L3DT Users' Community

Hello all.

I'm a fairly new L3DT user but so far it's a very nice tool. Would it be possible to create a script/plugin to generate a cylindrical projection of a spherical terrain?

Something like http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/tutoria ... rial8.html

http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/tutoria ... ghtmap.jpg

Thank You!

Hi Ronniell1168,

Thank you for your question, and sorry for my slow reply.

Yes, I think it would be possible for a plugin to create a cylindrical projection heightfield. I have the libnoise library compiled into an L3DT plugin already (for ridged multi-fractal terrain), so it's probably no great difficulty to wire through the cylindrical projection functions too.

However, the other algorithms in L3DT, such as the texture generation &c, will not work well with such maps. At present, these algorithms all assume the pixel spacing is constant across the whole map (i.e. X metres per pixel everywhere). However, with these maps, the pixel spacing varies with latitude, and is different for the north/south and east/west axes too. The consequence of this is that the gradient will be miscalculated the closer you get to the poles, resulting in the wrong land types being assigned. Hence, whilst L3DT could be used to generate cylindrical projection heightfields, it would not do anything else for these maps (i.e. no light map or textures.)

Best regards,
Aaron.