Some fractal terrain questions

[waldronate]

Try reducing the number of octaves in the Wilbur Ridged Multifractal parameters (the Parms button next to the function name). It's not well behaved above about 13 octaves; Id' say that you have about 15 octaves in your picture. The "RMF with Perlin's Improved Noise" is a function with the same general character of noise (different absolute shapes, but the same statistics - "RMF" = "Ridged Multifractal") but that will handle many more octaves of noise. Other numeric precision problems creep into the displays long before the noise starts to break down with the improved noise variant.

The smooth things are very strange. If you're using the prescale offset editing as recommended in the tutorial I suggested then you shouldn't be getting anything like that. It looks a lot like you're painting a large amount of smoothing onto the area.

As far as erosion things go, the incise flow tool in FT does something like that, but only at your editing resolution.

The version issue is a persistent one for me. I'm usually a few versions ahead of the version that's available at the ProFantasy web site.

[Naima]

First of all thankyou for your time helping me .

Try reducing the number of octaves in the Wilbur Ridged Multifractal parameters (the Parms button next to the function name). It's not well behaved above about 13 octaves; Id' say that you have about 15 octaves in your picture.

I used 13 octaves, but after setting to 12 and it solved the issue . I noticed that if I leave at 13 and generate new worlds , I sometimes get the same issue and sometimes not ... something like a bug or something else?
I didn't notice from the top world large view the issue be4 untill when I went into a detail area to edit . though after when making attention I could see if the whole map had similar issue or not by the top view .

The "RMF with Perlin's Improved Noise" is a function with the same general character of noise (different absolute shapes, but the same statistics - "RMF" = "Ridged Multifractal") but that will handle many more octaves of noise. Other numeric precision problems creep into the displays long before the noise starts to break down with the improved noise variant.

Not sure I understood that, but do you mean that RMF with perlin improved noise gives similar but better results than simple RMF?

The smooth things are very strange. If you're using the prescale offset editing as recommended in the tutorial I suggested then you shouldn't be getting anything like that. It looks a lot like you're painting a large amount of smoothing onto the area.

I post here a picture to show better what is happening


In this image the red arrows show the several editing I did . first of all I wanted to break the continent as was too huge for my taste and I lowered the land ... lower and rise seem to work but after some editing the land become to be rised smooth or lowered smooth ...

is there a way to lower and rise preserving or "recreating the roughness there ?

Is there a way to break a continent like by making also the continental platform around the coasts edited? As ypu see in the editing its just lowered land but no continental step .

The increase roughness and decrease roughness buttons to me do not work , they either create erratic results or dont work well , the lower one for example creates large bumps or mountains whatever the case .

Also whats The Value for ? When I select for example raise I can change the operation in the paintbrush options to lower or to value ... even if the button is rise, well rise and lower even on the same button work as written befoure but value seems to paint according to what he wants, I can't understand what it does well and how to use .
On some areas seems to paint on others nt and doesn't really works like a flattener on a specific value as I imagined

As far as erosion things go, the incise flow tool in FT does something like that, but only at your editing resolution.

Not sure how to use well as it gives a lot of interesting but also not really fine tuned results as I woud like , for example I would like ot control where and from where the river flow get incised in the map or to actually have a more natural erosion , without making rivers but also without lowering my mountains .

The version issue is a persistent one for me. I'm usually a few versions ahead of the version that's available at the ProFantasy web site.

I do not understand this sentence .


Some questions about still how to Import export .

Is there a direct way to export a hieightmap out of FT , edit it in Photoshop and reimport in FT to continue work on it?
( Possibly without the wilbur middleware as apart from beeing unconfortable and slowing workflow , it produces a mdr file that is all gray and not showing anymore all other details that were befoure in the FT 3.

Also some tools do not seem to work precisely as in the "Help" guide ...

Here a test of the global set altitude value in a selected area ...



the settins are 500 feet but the results look pretty different than the ones showed in the help .


On the Saving issues :

if I save as special mdr at 8192 x4096 it saves fine seems
If I save as wilbur mdr it says error saving whatever resolution I pick .

When I go to wilbur and open the special it gives error unspecified at opening the file unknown code ( -100000)
so what I have to do to be able to open in wilbur? in the tutorial says special mdr but it doesn't work for me .
Also if the resolution might be the problem if I go down I loose most of the details and the work done on it .

On another test a straight from heightmap PS map into Wilbur then saved as mdr . When opened in FT3 it gets all sort of weird results from flat blue map to grayscale maps without any other info .

[waldronate]

A fractal function in the FT sense has two basic components: a noise function and a way to combine detail levels on the noise function to get the final result. Both "fractional Brownian motion" and "ridged multifractal" are ways to combine noise; the basic FT noise function (no type), "Wilbur", "Perlin's Improved Noise" and "Voronoi" are all examples of noise functions. That means that all of the "ridged multifractal" or "RMF" types will be broadly similar, as will the "fractional Brownian motion" or "fBm" types. The noise function groupings will share a character as well. The details are different among all of them. For general use, I do not recommend any noise function other than "Perlin's Improved Noise"; the basic FT and "Wilbur" types have serious implementation flaws that manifest in a number of ugly ways when zooming in. In short: prefer the fractal functions with "Perlin's Improved Noise" in the name for all new work; the other functions don't work as well.

