Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Development screen shots and videos => Topic started by: cameni on May 02, 2011, 04:32:35 pm

Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: cameni on May 02, 2011, 04:32:35 pm
Here are few screes from ongoing effort to get data from Middle Earth DEM (http://www.me-dem.me.uk/) project into Outerra using the new terrain mapping tool. ME-DEM project is aiming to create a complex digital model of Tolkien's Middle Earth.

With Outerra one of the goals is to be able to set foot in virtual worlds of well known fantasy and science fiction works, with real scale and full details. The screens do not contain anything recognizable yet, it's one of the first imports of 4000km x 4000km area with original resolution of 100m, mapped to an equally sized area on earth-sized planet.

The terrain mapping tool has been extended to support HF2/HFZ format used in various terrain making software.

(http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-2.jpg) (http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-2.jpg)
(http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-3.jpg) (http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-3.jpg)
(http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-4.jpg) (http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-4.jpg)
(http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-5.jpg) (http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-5.jpg)

(http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-6.jpg) (http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-6.jpg)
(http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-8.jpg) (http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-8.jpg)
(http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-9.jpg) (http://wwww.outerra.com/shots/medem/medem2-9.jpg)
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 02, 2011, 04:54:03 pm
Outstanding!
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: RaikoRaufoss on May 02, 2011, 06:49:47 pm
Incredible!  Could this map be integrated into the Outerra demo as one of the planets the ISS Outerra visited?
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 02, 2011, 08:54:46 pm
Actually, I keep forgetting to contact these guys .. I need to get my hands on some of their elevation data so I can analyze it for my own fictional realm's purpose lol

Would love to see the areas of the Misty Mountains, Mordor (Barad Dur, actually), and the valley of Rivendel.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: ZeosPantera on May 02, 2011, 11:22:35 pm
I don't see the black gates.. Or the mines of Moria. Or the white tower of... honestly can't remember don't have the Tolkien hotline on my speed dial. Good movies though, excellent surround sound mixing.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: cameni on May 03, 2011, 01:19:44 am
Quote from: RaikoRaufoss
Incredible!  Could this map be integrated into the Outerra demo as one of the planets the ISS Outerra visited?
Probably not, it doesn't fit to the game setting, and it's not a complete continent, not mentioning the whole planet. And there's still a lot of work until it gets terrain detail levels approaching that of Earth data.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: PeterBitt on May 05, 2011, 09:08:38 am
wow, i imagine a nice morrowind style rpg within a real huge world :o
with creatures and animals all over the planet, some castles and citys, spells to jump or fly over thousands of kilometers ... this engine is fantastic!
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: ZeosPantera on May 05, 2011, 09:21:35 am
Quote from: PeterBitt
spells to jump or fly over thousands of kilometers ...

That seems counter productive toward using the benefits of this engine. If going from one end of something like middle earth to the other was that easy nobody but the super dedicated would hoof it. And they would be at a disadvantage for doing it properly.

GIANT EAGLES DO NOT APPLY!

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU[/video]
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: PeterBitt on May 05, 2011, 09:57:31 am
you played morrowind? i think its a nice feature to jump or levitate, especially if the world has 10000x size of morrowind.
for sure these spells must be learned and mastered over long time, not that frodo just jumps from his living room to mordor in 5 seconds  :D
i neeed a rpg with outerra engine!
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Tottel on May 05, 2011, 11:49:05 am
Middle earth in Outerra? Yes.. YES!
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on May 06, 2011, 09:41:00 am
:) Yes!, it looks amazing, even at this early demo stage (both engine and Middle Earth terrain model in development). Big thanks to Cameni!

 Haha, yes seen that vid before. Taxi!!!! The Eagles would not have done it though because, being intelligent creatures, they would be also tempted by the Ring- although what a 40 bird does with a tiny lil ring I don't know  :P  

cshawn, from the pics of your model, I'm not sure if we can add anything to what you've already done. The ME-DEM model is still in development. My eventual goal is to use real world data combined with the basics that we already have.
 Synthetic terrain doesn't stand up to scrutiny from extreme heights that you get in OuTerra in the way that real Earth data does. There are scarcely any game models that do. If you looked at Morrowind, Oblivion, etc and compared it to Earth at that high altitude, you'd see the difference. But I'm working on that, and OuTerra just gives me inspiration and the motivation to go to the next level.
...but then I'm a bit of a perfectionist, if you're playing the game at ground level or flying at sub orbital altitudes, then yes, you are in absolutely in Middle Earth and the landscape looks awesome.  :)
 I used the ridge patterns of the Alps to model the Misty Mts. That went some way to producing the visual effect. But I want to go the whole hog and use the actual terrain itself.

 What I'd say is we use Global Mapper, and all of our terrain layers, features (forest cover, rivers, roads) are stored with the terrain in there as vector layers. If you can get your terrain in there, then vectorising is really easy. You'll also have georeferencing and tiled import/export as well. We store our project data in its basic form and then we can export at different detail levels for different things- visualisations, game data, etc.

