Terrain height map generator.

sriesch

This is about the coolest thing I've run across this year, thanks for pointing it out! I'm going on a virtual vacation across the USA and went into a downloading frenzy.  There is literally a whole world of useful terrains to be had here.  I do see I'm going to have to find a way to smooth out those terraces though.

I also see the readme text file that comes with each download has the coordinates built in in the form of a link, so you can also point others directly at the same terrain section you downloaded: 

http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Meteor+Crater,+AZ&box=-110.920554,35.101028,-111.118193,34.939331

 

sriesch

Wait, nevermind, dug out my Bryce notes and remembered you have to use the Load, not the Paste, to avoid terracing.  The terraces weren't in the original image.

sriesch

Here's one or two interesting finds (exagerated height needs to be adjusted, this is just the default settings):

Mt. Isarog in the Phillapines: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Mt+Isarog,+Phillapines&box=123.499204,13.777660,123.258723,13.544099

Crater Lake, right here in the state of Oregon, USA (I've stood on that little island in the middle!  It's much shorter.): http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Crater+Lake&box=-121.999818,43.030211,-122.221019,42.868514

The island of Kauai, in Hawaii: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Kauai&box=-159.290512,22.269408,-159.795285,21.802286

Mt. St. Helens, state of Washington, USA: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Mt+St+Helens&box=-122.063496,46.271343,-122.297417,46.109646

Anybody have any really unsual finds to add some variety?

 

 

sriesch

Jamahoney said:

Cheers, for that, Horo...and I would suspect such a simple interface like this would be great also for the Moon, Mars etc. NASA did have a moon mapper (LMMP) some years back, but they discontinued it for some unknown reason...a pity, as it was super.

I tried navigating through this link, but quickly got lost.  Have you used it before, and do you know what is missing that one needs to look for?

EDITED to fix spelling horrors

sriesch

I have some old school contacts who might have access to some of this type of stuff.  Perhaps if it is still avilable in dusty old boxes somewhere and I could find a way to resurect some of that information from them if they're feeling generous?  But I need to know what to call it.

Horo

Great to see you could make it work, sriesch. To load a height map, I do it from the Elevation tab and click on Picture.

Chohole

They are playing with this over in the Carrara forum as well.   someone saw this thread and linked the program over.

 

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/61043/height-map-generator

mermaid010

Wow very nice renders by everyone. I just exported by first heightmap, are you guys using the Aster or merged png?

Fishtales

I used the merged png and changed it into a 24 bit jpg and tried a greyscale jpg too. Both seemed to work

Horo

I use the merged one. Though Bryce can load the 16 bit grey PNGs and comes to grips with the 1081 px square images, I scale them down to 1024 and save as 16 bit grey TIFF. 24 bit are colour 8 bit grey and give steps. Scaling to the Bryce compatible 1024 helps when tiling.

 

Jamahoney

sriesch said:

Jamahoney said:

Cheers, for that, Horo...and I would suspect such a simple interface like this would be great also for the Moon, Mars etc. NASA did have a moon mapper (LMMP) some years back, but they discontinued it for some unknown reason...a pity, as it was super.

I treied navagating through this linik, but quickly got lost.  Have you used it beforem, and do you kow what is mnissihg that one needs to be look for?

Yes, Sriesch, I have used it several times in the past (used it when writing two books about the Moon), and it allowed you to view any part of the lunar globe in real three dimensions. You could zoom in on, say, a crater, view it from any angle or altitude above the lunar surface...it was super. That was a few years back, so when it went off-line, I gave up on it, however, as I'm not sure if they have done anything else with it since then, here is another link that you might want to explore. Btw, love what you've done with your experiments.

Jay

mermaid010

Thanks Sandy and Horo for the info

sriesch

@Horo, thanks for the simplified steps / correction for how to load a picture.

Here are a few more interesting finds (also with no correction to height yet):  A random spot in the state of Alaska, USA that appears to have a glacier in it: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Alaska1&box=-151.070206,62.714519,-151.560100,62.489942

Some unknown spot I found in Tanzania: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Tanzania+2&box=37.383321,-2.974009,37.077394,-3.279436

And proof that Florida is the flattest state ever...

I can see that often a challenge will be in either picking the correct area or in modifying the edges (if you want a similar fictional feature, rather than an actual correct representation of a real place) to drop off and blend into the background or other terrain in a realistic way.   I've also noticed a few select items seem to have big noise spikes in them, they're obvious when you download them as bright white marks.  The readme did mention that clouds can sometimes goof things up.  Sometimes there are are higher resolution pictures available (10m instead of 30, the USGS images that indicate 10 in the name).

 

Fencepost52

sriesch said:

And proof that Florida is the flattest state ever..

I live in Florida and can vouch for that!

