L3DT Users' Community

Help and support :: RE: Defining Land and Sea with an Imported Heightfield

Author: DSXC
Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 8:12 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

*sigh* I had downloaded the entire earth as GeoTIFF's but for some reason I can't find the site anymore...

Scratch that... google found it for me:

http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/SELECTION/inputCoord.asp

Help and support :: RE: Defining Land and Sea with an Imported Heightfield

Author: Yelnoc
Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 11:08 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

Thankyou for your help.

Would you happen to know if there is a map database of GEoTIFF maps that are small enough that L3DT could handle?

Also, would using an L3DT map in a (Non commercial) mod for a video game violate the terms of service of the L3DT Standard Liscense?

Help and support :: RE: Defining Land and Sea with an Imported Heightfield

Author: aaron
Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 11:02 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

Hi Yelnoc,

Drawing a red line on the map won't help, as the extent of the sea flooding isn't controlled by the red contour line. Terrain that is below sea-level (i.e. altitude less than 0 metres) is flooded. Coincidentally, L3DT displays a red contour line at 0 metres, but it's the height of the terrain that's important, not whether L3DT has coloured a pixel red or otherwise.

Your image contains values from 0 (black) to 255 (white). You need to work out what elevation range these values correspond to, so that you can tell L3DT how to convert the image values into elevations in the import wizard. In the import wizard you'll also need to enter the correct horizontal scale, which I estimate to be around about 3,000,000 divided by the width of your image in pixels. Once you've imported your data, you'll then need to use the 'Operations->Heightfield->Clip heightfield' option to clip the seafloor down to a negative height, since your image seems to contain no bathymetric data.

By the way, the image you've used seems to have been compressed to 8 bit precision (certainty by GIMP, but possibly before this too), so it's going to look pretty bad in 3D due to 8-bit stepping artefacts (see rant here). To use real-world terrain, I'd recommend you source your elevation data from a 32-bit GeoTIFF file, and load it directly in L3DT.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Help and support :: RE: Heightfield modeling very slow and laggy, any suggestions?

Author: aaron
Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 9:29 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

Hi Timbo,

You might be able to do it, but I'm pretty sure L3DT can't do it for you. If software were able to exempt itself from AV scanning, then surely all malware would use this option, thereby nullifying any security provided by AV software.

In any case, did you try disabling the undo option in L3DT? Did it make any difference?

Best regards,
Aaron.

Help and support :: Defining Land and Sea with an Imported Heightfield

Author: Yelnoc
Subject: Defining Land and Sea with an Imported Heightfield
Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 2:57 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

I am trying to create a terrain from a heightmap of western Europe that I found on the internet. I copy/pasted it into GIMP, saved it as a PNG, and then imported it into L3DT as a Heightfield. Below is the result.

So far so good.

Next I created the water map. Instead of flooding the black areas like I had expected it to, it made the entire map water. Is this because there is no red line seperating land from water? If I were to paint this line onto the map in GIMP would it fix the problem?

By the way, I have L3DT Standard rather than Professional so I can't use the method shown in one of the tutorials

Help and support :: RE: Heightfield modeling very slow and laggy, any suggestions?

Author: timbo3185
Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 3:53 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

couldn't you simply remove the application from the AV scanning?

Help and support :: RE: Heightfield modeling very slow and laggy, any suggestions?

Author: aaron
Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:38 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

Hi Timbo,

I apologise for this inconvenience. Are you, by any chance, running AV software that performs on-access file scanning? In the past we've had problems with AV software bogging down realtime editing (see older post).

One solution that has worked in the past is to disable the 'undo' feature in L3DT by un-checking the 'Edit->Enable undo' menu option. When editing maps, the undo feature writes small backup files to disk, and if AV is (slowly) scanning these files it can cause lag.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Help and support :: RE: Besides Clamp..........................................