 We're happy to let people use our terrain to make a game or whatever. What we're short of is models for buildings, characters, etc. We can supply the terrain and positional info for vegetation, roads, lakes, towns, etc.
 One of the most exciting things is that OuTerra is supporting vector data and in the tunnels/caves thread we were talking about getting underground areas into the engine. If we can input that as vectors, and then OuTerra flesh out the tunnels and caves procedurally to some degree, then we have the possibility to have really large underground cities like Moria and Gundabad. Obviously you'll still need 3D modelling for the areas of special interest- great fun making those too, but the bulk of the tunnels connecting those areas will be made easier to create. I've got massive underground maps of both Moria and Gundabad I'd love to see. :D
 pdf of the Goblin city:
 http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Temp/Gundabad1Version1.zip

 Also, the limestone canyon and tunnel complex that lies some way from the city- it provides access to both Gundabad by more secret means, and surrounding Orc fortresses/ holdings.
 http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Temp/Gundalok.png
 

 Hfz is supported by Global Mapper, World Machine, L3DT, Wilbur, and soon Leveller. GeoControl as yet doesn't support it but the dev said he would add it.

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Redrobes on May 07, 2011, 07:39:35 pm
Those pics are really superb. I'm processing the next gen terrain now and its taking a few days on a quad and its been optimized as much as possible already. Kinda getting to the point we need a farm to do this... I'm not sure how much of this processing output Outerra can use but this will generate some good masks like vegetation maps, flow and sediment etc not to mention the snow and glacier flow. It will be rendered out using my programmable shader but I think Outerra uses all of its own. What we will get is a super sized middle earth map to look at as well as a pre cut selection of height tiles to use as the basis for the Outerra terrain compressor.

For Cameni and anyone else who might appreciate the nerd LOL...
[img=make make make...]http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/Temp/Outerra/makemakemake2.png[/img]
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 07, 2011, 09:31:28 pm
Redrobes, I have a duo and am willing to contribute processor time when I'm asleep or not using the computer.  Just let me know :)

Would be cool to get something like Seti@home going for a project like this :D
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Redrobes on May 07, 2011, 09:46:46 pm
Thats very kind and generous but the issue is also that once you have processed a load of data then you have to get it all back to one place. With a massive extensive cloud type thing that might work but for a few PCs its too much hassle to try and upload many Gb of results and then potentially have to download many Gb multiple times to all the different hosts running the farm. In effect you multiply the problem. I think this idea of processing on the graphics card to get your 100x speed up is more of the answer. When I wrote my app cards had about 256Mb of memory but now its also in the Gb so in theory it could be done and I could get a lot of performance back on it. Another huge hit on the overall speed tho is the write speed of the hard drive. When I write a very large file - larger than the file IO caches, it seems to stall the whole PC. I would probably get a load of speed back if I just RAIDed a load of drives together or sent all the file data across a gigabit network (with a hardware assisted network card of course). Then the compute PC could get on with the next bit of processing whilst another machine wrote it all away from its RAM to drives. If I implemented both of those things then I think I could get the 10 to 50 times overall speed increase that would make this process trivial.

The thing about SETI is that you download a load of data which is served out from a single source which has it all to start with and you do a lot of processing on the data and only if there is something significant does the PC send a little bit of data back to source again. So there is never an issue with collecting up all the results.

But yeah in principle it could be done. You could also buy cycles off of someone like google and write it all so it runs on thousands of computers and then wait a small amount of time and download the whole kaboodle back at the end. That download is probably less time than your one PC computing it all out with no download. Were currently running 1600 tiles so we could use up to that many PCs and do it in parallel.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 08, 2011, 01:28:44 am
I just developed a headache imagining it :)

What I can do to help though, let me know, no matter how mundane.  If I have the time, I'll do it.  Tolkien's world is very dear to me, and I like to support this kind of thing when I can. ;)
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Redrobes on May 08, 2011, 06:56:30 am
Well, especially since this is the Outerra forums and the app supports buildings and vector data, the main thing I think people could do is pick up bits of the world and make some of the buildings. Kicking about somewhere is the Minas Tirith Project so that might exist. But loads of other things need to be done. The two towers, Hobbiton, Bree, Rivendell etc.

Would be nice to recreate that scene where they are in the boat going down Anduin and pass the granite kings at Argonath.

