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Outerra Tech Demo download. Help with graphics driver issues

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Author Topic: Images from ME-DEM project  (Read 55058 times)

ZeosPantera

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #45 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?
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Redrobes

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #46 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.

C. Shawn Smith

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #47 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.
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monks

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #48 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
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C. Shawn Smith

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #49 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)
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
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The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)

monks

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #50 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
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C. Shawn Smith

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #51 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.
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
There is no spoon -- Neo, The Matrix
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)

Lieste

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #52 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
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monks

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #53 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
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C. Shawn Smith

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #54 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).
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
There is no spoon -- Neo, The Matrix
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)

Lieste

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #55 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...
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monks

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Re: Images from ME-DEM project
« Reply #56 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/ZGrab02.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/ZGrab06.png

monks
« Last Edit: January 22, 2012, 11:43:06 am by monks »
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