Creating landscapes

[Mitch]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on creating landscapes with only the 3d toolkit and photoshop, that is, the texturing of terrains and such. While I do have other software, plug-ins, etc, I'm trying to learn more of the meat of texturing and think doing things the "hard way" might be a better learning experience.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Aziz]

Hi,
Try 'Cybermesh', a free Photoshop plug-in by John Knoll. It allows you to create geometry from grey scale images in Photoshop which can be imported into Electricimage/ 3D Toolkit.

[Aziz]

Sorry, missed that part in your post about texturing. I bought the Surface Toolkit and have found it invaluable in helping to make my terrains look more realistic. For example, by just mixing the Bumpy noise shader with two layers from the Surface Toolkit, I came up with a nice mountain range texture.

[Mitch]

Thanks for the reply, Aziz. That is a good idea. I do have the Surface Toolkit and was thinking along those lines. Another challenge is getting different effects for different elevations and such. Is it possible to use a photoshop gradient for that purpose? If so, how would you do that?

[Tom Vincze]

Cybermesh reminds me of Bryce, which had this capability. I went to search for it on the web, and ended up at Pinnacle, but there is nothing mentioned on their site. Do you know where else I might find this plug?

[jarek_d_98]

Hello,
I have tried many things with creating landscapes. One thing for sure is that most of your great reference material is out there, its just a matter of converting the data so it can use by you.
On many geographic sites you can find DEM's (digital elevation models) and they are the best resource out there but they lack the ability to really be used by all the 3d apps out there. Some programs can convert the DEMs into images and some apps can read the DEM's.
The easiest way i have found is to get the DEM into an image and then use that image to displace the geometry. The US gov makes a freeware program that can display the DEM at High rez in 3D but there is no export from this program to DXF or OBJ. So you are limited to taking an screen grab and then tweeking it in photoshop to use on the geometry.
I can't remember the program but i could find out agian.

rob:D

[Scott Hankel]

You can download cybermesh here:

http://www.commotionpro.com/support/downloads/index.html


You'll have to fill out there little form to get at it, but its a small price for such a cool little program...:)

[Mitch]

Looks pretty cool, thanks. I'm gonna experiment with some texturing and see what I come up with. I'll post some pics soon. In the meantime, if anyone has any texturing techniques for terrain, please post them.

Thanks.

[Glh3586]

I don't know about you, but i know when i tried this it came out with jaged edges. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[jarek_d_98]

jagged edges on what the surface or the image? if the surface up the tessilation.
to bad this area of making landscapes is such a pain. I always wondered what they really did for the pod race scene with the land generation. Then kind of explained it but alot of the land doesn't look CG but photos of models and pics but they did put it into the layout of the race course. Alex do you know anything about the land generation of that scene?


Rob:D

[Glh3586]

I would but its an imported 3d object. Can you change the tesselation settings on an imported 3d object (like 3ds, obj, etc.)?

[jarek_d_98]

can you select the surface and subdivide or smooth that object?
what about duplicating the object and then trying to subdivide.

rob:D

[Glh3586]

before or after i get it into EI?

[jarek_d_98]

once you bring it into your program select the object and see if you can smooth it or subdivide. I know i can do it in other programs. EI should have some option that will allow that.

rob:D

[Scott Hankel]

I believe the land and terrain in the Pod sequence was created in FormZ... then went through a proprietary program to reduce the polygons and clean up the edges...

There were some other POV shots though that had specific proprietary software that created dense geometry close to the camera and less geometry further away from camera to speed up rendering times...

[Glh3586]

I could be wrong but i don't think there is any way to smooth an object out in the animator.

[nibeck]

You can use Dicer to sub-divide the entire surface. This might be extreme, but it should work.

- Mike

[Glh3586]

Nope, that didn't work.

[Kie]

Originally posted by nibeck
You can use Dicer to sub-divide the entire surface. This might be extreme, but it should work.

- Mike


Yeah, I believe Dicer (in EI Animator) is for increasing the density of the polygons, but doesn't do any smoothing in the process by just applying it. It's main use I know about is applying it to an object so you can then apply deformation to it like bends and twists and so forth without it getting all choppy and angled if the geometry is not very dense, as large triangles of the "mesh" of the object cannot bend, so they are broken down into smaller triangles that can bend relative to one another at their edges. Have I over-explained myself yet? ;)

Learned it all from the 3D Toolkit...basically...wink wink nudge nudge.

Anyway, I don't know offhand of any way to smooth and up the tessellation of an object within Animator after you've imported it...unless maybe there's some 3rd party plug-in to do that. EI keeps modelling separate from the Animator (except once again, for plug-ins that auto-generate geometry).

-kie.

[Glh3586]

hmm that kinda sucks