First River and Lake test render

[cajomi]

Rendered in Carrara - Vue is not exact enough and shows, that it is internaly working with a 8 bit heightresolution. I will have to work on a special solution for Vue.
This are two terrains, one for the mountains and one for the water.
Still not as I want it, but much better than the water terrain of version 1. So, this is only a preview in alpha state and the tool will be improved till release.

As to see: There are really low sloped parts and higher sloped parts. Some areas were really hard work for GeoControl 2, because even if it is nearly unvisilble, GeoControl 2 had to calculate many break throughs, to get a continious non broken flow. The calculation is nearly scientific and the result is a absolute correct water flow.

[Criss]

Nice rivers you have there. I thought the 16bit greyscale TIFF is still a 16bit in Vue or does Vue change it into 8bit for some weird reason?

[cajomi]

I thought it too.
But now, with the both terrains, where an exact caculation is needed, it was clear visible, that Vue is not operating with 16 bit.
If you turn of the interpolation, you see stairs, the typical 8 bit stairs. The higher visible resolution is caused by the interpolation, not by the original terrain.
I had also found, that the tga import does not generate the original terrain, but a smoothed version. So, the tga is also not importing the full 16 bit resolution.

The most crazy thing with that: Internal Vue uses floats, 32 bit. All the functions are expecting float values!

[Criss]

What is with that. Shesh! If anything Vue should be able to import and read 32bit terrain heightfields. Carrara does this easily as we already know. I just wish Carrara's skies were better looking and object duplication/instancing handled better with memory.

Now when i think back on it i knew there was something wrong with the terrains i imported into Vue but i just could not figure it out. I thought i was doing something wrong.

[monks]

Nice results! The most important thing is the fact that you've got uninterrupted rivers flowing over pretty flat terrain *at all*. Having a water heightmap is a big bonus.

monks

[cajomi]

Not only in flat areas:
GC2 will be able to create break throughs, when there is an obstacle. You can decide, whether there should be created a lake or a "canyon", not for every, but in general.
This is most important for fractal terrains. We have seen, that it is nearly impossible, to create a permant falling slope and at the same time a realistic looking terrain.

The main problems are solved, I am working on some necesary improvements.

The problems which had to be solved for this tool were really "heavy". In the theory it sounds really simple, but the "devil" was in the details. No wonder, that no one less than James Bardeen had done this work for pandromeda.

[Criss]

This new stuff you are working on sounds exciting to say the least. :)

[monks]

This is why I didn't go with Vue- the dem import support. It's really great at lots of other things but this whole area seems to be a weakness (size of imported dems as well). Last I heard anyway.

GC2 will be able to create break throughs, when there is an obstacle. You can decide, whether there should be created a lake or a "canyon", not for every, but in general.

Yep, that's a good thing- and (I imagine) not easy to implement. That's great. I think that some kind of ability to mask over the river heightfield (or network) would compliment this. You could run your rivers, get your mask, then make changes to the masked terrain if you wanted to smooth away some canyons on the river banks for eg. Maybe that would need a limiter on the filter (ie do not alter terrain below the level of the river bank). That way you can have canyons, lakes and anything in between.

The problems which had to be solved for this tool were really "heavy". In the theory it sounds really simple, but the "devil" was in the details. No wonder, that no one less than James Bardeen had done this work for pandromeda.

Ouch- I feel your pain :D I'm sure one feels the need to say 'hey, you *will* like my rivers!!!' hehe I've also gone to some lengths to get accurate rivers in my dems- most folk probably (understandably) say huh?! why bother?!
I'm sure this work will pay off- because as we know, rivers are going to come into games- better be prepared. I think getting rivers down as a heightfield has got massive potential- especially for larger terrains. Maybe that's another code headache but that's a big prize!


Looking forward to having a look at this!

monks