Author: aaron
Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:31 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 2

Hi Nicethugbert,

I might also recommend the 'Heightfield:Power' filter, which is a non-linear filter that can be used to smoothly clip altitude ranges without sharp changes in gradient (use of the multiply filter may do this). You will, however, have to also use some scaling and combine filters to ensure the terrain is put back together smoothly.

If you're prepared to wait a little while, I can bash together a script to do the smooth clipping for you. Mind you, this will probably require me to make a new filter function, so it will have to wait until after v2.9 is released.

Regards,
Aaron.

Bug reports :: RE: "New Script" crashes L3dT

Author: David Walters
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 5:51 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 8

Posting to confirm this works for me on Vista x64, thanks for the new beta!

Announcements :: L3DT version 2.9 beta release #3

Author: aaron
Subject: L3DT version 2.9 beta release #3
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 10:38 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 0

Hi Everyone,

A third beta release of L3DT v2.9 is now available for download. This version fixes the following bugs found in v2.9 beta 2:

Opening the script editor was causing crashes on non-Windows 7 systems.
L3DT Standard Edition was occasionally throwing errors related to heightfield mip-map generation.
The 'File->Export->Export map layer' menu option did not work.

Additionally, this beta release also includes a new DDS plugin that supports loading and saving of large image files that will not fit in the available system memory. In case of compatibility issues, I have included the old DDS plugin with the installer also. To revert to the old plugin, open the extension manager, disable the new 'L3DTio_DDS2' plugin, enable the old 'L3DTio_DDS' plugin, then re-start L3DT.

Please let me know if you find any problems with this beta release.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Bug reports :: RE: "New Script" crashes L3dT

Author: aaron
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 10:25 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 8

Hi Telarus and David,

Thanks again for the bug reports. I've included the fixed script editor plugin with L3DT v2.9 beta 3, which is on the downloads page now. The fixed script editor has been verified on Windows 7, XP, and Wine/Linux. Given the nature of the fault, I have every confidence it will now work properly in Vista and Win2k also. Please let me know if you find any further problems, and thank you for your assistance and patience.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Announcements :: RE: For Torque 3D users

Author: aaron
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 10:21 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 58

Hi Pierre,

The version on the GarageGames site is the most recent stable release. However, more recent developmental builds and beta releases are available. I'll send you the download instructions in a private message.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Announcements :: RE: For Torque 3D users

Author: DragoFire
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 9:28 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 58

Just Brought L3DT yesterday on torquepowered.com (GarageGames) is the version there the most up to date?

Pierre

Help and support :: Heightfield modeling very slow and laggy, any suggestions?

Author: timbo3185
Subject: Heightfield modeling very slow and laggy, any suggestions?
Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 5:16 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

I am new to this software but am enjoying the experience trying to manually model a terrain using the Heightfield editor, However I have ran into some lag issues which is surprising since my computer should be able to handle such activities since i am using Max, photoshop and running most games i play on Max resolutions without any issues
I am using the beta version, running Windows 7 with these specs

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
i7 920
G.SKILL 6GB PC-12800 6GBPI 8-8-8-21
G.Skill 128GB SSD (plus other SATA HDD's (total about 400gig))
2x HIS 5770 1GB GDDR5 X-fire
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS
Viewsonic VX2433WM 24" LCD

are there some settings I can change to boost performance? I tried to lower the clip but it becomes too foggy and doesn't really help much. I have also tried lowering the Tri count but that removes a lot of detail and I need detail.

Thanks all

Help and support :: RE: Besides Clamp..........................................

Author: David Walters
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 10:45 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 2

Sounds like a perfect use for a ZeoGraph. If you split a map into two routes with the TEE node.

Route 1: Clip the map to your altitude with MIN.

Route 2: Clip below this altitude with MAX, SUBTRACT by this altitude, MULTIPLY to apply your percentage. Then ADD your altitude back on.

Then do a COMBINEMAPS with the 'max' operation mode.

Hopefully, that should work. Bonus points for putting your altitude and percentage into a FLOAT variable node and hooking that up to all the things that need them.

Good luck!