Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ozybolairy]

already done http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2013/01/explore_the_game_of_thrones_westero.html

[monks]

How cool is that?! Will have to take a look in Google Earth... 
 We did look at GE but it doesn't support user defined terrain data so one of our bunch tried putting our (stitched together from Pete Fenlon's of course) map on NASA's Worldwind a few years ago now. Worldwind does support imported terrain but we never got any further than this. http://www.me-dem.me.uk/videos/worldwind/videos.htm

 They don't even support it in the pro version. Don't know why...I guess it's a niche interest. But with enough people doing stuff like Westeros, maybe one day they will.

 We would be more focused on the terrain model which could be generated easily enough from the GoT maps- such as those this guy is using. Once you have terrain you can do all kinds of things with it, such as procedurally generate texture maps from height info. Maps, stories and 3D don't always go together though in peoples' minds. Especially if the maps are ye olde world maps and the style of presentation is technical/modern such as GE or full 3D.

monks
 

[monks]

I think I've finally ironed out my pc problems...don't want to jinx myself though by saying that :-D...There's a
quick hack by Cameni here to get some forest placement from a user defined map.
 I'm rebuilding some river valleys that got destroyed from our recent remapping of lowland heights and then running another make which will spit out the textures and the final release build. The GTS texture output maps will be used in Outerra's upcoming biomes system to place different biome types. If all goes well it'll be about 2 weeks until we can release something.

 











Full res here:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Outerra1/gallery.htm

monks

[MarkyDeVille]

I just registered here on the forum only to tell you, that I am very excited about this project! keep up the fantastic work! 

I also have a question regarding the long term goals of this project: What do you plan after all the terrain, landscapes and relevant citys/buildings of Middle Earth are created? Will you also add people/animals to the world?

Best wishes for the project and sorry for the crappy English, I am not a native speaker...

[Redrobes]

Nice Pics Monks, the build system must be fully working again then. The final vegetation looks good too.

As for stuff after the terrain has been released I think there will always be tweaks being done to the terrain to fix up some issues and a lot depends on what Outerra supports that we can generate in order to make the land more in line with the real M.E. For example, we may try to modify the resulting data to align outerras procedural snow generation in line with where we have snow so that outerra produces the snow in the right places.

After all the terrain issues have mostly been patched up then the first thing I think we need are some markers on outerra for some of the famous places since outerra does not have any text or labeling. Then we should try to work on some of the building, towers, forts and so on. There is an active selection of individuals that are making some of the models in ME anyway but we should try to persuade them to put it into the Outerra Engine to see. From what I gather tho, some like the Minas Tiriths of the web are many millions of polys. Whether we could realistically have that in 3D along side the terrain is something we need to talk about with Cameni. Maybe we would need to generate 3D models with a set of levels of detail to show I dont know. I can imagine to start with having some bill board type images to show.

Animals and people - I don't know about that. I dont think we woudl be hand placing them in so I think thats a procedural thing. So again its more of an outerra capabilities thing. We could potentially make up some population masks for it to reference whilst in the terrain. But I cant see that being on the top of the dev priorities for the outerra team.

I would think that once most of the terrain is in place with outerra they would work on rivers and lakes. We have those masks to reference so were ready for that when it happens.

[monks]

Hey Markey, thanks very much!
 What Robes said really. I like the idea of markers yes. I think it all depends if we can get any people interested in donating models/ modelling skills/time to the cause -getting involved. If folks do, then we'll try to minimise any changes to the terrain (unless the devs come up with a way to auto-fix models to changing terrain -I doubt that'll be completely possible though- dunno). If folks don't then I imagine we'll stick with modifying the terrain more- ie the heightmap and the textures/biomes. Having said that though, we're beginning to transition over to concentrating more on textures now, and I'm looking for an excuse to learn a 3D modelling package to do some architecture myself. It's hard to say but ideally more hands make less work!
That's the pic you sent me Steve, the GTs one. Still doing the rivers here! Yet to test the make sys but it'll just be a case as we normally proceed I think. 

monks

[monks]

Hey, we're going to release the demo very soon...! The build is done and good to roll. In the meantime here's a few pics from both the GTS texturer and from Outerra. Once Outerra's biomes come online GTS will be providing the distribution maps.

 This will be a demo. We'll release an update in the next weeks which will be V 1.0, and good for building architecture on. We just need to make a few changes to heights in a few places.
 New stuff this time: Lonely Mt added. Lakes now visible as water in Outerra. Numerous other fixes and improvements.

 At the moment lakes are set at sea level. Further down the line when Outerra supports lakes at different heights we'll release another version which will have lakes set correctly. This wil change terrain heights around the immediate vacinity of them but won't impact other than that.

 Currently there is no Rivendell- I mean there is no deep valley especially created for it. Ideally we'd want to use the Lauterbrunnen terrain for that (It was explicitly based on the Swiss valley). That would have to be part of a patch for future release. Apologies to any extreme elf lovers  Such things happen when you're trying to build an entire world...!


GTS Texture in ViewingDale Viewer


More here: http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/vdale/gallery.htm

GTS Texture as a drape in World Machine


more here: http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/gts/gallery.htm

Outerra


More here: http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Outerra1/gallery.htm



monks

[monks]

The demo is out! Head over to Cameni's post here for all the details! 

http://www.outerra.com/forum/index.php?topic=1491.msg17180#new

monks

[Sam]

Hi Monks

You build a quite interesting north Africa, isn't it? Thanks a lot fot that! I like it so much! 

[monks]

  North Africa...where? You mean the shape of the world or do you mean the southern section? I did use north Africa for the southern deserts. If you spotted that...Wow, you have eyes like a hawk!

monks

[Sam]

I did use north Africa for the southern deserts. If you spotted that...Wow, you have eyes like a hawk!

monks

No no, I use the "G" Key > Google Map. 

[monks]

Eh? I'm lost. What does that do?...I know Anteworld has a Google map thing, but I've never used it. I'll have to have a look to see what you're on about 

monks

[Redrobes]

I think that Outerra can sync the view your seeing in 3D with a google maps view of the same place on earth. Since we dont have a google middle earth yet..... .... then its syncing the 3D middle earth view with the coords that it would be on earth. Since we aligned the Middle Earth with the Geo coords of what we thought tolkien wanted with the earth then most of Mordor lines up with North Africa. In which case I have to ask... does the equiv of Earths Oxford UK line up with Hobbiton then ? That was supposed to be the case, was it not, referring to Tolkien's letters somewhere.

[cameni]

When we started experimenting with getting the ME data into OT, for simplicity we just placed it somewhere, which happened to be so that the bottom edge of ME map lies on the equator.

[Redrobes]

Ok cool that makes sense. So any alignment between medem continent to earths locations are just pure coincidence then. I thought for a mo that we ported over the GeoRef locations but I recall now that we didn't. The MeDem terrain from side to side is supposed to be about 4000km which looks about the same in the outerra world too.