Terrain height map generator

launok

I have test this generator but have zero experience with it.

Is it possible to add different textures to the completed terrain after the generation process?  For instance, add blue water to the rivers or grass/snow, etc textures to terrein parts.  There is not an ungroup option available in this case.

 

 

sriesch

One option is to use a material intended for this, look at some of the terrain materials that come with Bryce or third party products.  There are ones that have different colors for different altitudes so you can have snow at the top but not at the bottom, or that have a variation to the material for steeper slopes as compared to flatter ones that help simulate vegetation differences.  I can't remember offhand if there are any that have water included.  Experiment by clicking through them to see the various effects.

A second option is make copies of your terrains and overlap them slightly, then modify them.  So for example you could use a vegetation material on the terrain above, then create a water plain and raise it just slightly higher than the part of your terrain above that represents the river, that allows you to use two materials at once.  similarly you could make multiple copies of your terrain and mix materials and slightly overlap them or edit them so bits of the one poke through the other, which might be good for rock poking up higher, or wet&dry sides to the same mountain, etc.

A third option is to add a material in a third party application however you want, but of course a large image will eat a huge amount of memory in Bryce so that's probably not going to work well very often, but might be fine sometimes.

Eugenius Maximus

Hi launok,

I'm also doing some research with Terrain Party. This is what I have found so far:

The terrain example below is from the Jedediah Smith Wilderness Area (Canada). I switched my view to USGS Shaded Relief (which clearly shows the mountain ranges) and changed the mileage square area to 8 km (the smallest). 

After downloading the file, I uploaded the "Merged" PNG Height Map for the following experiments:

1 - Imported 1081 x 1081 Height Map onto 4096 Terrain (Upper Left).
2 - Imported 1081 x 1081 Height Map onto 1024 Terrain. Exported it's Height Map (TIFF) & imported it back onto same 1024 Terrain  (Upper Right).
3 - Imported 1081 x 1081 Height Map onto 2048 Terrain. Exported it's Height Map (TIFF) & imported it back into the same 4096 Terrain (Lower Left).
4 - Imported 1081 x 1081 Height Map onto 4096 Terrain. Exported it's Height Map (TIFF) &
imported it back onto same 4096 Terrain (Lower Right).

I hope this helps :-/

Eugenius Maximus

I found this site called Tangram Heightmapper (https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/). Kind of like Terrain Party, however, our planet Earth is one big height map. You can zoom anywhere to your hearts' content and download higher resolution maps; Bryce 7.1 imported it in with no drama. The one I downloaded is 1280 x 882 at 32 Bit from somewhere in the mountains of South America. 

Have fun :-)

P.S.: Upper Left at 512, Upper Right at 1024, Lower Left at 2048 and Lower Right at 4096.

Slepalex

launok said:

I have test this generator but have zero experience with it.

Is it possible to add different textures to the completed terrain after the generation process?  For instance, add blue water to the rivers or grass/snow, etc textures to terrein parts.  There is not an ungroup option available in this case.

launok, as far as water is concerned, is very simple. Create a horizontal 2D Face or infinite plane, assign a water material and place them just above the flat area in your terrain. After all, the level of your rivers is the lowest, is not it?
For the rest of the terrain, use ready-made materials from the library or look at David Brynnen’s lessons on working at DTE. 

mindsong

Eugenius Maximus said:

I found this site called Tangram Heightmapper (https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/). Kind of like Terrain Party, however, our planet Earth is one big height map. You can zoom anywhere to your hearts' content and download higher resolution maps; Bryce 7.1 imported it in with no drama. The one I downloaded is 1280 x 882 at 32 Bit from somewhere in the mountains of South America. 

Have fun :-)

P.S.: Upper Left at 512, Upper Right at 1024, Lower Left at 2048 and Lower Right at 4096.

too cool! Thanks for that tidbit!

--ms

StuartB

Hi Eugenius Maximus

How did you get Tangram to work.

I can see all the world as height maps and zoom in to anywhere I want to, but clicking on Export does nothing.

When I selected a part and then right click to save the image it just saves a blank white image.

Tried in Firefox and internet explorer.

Horo

Stuart - it worked for me, I did as you described, but the exported png is only 8 bit, not 16 and the terrain get steps.

StuartB

@Horo

May be it's just my browser settings. I have 2 Ad blockers and a website tracking blocker running in them.

 

Eugenius Maximus

mindsong - All good.

StuartB - I just tried again and it worked for me. It could be the browser settings but not sure at this time. I use Google Chrome.

Horo - It's weird that your downloading 8 bit; my downloads are 32 bit. I tried looking for some documentation on how it works, but the "Help" link, Mapzen (owners?) has ceased supporting it since last February (https://mapzen.com/blog/shutdown/). They did try to keep it going, but it looks like it's been a while since they did any updates. (https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-docs). 

 

Horo

Eugenius Maximus - oh it does say 32 bit but if you open it it's RGB plus the transparency layer (8/8/8/8). Best for Bryce is 16 bit monochrome.