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Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

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Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby Aaron » Fri May 03, 2013 12:38 pm

Hi Everyone,

L3DT version 13.0X is shaping up nicely, with most of the remaining items on the to do list relating to documentation or minor tweaks. A beta release should be available later this month, with the final release in June/July (weather permitting.)

Does anyone have any last-minute requests for version 13.0X before the code is finalised? If so, please reply to this forum thread.

Cheerio,
Aaron.
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Re: Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby Bush » Fri May 17, 2013 4:40 pm

A raster output filetype other than .png (.bmp?) when exporting AM layers would be nice - particularly if it allows for the export of single images bigger than around 10240x10240 - beyond which .png seems to fail with monotonous regularity...
In fact, .png is frequently problematic even with mosaic output, but it's currently the only non L3DT-specific output type available.

*edit*
I should mention that the .bmp import AM option works nicely on all sizes up to and including 20480x20480 - extremely useful!

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Re: Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby Aaron » Sat May 18, 2013 11:51 am

Hi Bush,

Thank you for the suggestion. I was aghast to find I had overlooked BMP support for the attributes map. The updated plugin is now available from here:

http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/downloads ... ap-bin.zip [114kB]

To apply the update, extract the plugin from the zip file, and copy it over the existing file at:

C:\Program files (x86)\Bundysoft\L3DT [version]\Extensions\

Please let me know if you find any problems with the updated plugin, and thanks again for your feedback!

Best regards,
Aaron.
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Re: Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby Bush » Mon May 20, 2013 12:08 pm

Wow!
Thanks very much for the fast reply Aaron!
I found the updated plugin - installed no problema and worked without a hitch! - You're a genius (but then again, we knew that already ;))
I managed to export a 32768x32768 .bmp AM layer - Bigger than I needed! - Bigger than I could subsequently handle, actually!
- Terrific!

Thanks once again for your help - and for such an excellent program!


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Re: Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby Aaron » Tue May 21, 2013 3:32 pm

Hi Bush,

Thanks, I'm glad I could help. If there's anything else I can do, please let me know.

Cheerio,
Aaron.
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Re: Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby MacroManJr » Fri Jun 28, 2013 2:19 pm

Hi Aaron!

I'm not sure how close to finalizing L3DT version 13.0X you've come, but perhaps if you still have a little room to squeeze in a nice little feature, how about have an Indicator somewhere for telling us the heights of the highest elevation point and the lowest elevation point of the terrains?

I know I can always just mouse over the heightmap and check the height of any point of the maps, and I'm not sure if this feature already exists to some other degree in L3DT, but if there's not, it'd be nice if I had a way to take all of the guesswork in finding those heights.

Sometimes I export heightmaps into programs where you have to set the height of the generated terrain, particularly Unity game engine. Most of the time, I just mouse around for a nearby high point and round it off, but if I could define the max height of the heightmap's terrain exactly, that'd be nice.

And maybe you could even have the mean land elevation tucked in between those two indicators, but really, just the first two alone would be plenty enough.

Also, perhaps not with this release but maybe later down the line, I would like to request for importing .obj terrains in order to extract height maps from them, which is a feature simply not out there much anywhere. Again, I'm not sure if there's already support for this feature existing somehow, but if not, this would be nice, as there just aren't many programs at all that do this and extracting a heightmap from mesh terrains is a bit time-consuming.

If you're too close to finalization by this point, then that's cool. I really appreciate your program! I just think it's the best-designed terrain-generation software out there. Looking forward to seeing version 13.0X!

- Brian L. (MacroManJr)
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Re: Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby Aaron » Wed Jul 03, 2013 12:03 pm

Hi Brian,

I apologise for my slow reply. The feature you're looking for is in the menu at 'Operations->Heightfield->Change vertical range'. This opens a window that reports the maximum, minimum and mean heights of the map (userguide is here).

MacroManJr wrote:Also, perhaps not with this release but maybe later down the line, I would like to request for importing .obj terrains in order to extract height maps from them, which is a feature simply not out there much anywhere. Again, I'm not sure if there's already support for this feature existing somehow, but if not, this would be nice, as there just aren't many programs at all that do this and extracting a heightmap from mesh terrains is a bit time-consuming.


Thanks for the request. Rasterising a mesh back into a heightfield is a bit of a fraught task, but I'll pop it on the dev plan and have a think about how it might (or might not) work.

MacroManJr wrote:If you're too close to finalization by this point, then that's cool. I really appreciate your program! I just think it's the best-designed terrain-generation software out there. Looking forward to seeing version 13.0X!


Thanks for your encouragement. As it stands, v13 won't be ready until the last quarter of 2013 - time has been evaporating much faster than it used to now that I have a young (and adorable) family. That said, the current dev build should be a pretty good approximation of the final release (but for a few little to-do's), so if you're interested, please feel free to give it a try.

Cheerio,
Aaron.
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Re: Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby MacroManJr » Mon Jul 08, 2013 3:15 am

Thank you for your reply! And no problem about the wait--it was no delay for me. I've been so busy lately, I quickly lost track of time and forgot about my suggestions here until today!

Thank you for pointing me to the Minimum and Maximum Altitudes in "Change heightfield vertical range." Yep, this solves it completely for me! Thank you for the informative link to the reference guide.

Also, thanks for your consideration of my "mesh-to-height map" suggestion. I do a bit of development myself, so I understand. If it proves too troublesome, and more trouble than it's worth, that's no problem. I can well live without it. But I thank for your putting it on your list of considerations anyways.

In any case, I do have some solutions for myself with extracting height maps from meshes, such as rendering height maps using my 3D package or displacement maps with xNormal.

I'm just glad L3DT is there for editing any of my extracted height maps! And I do more creating height maps than extracting them, anyways.

Thanks for all your help! Good luck with the development (and your family)!

- Brian L. (MacroManJr)
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Re: Final feature requests for L3DT version 13.0X?

Postby Telarus » Tue Jul 09, 2013 4:55 am

Hey guys,

You're talking about "displacement mapping" from an arbitrary poly-mesh back to a grid-plane (thus to UVV space). This is the mainstay of apps like Zbrush/Mudbox, etc.

I found a Sourceforge project that appears to pull it off: http://sourceforge.net/projects/denormgen/

There are other indie apps that can do it, like Marmoset or TopoGun.


Good luck!
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