On the MeDem forums we should put together a list of models that can be had so far and have another list of 'would like' models. I don't think it matters too much at this stage what format they need to be in. I am guessing sketchup would be the app of choice but a OBJ or MAX or something might be just as good.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Jak_o_Shadows on May 08, 2011, 05:59:11 pm
I'd be quite happy to throw myself at 3D modelling some stuff. I'm not too good without solid references, and i'm fairly hopeless at people (so i guess that means the statues as well :P)
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on May 09, 2011, 07:48:18 am
Guys, feel free to build some models!- they can be shared around the forum here can't they. I've got a lot of fantasy role playing material detailing site maps of towns, buildings, fortresses, castles, etc. There's some refs in those, but you can find refs of buildings on the net. Sketchup already has a bank of models. You might find something in the boards of the Minas Tirith project, dunno.
 I reckon Sketchup would be best- but I'm speaking from a layman's point of view. That's the app I'd use- and in fact if I wasn't so tied up with the terrain I'd dive right in there and build some too.
 You could go two ways really. Build re-usable buildings that will occur a lot. Or build from site maps- and re-use the individual models for other areas. There's lots of stuff knocking around on the net. There is a Minas Tirith model but it's nowhere near the detail of the one they built in Minas Tirith project. I think that's pretty much dead anyway and they didn't want to share their assets unfortunately.
 One of the models I'd love to see is Carn Dum- I built the surrounding site for it a few years ago. You can see it here:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Quad_02_CarnDum/gallery.htm

 It just needs the fortress. But feel free to build whatever you like.
 If you register on ME-DEM we can talk about it there, but I'm happy to hang here too.


 I tried a new workflow using real terrain data. I think the mountains look fine now when viewed from orbit..

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/Screens/AlpsView.png

 The need a fair bit of work though because the valleys don'tt naturally fall into the surrounding terrain. I can do that in something like Leveller manually. I've pretty much been doing that anyway with the old method, so it's not actually any more work.
 The Alps tend to fall away in height to the south, so I'd have to apply to some height offsetting in that area to beef up the mountains around Isengard.
 We could also extend this idea to hills too as we have distribution maps for those. We might even be able to extend it to every part of the model synthesising the real world terrain with the underlying surface. I've got an idea that uses watersheds- build the terrain via watersheds. That would create the most believable river systems.

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 09, 2011, 12:41:22 pm
I've actually been wanting to do some of that (making structures).  I need to for my world anyway, some of which have ME-analogs.  If I can ever get Lightwave working again, I can export in a variety of formats.  I have ZBrush as well, so I can make some awesome details for normal mapping, creating higher quality textures/models :)  But until I can get this Lightwave issue resolved, I'm stuck :(
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Redrobes on May 09, 2011, 12:52:20 pm
I think just some basic shapes and textures would be fine. Normal maps are quite specialized for terrain mapping. We have found that there is a certain amount of quantity required as well as quality and you can get bogged down doing just a few buildings really well when there is a whole town to complete.

Also, whats the matter with your lightwave ? And I use a little app called 3D to 3D which can change a lot of formats about. Meshlab can do several more and Blender has a moderately big list too. Sketchup files are just zipped up Collada files which I know blender can deal with. Rename dot SKU to dot zip. Unzip and import the dot DAE file into Blender with Collada option and then you can export it from there. Don't know if it supports more than the shape tho. I export LWO then with 3dto3d to OBJ and thats my native format. I think sketchup can import OBJ but not sure as I am not all that familiar with it.

So whats Outerra's preferred model object format ?

Links:
http://www.bebits.com/app/1717
tho my version is a little older at V3.5
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 09, 2011, 02:23:29 pm
Quote
Also, whats the matter with your lightwave ?

I'm not quite sure yet.  It's not exactly a Lightwave problem, per se, but something computer-related, possibly to the OpenGL drivers on the graphics card, or a missing or corrupted Windows file.  Unfortunately, the error logs are not giving me ANY details.  I've rolled back my video drivers (several different iterations dating back almost a year), including those I've used before, but so far none of that has fixed the issue.  Sometime Wednesday afternoon I'm going to try another fix and see if that works.

The good thing about Zbrush is that you can take an extremely low resolution model and give it high resolution displacement with almost no impact, even with small normal maps.  In some of the stuff I've seen, models with even as little as 500 polygons can appear to have 10k with Zbrush-created normals :).  Makes painting UV maps much easier as well, as you can paint directly on the model and save the UVs out when finished.

As I eagerly await the Outerra demo, I was building a "mountain villa" for my own personal use, before Lightwave stopped working :).  I even have a perfect spot located already. :lol: The villa will feature a museum of some of my favorite artwork from various fantasy/scifi authors, as well as some of my own.  I'll add some other cool things into it as new features are released.  Guess I'll also need to figure out which cool vehicle I want to build so I can drive it around :).  Maybe a formula 1 or NASCAR vehicle, after seeing the banked roads video.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Redrobes on May 09, 2011, 02:50:15 pm
Your welcome to download and try out my graphics system tester for ViewingDale but its similarly OpenGL based and uses many of the same calls and suffers similar problems. It checks off the driver and some of the calls. Well just thought it might possibly help out - you never know.

http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/cgi-bin/viewingdale.pl?category=test_app
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 09, 2011, 02:58:17 pm
Ahh thanks.  Well that tells me my problem isn't OpenGL (other OpenGL programs seem to run fine ... I was originally thinking one of the OpenGL links within Lightwave was corrupted, but even a clean reinstall didn't fix it ... this pretty much settles that it's not an OpenGL or graphics driver issue.

