Avoiding Terraces

[smvwhite]

I've been having some problems with terracing (the unwanted kind as a result of applying grayscale maps to terrains).

Initially I had a 4096 terrain I had produced by tracing a contour lines of a topographical map and figured I could use filtering within GeoControl to remove such terraces. As this was not successful, I thought I would experiment with the filter settings (and Vue 6 Infinite).

Seems that no matter what I do matching 4096 GeoControl to 4096 V6I the heightfield terracing shows up on the image. I have tried:

- Filtering my topographical map at a range of different strengths before sending into V6I. (The grayscale for which has been slightly blurred in Photoshop to minimise unwanted terracing).
- Switching to procedural terrain once grayscale has been alotted to terrain in V6I (seems to reduce the terracing a little but still visible).
- Using the Terrain Presets and sending the grayscales of these into V6I.

I'd very much appreciate any help that could set me in the right direction. Thank you.

[cajomi]

There may be two reasons for the terracing:
1. You have done the basic heightfield in a 8 bit format, bmp for example. Then the terraces show up in GeoControl after the import.

2. You do not use the best format for export to Vue. You can use the tga format. Then you have to set the grid size to the terrain size and then load the image.
Or you can use the raw (16 bit format). Convert the 16 bit raw with Photoshop (or another software) to 16 bit tif. Then create a proc. terrain and load the tif as texture map in the function editor. You have to select the "bicubic" smoothing, else Vue produces also with this 16 bit format terraces.

If the original file has only 8 bit, the best is you load it into GeoControl, and make a generating (with matching filters) and the protection slider to 1024 or lower. This will kill some of the details you have produced, but it will also reduce the stairs.

[smvwhite]

Thanks for the help regarding my unwanted terraces. I realise now the problem has been my 8 bit grayscale. Converted this to 16 bit but have only ever used Picture for grayscale with standard terrains. Not quite sure how to configure the Altitude in the Function Editor after converting the terrain to procedural.

Do you know of any tutorials that will show the correct 'wiring' of function editor elements. Merely connecting the Texture map node to the Altitude function is not enough and does nothing.

Really appreciate your assistance.

[cajomi]

that should work.

My workflow:
1. create a terrain
2. reset the terrain
3. convert to proc. terrain (grid not changed, still 256)
4. switch to the proc. panel (in the terrain editor)
5. edit the function
6. add the textue map node (do not forget to connect it to the altitude)
7. load the 16bit tif
8. interpolation to bicubic

and you are done.
This works only correct in the Vue 6, in Vue 5 you have to set the size of the function (in the terrian panel, the general size, to 2.385, to get the terrian fit.

[smvwhite]

Success at last! Thank you so much for your assistance!

You have no idea how many weeks I have messed around (on and off) to get my contour map produced grayscale into something that could pass as a terrain.

Thanks Cajomi! :D :D