I think.

    Sorry to be such a pest. Your help is greatly appreciated.
    Selden

  2. #32
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
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    I thought the link above had that stuff in them. These were supposed to be the original world maps used. Your probably best off using these as they have the highest res of them all.

    http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...&postcount=105

  3. #33

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    Unfortunately, world4-grey is a square bumpmap which seems to be only for the region currently being mapped by Guild members, not of the whole planet.

    The other zip file contains World4.ftw. I don't have Fractal Terrain. Is there a converter available for the .ftw file format? L3DT [which I just downloaded] doesn't recognize it, and it isn't listed on its plugin Web page.
    Selden

  4. #34
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
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    Actually I think someone must have asked about this before as I have a PNG16 sat on my drive here. I dont use these so I cant think why I have it otherwise.

    Anyway, DONT CLICK on the link below. Right click and save as to your HDD. Its rather big.
    http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/Temp/CG/Th...orld_png16.png

  5. #35

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    Thanks!
    It's downloading now.

    I found a free viewer for FT files on their web site.
    I'll give it a try, too, once I get the email saying where to get it.
    Selden

  6. #36

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    After some massaging, I managed to persuade world_png16.png to align with the zoom texture. When both are scaled to 2048x1024, there's an offset of about 100 pixels in longitude between them.



    Note, however, how flat it is along the coastlines. ImageMagick's histogram facility revealed that there aren't very many levels in the heightmap. It'd be nice if that could be improved.

    Selden

  7. #37
    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    What does that histogram analysis look like on an Earth-derived heightmap?

  8. #38
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
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    Whilst it looks bad on the histo, it is supposed to be a 16 bit PNG so its a smallish section of 65K levels instead of 256. If this were a small bit of terrain and we were going in for a 3D through the mountains look then it might matter but wrapped on a planet then I think its going to make no visual difference at all.

    Although I cant remember doing the PNG16, I would have thought that I derived it from the HF2 map so that my color and the height should have lined up. Neither might line up with the original FTPro color map or zoom map tho. If you wanted to align them then you might have to work it a bit.

    Its likely to be flatish at the edges of the land mass because it would normally be something like that and FTPro has some sort of subsea flat land region before it starts to drop off steep subsea. Note my amazing lack of geological terminology there. It does mean of course that any slight Z offsetting does produce quite a radical sea-land shape from the height maps.

  9. #39
    Professional Artist Ashenvale's Avatar
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    Holy crap. I had no idea how much I don't know.

    Last week, a sci-fi RPG publisher asked me to create a planetary map and a continent map for its upcoming publication. I've been thinking in two dimensions with Photoshop as my tool.

    Spinning planet video never entered my mind.

    I feel something like I did when a sci-fi author friend first handed me Stephen L. Gillett's World-Building; A Writer's Guid to Constructing Star Systems and Life-Supporting Planets. There's are simple formulas for escape velocity? Tidal braking? Binary star system's gravity? I'm so in the dark!
    We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
    -George Bernard Shaw

  10. #40

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    Quote Originally Posted by waldronate View Post
    What does that histogram analysis look like on an Earth-derived heightmap?
    I don't know.

    Can you provide a pointer to one that I can try? A quick Google search turned up ways to get heightmaps of regions (e.g. http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=27052 ) but I haven't found a complete one yet.

    Quote Originally Posted by Redrobes
    Whilst it looks bad on the histo, it is supposed to be a 16 bit PNG so its a smallish section of 65K levels instead of 256.
    That's one of the problems that I realized when I woke up this morning. I guess I'm going to have to write my own utilities to do the kinds of manipulations I want to do to the height values.

    Do you know what scale factor was used when the translation was done between the altitude and the 64K binary values?

    I'm guessing that the large spike is due to the coastal regions of the continental shelves, so presumably is near 0.
    Selden

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