Sorry to derail this topic :).  I'll dig a little deeper tomorrow and Wednesday to see if I can't get this working again.  A Lightwave guru buddy of mine gave me a few avenues to pursue (including the OpenGL possibility), so I'll be trying those fixes soon enough.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on May 10, 2011, 08:21:04 am
Bummer about lightwave cshawn- especially as your building project sounds like it was was going so well. That must be very frustrating.


Yes, I don't think you need to create a masterpiece, lots of low detail buildings would be better than one
 highly detailed building.

 Do you folks have a preference- I mean any burning desires to build a specific building or place from Tolkien? :)
 I've got pdfs of the role playing material and a complete hard copy collection.
This is the cloest we got to a model of Carn Dum:
 http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/renders/CarnDum_Seer.png

 http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/renders/CarnDum_Ortho.png

 The model is just a displacement of the terrain- it's not actual models, but you can see the site laid out clearly
from that.
 Ok, I'll upload some pdfs of the stuff I'm talking about- the site maps, etc. Just let me know if you fancy building anything specific.
 
monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 10, 2011, 01:42:28 pm
Hmm, getting the walls modeled would be a relatively easy task.  Individual buildings and/or other structures could be instanced relatively easily based on just a few models.

If I can get Lightwave working tomorrow, maybe I can work something on the walls (quick hack job, nothing fancy yet).

Since you guys seem to be experts in Tolkienese (:D) any idea on the height of the walls?

*Edit* and, um, perhaps we should take further discussion over onto your forums, instead of cluttering up Cameni's thread  :lol:
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Tottel on May 10, 2011, 03:19:40 pm
I can think of a few locations that would be relatively easy to begin with (compared to the rest of Middle-Earth):

The Shire, since it's mainly landscape, with the buildings dug in the terrain.
Isengard (before Saruman got corrupted): A ring-wall, a single tower and a green environment. :)

Well, "easy" combined with 'cool'. :)
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 10, 2011, 05:04:10 pm
Now that I'm thinking about it, I have two of the statues of the Argonath from my collector's edition LoTR :).  I can probably do a Zbrush sculpt on it, redo the topography on the base mesh, and then export it out as an obj file.  The only problem with Zbrush is that it's UV's are unorthodox, so modifying them after the model is done would be problematic in Photoshop.  That part doesn't bother me personally, but if you wanted to personally change something, it would be a headache.  I'll have to experiment with some of my UV Unwrapper tools to see if I can convert the Zbrush ones to something more user-friendly.

Anyone know what the one on the left is holding in his right hand?  The right one is holding a sword.  It's been WAY too long since I've read the books, and memory escapes me.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on May 10, 2011, 05:56:13 pm
"Each of the two figures was shown wearing a crown and a helm, with an axe in its right hand and its left hand raised in a gesture of defiance to the enemies of Gondor."

 It's been a while for me too  :)
 Peeps can register on the ME-DEM forums. You need to let me know though if you have or are trying to. We had a problem sometime ago with people having to wait- I'm not the webmaster. Not sure if it's still the same 'setup'. ;)

 We can start a new thread over there.
 I'm in the middle of uploading a lot of useful info. Should be up later.


monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 10, 2011, 06:15:08 pm
All righty.  I'll try to get registered tonight or tomorrow.  Not sure if I can contribute these models, but I will do what I can :).  Hopefully whatever I can contribute will translate directly into my personal world, and make everyone happy :)

Except for the Argonath ... I think the Tolkiens would have a problem with that :D  At least my "Dagan" area on my world will invoke the same sense of awe though ;)  (Inside information)
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on May 10, 2011, 06:18:57 pm
cshawn, model something that will translate. May as well kill 2 birds with one stone!
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on May 11, 2011, 12:05:47 pm
If anyone wants to take a shot at the Carn Dum fortress, I've dug out the project and I've got the render extents set up. I can export the terrain as either heightfield or mesh. I've also got the site map image aligned so it's easy to build from a reference overlay. There's a pdf too which has got some pics for ref of towers and stuff, eg. http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Temp/Keepref.jpg

 I'll need to know if you want a heightfield or mesh and what res, etc. The terrain has no erosion added. You can have it without or with erosion- including the maps for texturing.  :)

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on May 13, 2011, 08:11:27 am
Been fiddling with bits and bats. Quick demo of Carn Dum in Sketchup.

(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/Screens/CarnDum_inSketchup2.jpg)

It's not rocket science.  This is a model rather than a layout. I think it's probably best approaching this site as a layout, dunno. The workflow in Sketchup is that for projects with a number of components you model the components and then plonk them in your layout. I'm a newbie to it so still finding my way.

