Fractal Terrains Pro: tectonic plate simulation?

[Greason Wolfe]

It works through the Image Overlays. I don't remember the entire procedure off the top of my head at the moment, and, as I said previously, I've never had any luck with it as it doesn't seem to do a straight conversion in the same way that Terragen does. One thing I'm experimenting with right now is accomplishing this through Terragen to Wilbur to FTPro. Since Wilbur can read bmp files (exported from Terragen) and save them as mdr files (which can be read by FTPro), I am thinking that I might get a better result. If my experiments go well and produce results that look close to what they should be, I'll hammer out a tutorial on the process.

GW

[RainDog]

One thing I'm experimenting with right now is accomplishing this through Terragen to Wilbur to FTPro. Since Wilbur can read bmp files (exported from Terragen) and save them as mdr files (which can be read by FTPro),

GW

Pardon my ignorance but how? All I can open is .ftw files. Please explain, I would be very grateful

[Greason Wolfe]

Pardon my ignorance but how? All I can open is .ftw files. Please explain, I would be very grateful

Sorry, I've been away for a while and just saw this question. It's really not a very difficult process, but there are a few parameters that have to be met.

1. The bmp file that you import into Wilbur should be dimensionally correct for rendering in FTPro, i.e. 2 pixels wide for every 1 pixel of height. (I would personally recommend not going above 4096 by 2048 unless you have the RAM/Processing power to do so)

2. In Wilbur, before saving as an .mdr file, go to Surface>>Map Info. Where you see the "Edges" section, make sure those read as follows

Top : 90
Right : 180
Bottom : -90
Left : -180

This will stretch your file to cover the "full world" in FTPro.

3. As mentioned before, there is a "flipping" issue between Wilbur and FTPro. This can be solved in either application. In Wilbur, before saving as an .mdr file go to Surface>>Rotate>>Flip Vertical and then save your file. Alternatively you can save map in an .mdr format immediately, and once imported in FTPro (File>>New>>Binary File>>Chose Elevation File>>All Files) go to World Settings>>Fractal Function and check the Flip Vertical check box.

One thing to keep in mind is that you'll need to keep the .mdr file available unless you use the Burn Into Surface action which, IMHO, tends to distort/terrace the end results.

Hope this helps and, again, sorry for the delay in answering. Once I've tweaked out the final process I'll be posting it here. Besides the Convert Color to Altitude process, this seems to be the best way I've found to bring hand-drawn maps into FTPro.

GW

[jkchiche]

this is interesting... thank you for your comments

simulation credit

[Jennifervn]

Thanks for sharing your idea here. I appreciate your idea, very excellent.

simulationcredit