FT has a feature which is underused (maybe because it's poorly implemented): prescale offset editing. Tutorial for Cartographer’s Guild is pretty clear to use prescale offset editing whenever possible. There are cases where it won't work, but for painting, it's what you should really be using. It allows for useful things like continental shelf breaks working correctly. Stick with Prescale Editing where you can. Seriously. It will solve a lot of your editing problems, even if you can't use some of the other tools as effectively with it enabled.

The versioning comment relates to the fact that I am the code monkey who scribbles out FT for ProFantasy. I have my current work version to test with and it's usually a few features and bug fixes ahead of the tested and released versions that ProFantasy makes available. What that means is that the behavior of my local copy of FT may be somewhat different than the ones that users in the field can get. It also means that I also have other versions such as the unreleased and experimental 64-bit version that has much higher limits on pretty much everything and will eat every byte of RAM on your machine (and them some). The documentation package also tends to lag a little behind the released feature set.

For exporting high-resolution data to Photoshop, consider using a raw binary file (File>>Save As, File type = Raw Binary File). If you Open the raw file in Photoshop as a 16-bit IBM Order file with width equal to the size you specified and height half that (e.g. if you save an 8192 file, you would read it as 8192x4096 16-bit IBM order in Photoshop), then you can do whatever you'd like to do. Because oceans are negative in FT, they will appear white in Photoshop. After you're done editing, save the RAW file and make a new world in FT from a binary file (for the above file, Per-Sample is 2 byte, LSB First, Signed; Line Width=8192*2=16384; Width=8192; Height=4096; Top=90, Left=-180, Right-180, Bottom=-90). All of your edits in Photoshop should come over.

When using the global set features, be sure to feather your selection a little before doing the fill. Failure to do so will result in fringes around the edges of the selection where the interpolation function overshoots.

[Naima]

Thankyou really very much indeed the prescale offset editing does a way better job than the other rise and lowe things I used, perhaps are different thing I dunno but if I pres the buttons on left then I get the issues but if I select all time by the tools rise prescale offset editing then they work much better and I am manually painting the whole world now ....

Now the more I play with FT the more I am liking ...

That said I was trying to follow the lost tutorial recovered now of Israh , and its extremely detailed ... really cool but ... I get stopped all times when I have to go back from Wilbur to Fractal terrain ,

What I do is save in special mdr, then open in wilbur, actually I didn't have to flip some other tiems though I remember I had to ... anyway I work on wilbur and save as mdr ... then this format file seems unendarstandeable by FT3 as seems it load either all black or all broken with noise stripes or all grayscale etc... I have set the Top=90, Left=-180, Right-180, Bottom=-90). but seems that they miss header and that info .

I will open a WIP on my world on the wip section in meanwhile so u can eventually see what I am doing ....


So are you the programmer behind FT? In case is possible to suggest lot of new features ? :=) ....

[waldronate]

I would recommend avoiding the MDR file format unless absolutely necessary because the data is flipped vertically between the two programs and FT doesn't like it if top is less than bottom. Interchange between Wilbur and FT used to work seamlessly and it was a convenient file format because it kept the maximum dynamic range of the data. However, when Wilbur was converted to OpenGL, a vertical flip happened in the data that caused minor between the programs. The raw binary format generates the same data as the special mdr but without the format problems.

Yes, I am the perpetrator of both Wilbur and FT. Wilbur is a few years older than FT, but they (used to) share a good bit of code. Feel free to suggest features, but don't expect rapid response on releases. The current backlog of feature suggestions is about 14 pages single-spaced (in landscape mode, but that's still a lot of items). Some of the items date back to pre-release versions of FT in 1999; most are newer.

[Naima]

Ok ... well the first thing I woould fix, clarify or change are the rise lower tools , perhaps remove them and leave only prescale offset? and about the roughness and smoothness they do not seem towork to me so I guess pehraps woudl need to be checked.

Now I have one another serious problem ... I have saved yesterday the file I was working on for most of the day lol .... as Mdr...
I also saved as Helium ftw just to be sure ... well I go to open today and Helium ftw is another different planet , and mdr when I open also gives another planet, so I did new binary and loaded the mdr , this time gived me the right planet but .... I can't edit anything even after putting custom 4056 and prescale offset enabled ... I pass over lands and seas with the rise tool and nothing happened , I increased even to 1 the value and nothing changes, its like is just not getting the changes ... why that I am doing something wrong? I have saved thewrong format and all my work is lost or what else?

I also tried to use the FT to PS workflow , but when I reimport I still can't Edit the world with prescale offset tool ... Any idea on how to reenable?


Still explored the whole internet in search of similar issues but I couln't find any . So I guess in theory it shoudl work , despite that I can't edit and use anymore on my maps the Prescale offset editing tools wich I rely upon for modifying things around .

Also any idea on how shoudl I save to retake the world I was working b4 without loosing anything in order to reopen later to keep working on it?

Also what format shoudl I save from wilbur to reopen fine in FT3 ?