//checked it out and layout is for 2D presentations, not models.

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on June 07, 2011, 09:40:11 am
Not meaning to resurrect an old thread ... but LIGHTWAVE IS WORKING AGAIN!  Woohoo!

Turns out a background program was interfering with it.  Accidentally discovered it last night when I realized another program that had been having problems actually ran without crashing when the background program was shut down.  So this morning I made sure it was off, and poof, Lightwave returned to normal operation!

Now to get back to work making models again!  Think I'll start simple with some generic houses with thatched roofs.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on June 07, 2011, 11:22:14 am
You must be overjoyed! Glad you sorted it out.  :cool:  

 I've been running the make process all week for the 40K texture on our latest terrain. I made a fair bit of progress with the model above too- should be able to get back to it and post an update shortly,- and some shots of the texture.

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on June 08, 2011, 12:01:57 pm
The Carn Dum site. It's really just a learning using the app exercise for me.

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Presentations/Carn%20Dum/Screens/CarnDum_castle17.jpg

You can check out some screens of the texturer here at the end the dev gallery:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development/gallery.htm

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: cameni on June 08, 2011, 12:21:00 pm
Quote from: monks
You can check out some screens of the texturer here at the end the dev gallery:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development/gallery.htm
Beautiful. Now just to jump into the world :)

Btw do you know if there is someone doing something similar with the lands of Songs of Ice and Fire novels?
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on June 08, 2011, 12:49:00 pm
Yehh...both feet first!  :cool:  

I'm not sure, it's certainly possible. Someone may well make a mod for a game or something with Game of Thrones being aired. The distributed world creation idea is a very tantalising thought. I'm sure you could get a lot of people interested in using OuTerra for that.

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on June 08, 2011, 03:47:26 pm
Hey, Monks ... are you guys going for full interiors too for structures, or just the shell?

For my purposes, I'll be doing a few interiors.  But before I get to that point in the modeling, I could save out an exterior version.

Still going to be a few weeks away before I have the first model done, although I may make a little progress this weekend, depending on circumstances.  Texturing will be done in Zbrush, complete with Displacement mappings.  I'll probably have to export to OBJ, considering Zbrush likes that best anyway, so I can save out a copy for you guys.
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on June 08, 2011, 05:20:22 pm
Just exteriors will do us for now. Maybe I can pick up a few tips from you on the way. I've used ZBrush before to create bump maps- but you can easily forget how to do things if you don't repeat the process.
 I think our render targets will be OuTerra obviously, and Terragen- possibly 3DS Max later (I may be starting a course in September). I don't see me using Sketchup... for rendering anyway, though it's great for architectural modelling. Terragen supports .obj.

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on June 08, 2011, 06:15:15 pm
Brano, about the SoIaF, found these:

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=15328.75


http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,30943.0.html

monks
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Redrobes on June 09, 2011, 08:21:10 pm
Quote from: cameni
Btw do you know if there is someone doing something similar with the lands of Songs of Ice and Fire novels?

I don't know of anything in 3D either but Tear made a FAB map out of it on the guild.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?6549-Westeros-made-with-Pasis-tutorial
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: cameni on June 10, 2011, 02:58:13 am
Hmm, cartographersguild.com rejects my login. I have chosen a password that may be too long. But I don't see there an option to reset password, is it there somewhere?
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Redrobes on June 10, 2011, 06:26:43 am
Can you email me some details (minus the password...) about what happened and ill chat to the leaders on there. If the site is rejecting lots of members that's not good. There's a couple of simple anti bot questions to set correct or else it will reject you tho. Since it was made a 'choice' map then this image was made a no login one...

http://www.cartographersguild.com/feature/WesterosMap.jpg
Title: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: cameni on June 10, 2011, 06:33:27 am
Looks very good :)

I was registered there and logged in (just after the registration). Just now I've found out that I cannot log in back. I'll send you the details.
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on September 12, 2011, 12:50:46 pm
The ME-DEM project has been given kind permission by Cameni and AngryPig to post some development shots of our terrain within Outerra.

We recently moved over to an entirely new workflow in ME-DEM for building the terrain. We've been testing whether that would be feasable of itself and also testing the specifics of getting it into Outerra and how Outerra renders it with its procedural fractals at the sub 90m scale.

We got our initial terrain into Outerra which was built on our old workflow using procedural terrain generators. After viewing it from orbit and having seen  the real earth data in Outerra (SRTM v4 at 90m), it was pretty obvious that it didn't stand up very well to scrutiny from high orbit.  :P
 While procedurals terrain generators are great are small scale (sub planetary- Outerra is BIIIIIG!!) terrain modelling, they don't currently have tools for creating convincing large scale structures like continental mountain ranges. So we decided to use real earth data instead...

