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Suggetsions Creating map from continent outline

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Suggetsions Creating map from continent outline

Postby bcosta » Sat Nov 26, 2005 10:06 pm

Hi All,

For a while now i have wanted to generate a world map for a fantasy world that i have been working on. I started a while ago using a map making tool called AutoRealm. With this tool i managed to do a good outline of the worlds continents. I now wish to create a heightmap of the world and have wanted to use L3DT among a few other tools to do so.

The problem is that i have an outline of the continents, but not a low-detailed hieghtmap that i can use L3DT to interpolate the details for me.

I have attached the image to this post so you can see what i mean. (ACTUALLY NO I HAVNT I DONT HAVY WEBSPACE TO PLACE IT AND CANT ADD ONE DIRECTLY TO THIS POST)

Does anyone have suggestions on how i can autogenerate a lot of this detail and get some sort of realism? Note i also know where i want to place certain mountain ranges, cliffs, swamps etc that will fit in the hoistory of the world.

I tried using a tool called wilbur to "paint" some of this detail, but it did not turn out good at all. I have also attached my "attempt" at painting to see partly what i was trying to do. Anyhow, i would be greatful to hear from anyone with experience in how i could go about achieving this.

Thanks,
Brendon.
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Postby monks » Sun Nov 27, 2005 12:48 pm

Hi bcosta, this sounds similar to what we are doing over at ME-DEM.
The recent addition of the image overlay feature to L3DT (professional beta) might come in useful here. If you have a hand drawn map (a topo or something which says, here be mountains, here be dragons, etc), you could overlay your design map/terrain in L3DT with this and set the transparency so that you could see through the map to get at your terrain.
If your map is HUGE, maybe cut it up and approach it that way. I'm in the process of writing an article for ME-DEM which illustrates this approach specifically for ME-DEM, but it sounds relevant to what your doing.
Your project is also evidence of what I've always thought. There are masses of game worlds in 2D map form out there from the pen and paper role playing community going way back and still being produced. With the obvious translation of much of this material to video games, I think there is an untapped user base of gamers wanting to see their paper maps in 3D mods and games.
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Postby bcosta » Sun Nov 27, 2005 8:58 pm

I had a look at ME-DEM and what you are doing does sound very much the same as what i am trying to achieve except on a larger scale :-). I will be very interested in reading that tutorial when it is done.

Brendon.
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Re: Suggetsions Creating map from continent outline

Postby Aaron » Mon Nov 28, 2005 2:19 am

Hi Brendon,

Welcome to the party!

bcosta wrote:I have attached the image to this post so you can see what i mean. (ACTUALLY NO I HAVNT I DONT HAVY WEBSPACE TO PLACE IT AND CANT ADD ONE DIRECTLY TO THIS POST)


Oh bugger, I didn't know images couldn't be uploaded to phpBB2 forums. Reading more about this, it seems the most common way is to use a service like http://www.photobucket.com, which hosts images for free. You can also do the same thing from the users' gallery, eg:

Image

To get the URL of an image in the users' gallery, right-click on the image, select 'properties' and then use the URL given in the 'address' field.

bcosta wrote:Does anyone have suggestions on how i can autogenerate a lot of this detail and get some sort of realism? Note i also know where i want to place certain mountain ranges, cliffs, swamps etc that will fit in the hoistory of the world.


One of the things I'm working on for the next release is user-definable terrain algorithms, which might help here. With this feature, you could quite easily make a pixel in the design-map represent a much larger patch of terrain than the current 64x64 pixel default. Thus you could draw a basic plan for your continents (eg. something like a 20x20 design-map), and then use a customised algorithm to automagically turn it into a humungous heightmap.

Cheers,
Aaron.
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Postby monks » Thu Dec 01, 2005 11:39 am

Just to let people know, the article is now up on ME-DEM. The article itself is public access, but access to the mgfs may require registration- not sure about that. It's really aimed at ME-DEM but it does sell the new image overlay feature :wink: so it should be useful more generally for yourself bcosta and others using this approach.

I'll be brave and try putting in an image:

Image

:P
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Postby Aaron » Fri Dec 02, 2005 5:16 am

Outstanding, Monks!

Congratulations on a very meticulous and well thought-out guide. I recommend it to all users as a good insight into the tricks of building terrain ‘just the way you want it’, much moreso than my basic fjord guide. The comparison of different erosion levels was really insightful - I’d never actually done a study such as that (I simply tuned the behaviour at 50% and 100% to get the right mix of speed and strength). I also liked the screenshots from Leveller; they really show the benefits of having a good 3D renderer when building terrain.

All in all, a riveting read!

Best regards,
Aaron.

PS: I’ve added a link to the article from the Wiki (I hope you don’t mind).
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Postby monks » Sun Dec 04, 2005 12:41 pm

Cheers Aaron :) - the article was as much for myself as anyone else and I enjoyed doing it. I was still very Levellercentric in the way I thought about problems because that's where I originally formed the idea for the 'transcription' approach.
Now my money's on L3DT as the prime candidate to bridge the 2D map resources out there and 3D computer realisation.
I'm very pleased that you see the value of the 3D preview/interacton stuff :D (understatement of the century !)
I absolutely love the texture generation and the L3DTVi2 viewer- awesome.
Thanks for the link to the article- I was browsing a few days ago and saw some potential for a link myself- I was going to ask you about that.
I'm going to look into the special overlays- I take your comments on board about their early point of development. I hope to do a follow up based on this depending on what I find. It will certainly materialise to reflect L3DT development.
I also plan to do tests/articles on Leveller and Wilbur.

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ME-DEM article now in wiki, too.

Postby Aaron » Thu Dec 15, 2005 1:31 am

Hi All,

Monkschain has very graciously allowed me to mirror his Middle Earth DEM article in the users' wiki, at:

http://www.bundysoft.com/wiki/doku.php?id=tutorials:me-dem:intro1

If you haven't read it I recommend you do. It gives a very detailed explanation of how to design a map 'to a plan', and it also includes some really neat demonstrations of the various terrain effects (erosion, terracing, etc).

Thanks Monks!

Cheers,
Aaron.
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