[waldronate]

Binary things are an all-or-nothing operation. When you work with a binary file, it can't be edited in the tools in FT. Having the regular offset tool work with binary worlds is on the to-do list. To date, people who have wanted to edit in something like Photoshop are on final approach to their end product and usually aren't too interested in continuing to work in FT. I would like to apologize as I did not realize that yours was a different situation.

The prescale editing tool can only work with fractal-based worlds.

I'm a bit troubled that the ftw file is giving you different results. Are you using it on a different machine?

[Naima]

So just to resume .

I am using it on an asus motherboard with Intel core i7 3930 cpu 3,20 ghz 32 gb ram and nvidia gtx 580 dual monitor .

Btw .

I cant get back to make it work so the

• How should I save the file to reopen it later and keep working in FT?
  
• How I put back to work the Prescale offset editing tools?
  
• How I have to save and reopen the file from wilbur to FT3 ? The one described in the tut doesn't seem to work for me .

Problem is that I have spent like a whole evening editing with the tools and then saved to retake the work on later , but that I can't do anymore now? Shoudld I complete the whole work on a world in one session as by the moment I close the FT I loose the ability to edit with the needed tools?
Os there a way to recover the work and keep using those tools?

Some extra questions

• Is there any kind of clone stamp tool in FT?
  
• How can I fix a terrain if I have for example a smoothed area and I want it to look as rough as surroundings?
  
• How can Ido to fix height differences in a close proximity like an abrupt change in height up and down that cause a kind of spike?
  [
• How can I do to flatten a whole area to a single height ? and then later on add roughness?

[waldronate]

The FTW format is FT's native format. If you save work in this format and it's not coming back in correctly, that is indicative of a major problem with the software. It was possible under obscure circumstances for FT to not warn you about saved work and exit without saving, but if you explicitly save the file before doing any exports then you shouldn't have any problems.

The prescale offset tools can only work on a world created with the fractal functions: it will not work on worlds created from binary data. The round-trip to external tools through binary exports means that the data imported back into FT can't be edited in FT. I should probably make that clearer in the tutorial. If you're using the 16-bit raw binary file format then it should be possible to edit data in external tools like Photoshop or Wilbur and then import that data again into FT. The MDR file format has problems these days.

It's not nice of me to say this, but I view the first experience with new software in much the same way that I view crepes and children: the first one is for the dogs. Any work with new software is probably going to be done with assumptions that may not be appropriate for that software and that may result in much more difficult going further on. I definitely am disturbed that you're experiencing data loss, but it's possible that it may have been something as simple as an accidental lack of saving. I'm sorry to say this, but from what you've said at this point, you may be better off to use an image of your data as an image overlay and repaint the underlying terrain. If you open the FTW file that you saved and it's not the world that you saved then the data is gone.

A resolution-dependent workaround to get something like the original world data back into the system from a binary file is to:
1) open the original FTW file
2) create a new binary world using the saved binary file
3) use Tools>>Actions>>Burn In To Surface to convert the current altitudes into the offset channel. The data will be rasterized at the current editing resolution.
4) save the file with a different name than your original FTW file.

See the discussion about how altitudes work below.

I really recommend a few experiments without investing too much time in each. Do a little painting, save the file, exit, reload, and see if you're still getting the same results. It's possible that FT may have sprouted a problem that's sensitive to the number of cores: I've never tested it on a system with more than 4 cores.

FT doesn't have a clone stamp tool. The way FT operates doesn't really lend itself to that sort of operation. FT's Tools>>Global Set>>Altitude Value tool will set the current selection to the approximate value that you request. The adjustments are done in the offset channel, not the prescale offset channel, unfortunately. See http://www.cartographersguild.com/so...my-sanity.html for an example of what the flat areas might look like and a description of how FT computes altitudes. I'll repeat the basic altitude computation here:

altitude = (fractalfunction + prescale) * roughness + offset

There is a split [offset, scale, exponential, scale, offset] operation done after the basic calculation to get continental shelves. Note that the roughness channel controls the contributions of the fractal function and the prescale offset. Setting roughness to 0 worldwide gives a flat, featureless world. Setting it to 1 gets the basic standard fractal altitudes. If there's an area that's smooth, how to fix it will depend entirely on why the area is smooth. If the area is smooth because it's near the edge of a continental shelf, there's not much to do except paint in lots of roughness, but editing resolution will be very important here. If it's smooth for another reason and the roughness raise or lower painting tools aren't doing anything, then I'm not sure what's going on.

One of the important things to know about FT's editing tools are that the data is interpolated in a bicubic fashion to make lower-resolution editing data smoother. The exact function causes overshoots for a data sample on large, sudden changes, which appears as a ring around the edited area. The simplest way to deal with that it to use Tools>>Global Smooth on the appropriate editing channel.

[Naima]

Ok I did some testing .
if I keep my work always in the same file and not import export or else and save as ftw simple seems to work , so I can keep editing even after .
If I import a bmp as u said stops working.
SO I guess I have to keep work on ft3 and cant actually work on PS untill its finished completely in FT3 , perhaps its a future feature the one to allow editing againalso when bitmap?