Horo

sriesch said:

I've also noticed a few select items seem to have big noise spikes in them, they're obvious when you download them as bright white marks.  The readme did mention that clouds can sometimes goof things up.  Sometimes there are are higher resolution pictures available (10m instead of 30, the USGS images that indicate 10 in the name).

Yes, I've seen that as well, when rendering a high tower appeared on a mountain top and one in a valley. There are also black spots where data is missing.

sriesch

If anybody runs across any of these Venezuelan plateaus (Tepuis), let me know.  I haven't been able to find anything like the pictures yet, and lots of Venezuela has spotty coverage.  Although perhaps their scale is too small such that it won't show up, and of course I can simply build them manually if I want too, but with a bit more work.

https://www.google.com/search?q=venezuela+plateau&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CB4QsARqFQoTCKLS74GZs8cCFc4qiAodZH0A_w&biw=1607&bih=1049

I have noticed that sometimes I get that grid pattern over terrains, but other times I don't.  It appears the quality level varies a bit.

 

  A few more examples for you, then I'll give everybody a break and do something else for a while.  I did resize these vertically smaller, a randomly chosen and probably not accurate amount though:

Here's a nice section of the Colorado River: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Colorado+River+1&box=-111.764708,36.516323,-111.965902,36.354627

What looks like an old impact crater: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Mauritania+4&box=-11.120962,21.361504,-11.641834,20.876416

A caldera near the city of Volcano, on the big island of Hawaii: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Hawaii,+Volcano&box=-155.223513,19.457761,-155.318786,19.367929

A windy river in Brazil, looks like one could make a nice aerial jungle view out of it: http://terrain.party/api/export?name=Brazil+3&box=-69.866532,-7.228581,-70.029583,-7.390278

 

 

Hansmar

@Horo: Yes, very small houses are needed. You could fake some from some primitives. And a road or river would be nice. Not that I want to suggest that I would be able to make that 

@sriesch: Very busy, are you? I have the same feeling of: "Wow, I have to see/do/grab more!"

I have been working on some renders based on the island Jan Mayen in the Arctic Sea (or whatever the Sea is called). It is north of Island, east of Greenland and southwest of Svalbard. I made a render with the big grid (60 km) and one with a number of 18 kg grids. The patching up of all the grids is not something I have working very well. In the heightmaps of Jan Mayen, there are a number of anomalies, both in the sea around the island and on the island itself. White dots and patches that become peaks that should not be there. I tried to remove those as best as I could. But there are still some remains to be seen in the one without snow, which is the combination of 18 kms. The 60 km one is indeed very smooth (I added some noise, but that is way too regular, as you can see). The peaks at the bottom of the vulcano in the distance are not there in real life. They are artifacts. And icebergs neer Jan Mayen? Well, it is up north, but I have seen winterpictures and those icebergs must have come out of my imagination! I used some standard, partly modified textures and a distant fill light with Super AA. The one without snow rendered nice and quick in about 12 minutes.

sriesch

While attempting to track down lunar craters to do this same sort of thing, I ran across http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/search/details/Moon/LRO/LOLA/Lunar_LRO_LOLA_Global_LDEM_118m_Mar2014/cub ;

(click the Process button, then you can choose options for selecting part of the moon and building a DEM from it.  You need to sign up for an account; they ask for a reason why you need access, I basically said it was to make art, and they are fine with that.)

I downloaded a piece of the moon and played around with it, and I'm not convinced I chose the correct options to generate the file so if anybody sees that a higher resolution image is available than what I ended up with, let me know.  The problem I hit was the "steps" in the terrain.  (see screenshot for example, and artificially enhanced piece with arrows to illustrate.).  However, I'm thinking there must be some way to filter the image to "average" all the elevations into a smooth curve.  Does anybody know how to do that?  I'm using GIMP (and obviously Bryce), but even knowing the name of a tool in Photoshop might be enough to google it and figure out what to do in GIMP.

Horo

Sean - I use the IMG DEMs from http://imbrium.mit.edu/DATA/LOLA_GDR/CYLINDRICAL/IMG/ and converted them using the free IMG2PNG program http://www.mmedia.is/bjj/utils/img2png/ which gives you 16 bit greyscales. Jamahoney discussed this in the now unaccessible old forum thread (http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=166965&start=120).

It appears that you have 8 bit files and these give you the steps. With HDRShop you should be able to convert to 96 bit, apply a Gaussian filter then convert it back to 16 bit grey (I have a free 96 to 16 bit converter on my website. I had written it for exactly that purpose).

stitlown

What a brilliant find, thanks.  I've just spent days trawling our local government agency resources - and this basically does a better job for me easier and faster.  Yet to put it to use but a gread head start.  Thanks again. Lx