We're currently using two methods: a more traditional manual modelling approach using real terrain from SRTM sources in Photoshop, Leveller, and World Machine and procedural tile blending of tiles from the same data. We use Global Mapper to select and export the tiles.

 The manual modelling of the mountain ranges is the long term goal- but it will be longer term. the procedural approach will be handled by Robes' texturer and take care of any terrain I've not modelled manually in the meantime.

 First up was Mordor. Bear in mind that in the future the texturer will be set up to incorporate user defined textures. We're still with the default Earth texture settings here.
 
 The highest point on the terrain is at around 16,000 ft. Not sure where that is exactly...but everything looks good. We've used artistic license and extended the height of the Mordor mountains. We're probably going to roughly double the height of the mountains in Middle Earth over our previous estimates.
 I used the Carpathians as the basis for Mordor- sorry to people who live there, no offence  ;D. The problem with that was that they are not young mountains like say the Himalayas with all of those sharp glaciated ridges, so I had to apply ridge sharpening in World Machine. The Photoshop processing removed some of the high frequency detail from the terrain so I had to replace that procedutally while preserving the flatness of the valleys.
 
 These are all shots of just the lower right quad of the ME-DEM terrain. I'll post some shots later with the entire map.

Valleys
(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Valleys.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/Valleys.png)(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Valley.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/12_09/Valley.png)

Ridges
(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Ridges.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/Ridges.png)
 
 
 
Another problem we had was creating a good transition from mountains to lowlands. This turned out to be not too difficult to solve.

(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/transition.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/transition.png)(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/transition2.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/transition2.png)(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/transition3.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/transition3.png)

(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/transition4.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/transition4.png)
 
 
 
One of the spooky mountains- this is really cool when you travel across the Udun crater- it's huge and very evil looking up close  8) Just to get an idea of the scale of this, it takes about 20 minutes to travel across the crater of Udun "running" along the ground.
(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Tower.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/Tower.png)
 
I added a sea of mist and took some pics- you get an almost tropical feel.

In this one the mist fills the caldera of Udun. The Morannon Gate (the location of the battle at the end of The Return of the King) is at the south at the gap in the crater. To get a sense of the scale of this, the arrow in the pic points to the summit of the tower in the previous pic just poking its head above the mist!
(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Scale.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/12_09/Scale.png)

 Here's Mt Doom
(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Orodruin.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/Orodruin.png)

(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/screen_1315695201.png)

(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/screen_1315694989.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/screen_1315694989.png)(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/screen_1315695151.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/screen_1315695151.png)(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/screen_1315695179.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/screen_1315695179.png)
 
(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Terrain.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/12_09/Terrain.png)(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Moon1.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/12_09/Moon1.png)(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/thumbnails/Moon2.png) (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/12_09/Moon2.png)
 

I was playing around in World Machine with Voronoi noise and came up with the beginning of a surface for the plains of Mordor.
 
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/Mordor_surface.png (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/RW_Terrain/Test/Mordor/11_09_11/Mordor_surface.png)
 
It'd be really sweet to be able to add to this plain the occasional displacements like these: http://blackheart6004.deviantart.com/art/Terragen-2-Shear-163303491 (http://blackheart6004.deviantart.com/art/Terragen-2-Shear-163303491)
Terragen 2 has a workflow which can export displacements as meshes to 3Ds Max. That's one possibility, Outerra will no doubt have procedural solutions too.  ;)

monks
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: ZeosPantera on September 12, 2011, 01:09:55 pm
Wow. Pretty impressive considering what has to be done to get it into OT. What kind of land size are you using to get this all on earth? 200x200 miles? 1000x1000km?
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Redrobes on September 12, 2011, 02:02:12 pm
Its 4000 km square at 100m or 40,000 pixel square terrain. Its almost the same res as the earth data used in normal Outerra but we only do a continents worth instead of the whole world so the rest of the world would have to be all sea or something.
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on September 12, 2011, 04:03:48 pm
I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of the workflow you're using :)  Pretty impressive stuff.
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on September 12, 2011, 10:01:53 pm
Zeos it was pretty easy getting it into Outerra but we did have some discussions with Cameni about some preliminary things which helped.
I'm sure other people will find it just as straightforward because the devs have implemented things to make this possible in the futrure for others too.
 In the very distant future, it would be possible to incorporate the Middle Earth into Earth data, as a replacement for western Europe. It'd need a procedural blending at the borders but we can do that. It'd be interesting to see how it looked without the blending too, but the coastlines would really have to match where they met. Not everybody knows it, but Middle Earth was intended to be Earth but in a different time, so it's a natural thing to incorporate it like that.
 If it was all surrounded by sea, that wouldn't be so bad either as an interactive or game experience. The place is utterly massive. I tried crossing the some of the map
(the crater) along the ground- I think that's a truck speed right?, and it took a long time- maybe around 15-20 minutes. That's like 1/6 the distance of the Mordor extents in that direction. Then you have the rest of the map which is maybe 6 times that again. These are
not accurate figures but you get the idea.  :P
 I think if, in a game for example, if you limited the altitude people could fly to, that wouldn't be so bad either- it would fit the mechanics of a fantasy game anyway. You could still problaby allow flight to at least 50K feet. The views would still be pretty amazing.

