L3DT Users' Community

Wow, I went to the TG site to check in on TG 2 and I found a bunch of stuff. The main feature that blew my mind was the one I have in bold in the Quoate area.

Aaron and I hand a few others had a conversation about bieng able to get over hangs and all said it could not be done YET a while back. God I love Hi-Tech and the bleeding edge sometimes.

Well I guess they got some of the Math from either NASA or the Goverment somewhere as they going to release a version. Wow I have to admit I will buy that puppy just for that feature alone. Now that we know it is possible, I am thinking it is time to get more info on it and find the sourse so L3DT can have that same feature by years end or the next. Now we know the info is out there for us to find /winks.....

* Cutting-edge adaptive subdivision renderer.
* Modular, plugin-based architecture.
* Render entire planets, sweeping vistas, tiny rock gardens, or anything in between.
* Import 3D objects for rendering. Export high resolution objects.
* Render millions of boulders or trees using "instancing"; even billions of virtual objects
* Add multiple heightfields to your scene. Use procedural terrains that can span an entire planet.
* Apply almost "infinite" fractal detail to terrain and other objects.
* Overhanging terrain using procedural displacements, image-based displacements, or imported geometry.
* Volumetric clouds or fast "2.5D" clouds.
* Production quality anti-aliasing and motion blur.

Anyway you all probobly know about all that, but was a sweet surprise for me.

DT

Hi Maylock,

Urgh, this is going to get technical.

Previously we discussed how heightfields are single-valued; each x-y coordinate pair can only have one z height. Overhangs have more than one z height for a given x-y coordinate, and so you can do an overhang in a heightfield.

What Terragen 2 does is convert the heightfield into 3D geometry (i.e. a mesh), and then adds the overhangs to the geometry on-the-fly with procedural methods or from a 3D mesh import. TG2 then renders the combined mesh, and bingo, there's your overhang.

However, Terragen2 cannot then convert that mesh back into a heightfield. This is because the mesh is not single-valued (more than one z for an x-y pair). Thus you can't save a TER file with an overhang in it. There is no way around this.

Anyway, since L3DT only deals with heightfields, and not 3D mesh geometry, L3DT can't do overhangs. If I were to implement terrain mapping as 3D mesh geometry, not only would it blow your RAM requirements through the roof and take a lot longer, but it would also break the rest of the calculation algorithms. Water mapping, light mapping, texturing, etc all work explicitly with heightifelds. If you want me to re-write these for meshes, I'll get back to you in a couple of years.

In any case, aren't I supposed to be implementing a direct-to-TSE export option and a 3D renderer later this year? Surely they are more important than overhangs.

Cheers,
Aaron.

Ahh I C,

Err no don't do all that work and it sounds like it wouldn't be worth it at all. I just thought maybe they had something good for us to play with, but looks like just a stand alone kinda thing for rendering animations and the like with no real video game qualities then it sounds like with TG2. Bummer!! though as that sure would have been sweet to somehow achive that without having to go to mesh, dang
I am sure the Army has it, just not sharing is all ROTFL. Like we talked about before, OK thanks for the explanation on that for me. I actually understood what you were saying hahahahaha....Your the Ogre /smiles er man hahahaha....

Aaron Wrote:

In any case, aren't I supposed to be implementing a direct-to-TSE export option and a 3D renderer later this year? Surely they are more important than overhangs.

HAHAHAHA hehehe no chit so keep on the path my brother keep on the path, hahah TSE all the way.... it is just that over hang thing with me, or the dumb artist as it were hahahaha
Anyway I would rather have the paint brush re-size adjustable before anything other of my requests. And I know that is somewhere on the drawing board so I am good my brother I am happy. Get that brush down to the right size and we can make roads, streams, and all kinds of neat landscape sculptures in the terrains without depending on overlay maps. Thanks for your time bro, that helped me allot.

DT