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Thread: CC3 to Wilbur

  1. #1

    Help CC3 to Wilbur

    What is the most effective way to move a CC3 map into Wilbur? Is there a way. I have a fairly tediously detailed topographic map in CC3 but I'd like to shift to Wilbur for the erosion effects. Here's the full map

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    and a 16x zoom

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    I presume Wilbur ( or any other program ) will not be able to handle the entire map zoomed so I've made plans to break it up into tiles of 256x256 pixels. At the zoom range seen in the first image 1 pixel = 2 miles. I have plans to divide the images up into tiles and present them online in a form similar to Google Maps. I've played with Wilbur some (and made threads before) but exactly how to organize and deploy this bear of a task eludes me.

    The first step I think is getting this base map and the base zoom level into Wilbur to let it do it's calculations. Then figure out how to break the map tiles up and be able to recalculate things.

  2. #2
    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    The 64-bit version of Wilbur should be able to handle the full resolution map if you're patient. The 32-bit version definitely works with 4k by 4k maps (again, if youre' patient).

    Ralf Schemmann wrote a tutorial on getting data from CC2 into FT. If you stop a step early then your map will be in Wilbur. See http://www.jhendor.de/tutorials/cc2-ft.pdf for the full tutorial. The basic process is to set each contour level to a color ranging from black at sea level to white at the highest point and then load this image as a surface.

  3. #3

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    I spotted that tutorial and dutifully built a pallete to match. This is going to take, awhile.

  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by waldronate View Post
    The 64-bit version of Wilbur should be able to handle the full resolution map if you're patient. The 32-bit version definitely works with 4k by 4k maps (again, if youre' patient).

    Ralf Schemmann wrote a tutorial on getting data from CC2 into FT. If you stop a step early then your map will be in Wilbur. See http://www.jhendor.de/tutorials/cc2-ft.pdf for the full tutorial. The basic process is to set each contour level to a color ranging from black at sea level to white at the highest point and then load this image as a surface.
    Ok, this is done. I have the historical values in. Each change of color is supposed to be a 1000' elevation change and the scale is 1 pixel / mile.

    There are areas I need to honestly redraw completely since the mountains are too short or aren't present where they should be. However, how do I get Wilbur to understand that the heights are in 1000' increments at the start?

  5. #5
    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    You'll have to do some math, unfortunately. The general process to scale an image to a specific altitude range looks like:

    1) Decide what the highest and lowest values in your input image represent. Let's assume that the lowest grayscale level is altitude 100 and the highest grayscale level is altitude 25000.
    2) Load the image into Wilbur as a grayscale image (File>>Open, type as Grayscale Image Surface).
    3) Use Filter>>Mathematical>>Span. Set Low to your lowest desired value and High to your Highest desired value. Click OK.
    4) Look at the image. It is now scaled to the desired altitude range.

  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by waldronate View Post
    You'll have to do some math, unfortunately. The general process to scale an image to a specific altitude range looks like:

    1) Decide what the highest and lowest values in your input image represent. Let's assume that the lowest grayscale level is altitude 100 and the highest grayscale level is altitude 25000.
    2) Load the image into Wilbur as a grayscale image (File>>Open, type as Grayscale Image Surface).
    3) Use Filter>>Mathematical>>Span. Set Low to your lowest desired value and High to your Highest desired value. Click OK.
    4) Look at the image. It is now scaled to the desired altitude range.
    This works, but the colors for all altitudes are still all shades of green making it hard to visually verify altitude (though I can move the mouse over the pixels and see the height displayed correctly in the lower right hand corner)

  7. #7
    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    Hit the relight button on the toolbar (the thing that looks like a sun) to regenerate lighting based on the map min/max values.

    Also, you can use a different shader such as the contour shader set to 1000 or 500 interval (if you properly scaled the surface so that each level is 1000 units then a 1000 contour shader should look much like the original data that you imported).

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    Guild Artisan su_liam's Avatar
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    Also, make sure on the altitudes tab of the Lighting control that you don't have, 'absolute,' set. That could be your problem.

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by su_liam View Post
    Also, make sure on the altitudes tab of the Lighting control that you don't have, 'absolute,' set. That could be your problem.
    What altitudes tab?

    Also clicking relight didn't work.

    Here's what I'm seeing. The highest elevations are on the left - shouldn't they be white (snow capped peak style)?

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Oh, and switching to contour shader crashes the program.

    Apparently clipping the height to the max value fixes the colors.

    Saving is eradic - if I save as png and output 16 bit values the file won't load back in!! I've lost progress multiple times because of this. I've taken to having a second instance of the program open to test if it can load the file before closing the program with my work.
    Last edited by Michael Morris; 07-11-2009 at 07:20 PM.

  10. #10
    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    The contour shader is crashing because the default value for the shader is set too low. The code base is undergoing some significant convulsions at the moment so I can't get a new version out for that problem in the short term, sorry.

    If the relight command isn't properly shading things then it's most likely that there are wild points on your surface. Use Window>>Histogram to determine the min/max and distribution of altitudes on your surface - watch for unexpected outliers. Those can be removed by doing a height clip operation to your expected min/max values.
    One other thing you can do for absolute shading is to use Texture>>Shader Setup and pick the Altitude tab from the property sheet. Check Absolute Coloring to get coloring ranging between your set values (default 0 and 2500 for min and max).

    As for the saving problem, I would recommend saving temporary work as a .mdr file, which will effectively just save the floating-point altitude image from memory to disk. If you really want to use PNG as your file format of choice, then save your 16-bit PNG surface (make sure that PNG Surface is selected as the save type) and when you load it back in, again make sure that PNG Surface is selected as the file type. Your save file will be scaled to the full 16-bit range (0-65535) on save so absolute altitudes will be problematic.

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