 CShawn, it's something of a secret... ;D...well not really. I think it demands a few apps though. I find Global Mapper very useful for downloading large data sets as tiles from the SRTM. Easily exportable too. You could probably find a free replacement for that if you didn't want to buy it. You could probably get away with having a GIS capable viewer at all- maybe use Wilbur even.
 I use Photoshop and I use the warp tool to bend terrain in 16 bit png the format. That tends to remove high freq detail though so you'll need to put that back in because the terrain looks noticeably poorer in Outerra without it. Maybe you can use Gimp, but I'm not sure about it's warp functionality.
 You need a terrain modelling app capable of tiling output- World Machine or possibly L3DT.
 You also need a paint prog for terrain painting because you end up butchering certain parts of the dem in Photoshop and I would not recommend fixing it in there in greyscales- I use Leveller for that- though you could probably get by with Wilbur.
 I might also use GeoControl at some point for finding river flow.

 That sounds like a lot and a bit compilcated and perhaps it is- I've just been doing this kind of toing and froing between apps for a long time now-I don't even think about it really. No one app really has all the features I need unfortunately.

 Procedural modellers are close now though- for example, all World Machine needs is the spline tools developing a little bit more, or Howard Zhou to bring back his plugin, or maybe tesselation tool and the use of r-w terrain could be avoided imo.
 It's just that Outerra allows you a God's eye view that players never get to have of a fantasy terrain- flight sims yes, but then they always use Earth data out of the box.
 
monks
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on September 13, 2011, 12:29:57 am
I don't have a problem purchasing software if it will get me my ultimate goals. :)  The workflow itself is what interests me, because all of my attempts in 3d modeling to do even basics never have come close to what I've seen in these screenshots.

Guess I may just have to hire you guys to help build my world for me when I'm ready for it  :P

I'll take a look at Leveller, and some of the others you mentioned in the coming weeks.  I've already looked at Global Mapper (wow, nice program), so I kind of get a hint at the workflow.  I think our two projects are extremely similar, which is why I'm so interested.  I have a total of four main continents on my world, although only two are shown in the books (with a third a possibility if I can come up with a better plotline later on), so a lot of the world is a lot like Middle Earth as it exists today ... lots of reference, just not a whole lot of real data.

I guess my biggest hurtle right now is understanding how the DEMs are utilized (altered, etc), and how I can figure out my own workflow to create more customized DEMs.  (And here I'm using the term DEM as just a basic word for the overall terrain)
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on September 13, 2011, 08:13:08 am
Hmm, ok. Well most poeple who ask baulk at the cost of the software, but as I say I've collected them over some time. Yes Global Mapper is bang for buck the best value for money of all the apps I have (apart from Wilbur of course).
 You wanna hire us eh? :) I'd consider a reasonable offer ;) I've been looking for opportunities to get into the industry.

 We have a system which uses a base dem of very low detail and a high detail dem of r-w terrain added to it. It adds an extra degree of realism to the terrain. This has been the problem in the past with very large fantasy worlds- what I call the model railway effect
- where the whole world looks essentially like a flat table-top with stuff added to it. For example, the mist in those shots illustrates that the terrain has high and low areas- the high areas are poking out through the mist. That's not random chance- that's the contours of the base dem underneath the terrain asdding the macro detail. Without it, you'd have a much more random world. I use contours for the base dem- and Global Mapper or Photoshop for that-these days Global Mapper. With interpolation algorithms to grid the contours you can get the control over flow over continents.
 Our aim is to have correct flow down the rivers on the Tolkein map- and so far we're on target. We add terrain between the rivers (the watersheds) so that even though we can't really control the flow within those watersheds, the water will eventually run off into the rivers like a giant guttering system. Well, even if that system cant be proven to be entirely perfect, visually the world makes sense, and that's the bottom line with visual media. But one thing I've learned is that at this scale of organisation- continents and geography, it's really all about the rivers. Take care of those and the rest is easy.

 If you do decide to purchase CShawn why not give everyone a mention- I mean Outerra and ME-DEM? :) 

monks
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on September 13, 2011, 12:56:49 pm
Hmm, ok. Well most poeple who ask baulk at the cost of the software, but as I say I've collected them over some time. Yes Global Mapper is bang for buck the best value for money of all the apps I have (apart from Wilbur of course).

I can write it off as a business expense :D

Hmm, I think I can see where you're going with it.  Seems like I did something similar in Photoshop when I was trying to create a realistic map of one of my island continents.  The original used nothing but procedurals, and didn't look very good, so I headed over to the USGS website and copied a lot of the mountain areas from the himalayas to enhance my exisiting mountains.  For a "painterly" version, it worked quite well, but there were a lot of transitional areas that looked tiled, and a lot of it repeated itself in various areas of the map (probably because I was using a decidedly lower resolution over a broader area.

But then, I'm derailing the topic :).  I want to see more cool pictures or a video!  Would love to see a fly-by exploration of Mount Doom.
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Lieste on September 13, 2011, 08:29:00 pm
If you are interested in GM, then contact mike (the programmer/community contact) for a trial license - this will give you 2 weeks full use of the software.

Practising some aspects of the work-flow, and having the required materials and tasks on-hand and planned thoroughly, and you might be able to complete a small map in this window. It should give you the idea of whether it is suitable for you for the 'whole worlds' mapping, and an idea of how much pain you will suffer doing it  :o
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on September 14, 2011, 03:15:40 pm
Why did the transitional areas look tiled?

We're going to put one or two vids together :)
We'll be running the make on the entire world in the next week, so we should have some nice updates!

Lieste, what do you use Global Mapper for?

monks
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on September 14, 2011, 11:25:24 pm
Why did the transitional areas look tiled?

We're going to put one or two vids together :)
We'll be running the make on the entire world in the next week, so we should have some nice updates!

Lieste, what do you use Global Mapper for?

monks

Well, part of it was my initial approach.  I created what were supposed to be tiling textures out of some of the color maps, but it didn't work out too well.  The second approach was to cut chunks and paste them into specific areas (I was trying to allow mountain ranges to follow natural plate tectonic flows, so that the mountain ranges would appear and flow correctly ... even had an entire global map drawn for tectonics before the HD crash), and then just soften the transitions.  That just looked ... awful.

Final approach was just to clone at low opacity, slowly building up the color texture, and then spinning my source map according to the direction the moutains were flowing.  A little color correction to account for the differences in shadowing, and it worked perfectly.  Would figure the easiest way would also be the best way :p

I played around with Leveler last night.  Very interesting program, and I wish I'd looked at it sooner.  Gives me lots of ideas.  A Global Mapper tryout will come in a couple of months when I have plenty of free time to play with it.

I guess my first biggest hurtle is going to redrawing the entire world, and using that as a basis to chop up the world into chunks (LoDs).
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: Lieste on September 15, 2011, 02:04:23 am
Lieste, what do you use Global Mapper for?


Nothing as impressive as Middle Earth or Outerra

a little flight simulation 'world' editing for Targetware (currently dormant/cancelled?) - got masses of FM data and new procedures too which was my main 'bag'...
converting a raster of pylons/OHHT cables to vectors for the local council
I'm trying to get Panther (BfTB) to convert their mapping from contour interpolation (and those hand traced and limited to 16 levels) to an explicit DEM, with contour representation for the player as an auxiliary.

Other than that mostly just for-fun stuff. I've got an older license (6 updated to 8.xx if my memory serves, but I have also trialled several of the more recent updates - 12 looks really nice, but I can't justify the spend immediately).

I do some bits-n-bobs with my daughter to help her visualise how maps and the real-world work 'together' (or not - which can also be educational  ::)) She puts up with it in exchange for watching Shrek a-lot...
Title: Re: Images from ME-DEM project
Post by: monks on January 22, 2012, 11:39:41 am
            Sorry for the late reply Lieste...didn't receive any notification from the boards here, and been out of action for a wee while. Just dropped by to post a bit of an update.

 Sounds like you should know your way around the app. There's not a vast difference between 8 and 12 really. 12 has better 3D interface with more detail. GM went x64 around 10 I think, and I'm not sure if it is multi cored- think it is.
 You can interpolate contours in GM, but I know that the state of the source topos is the biggest problem. I've used WinTopo in the past which is good at image processing out the contours. It has one touch vectorisation, if you can give it a semi-clean image. You can then tag them with elevation automatically if the height spacings are equal. That's how I turned my intial contour map into a dem: photoshop > wintopo > Global mapper for interpolation. I had to tag manually though as my height spacings were not equal.
 I think Outerra is just about the perfect match for GM data- especially with the planned vector functionality. Your daughter will be the next generation of whiz kids eh? :)

 ME-DEM has been out of action for a couple of months. I've been using the beta of World Machine. I don't have a license currently for the commercial version which is the only version that is working soundly. I'll be getting a licensed copy in a couple of weeks if a beta is not released and we'll be cracking on again.

In the meantime been monkeying around in ZBrush. My enthusiasm with character modelling might last long enough to create some usable characters for Outerra. Hard to say. Some pics anyway. Hope you like. :)

(http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab04.png)

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab02.png (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab02.png)

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab03.png (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab03.png)

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab05.png (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab05.png)

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab06.png (http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/CharacterModels/ZGrab06.png)

monks