cajomi
20.June2007, 09:14
After 6 weeks the new tool river and lakes is done. As far as I know, GeoControl is the first not scientific software, which is able to caculate rivers and lakes, including the water level, on existing terrains.
This was the may be most challenging algorithm to develope since the start of GeoControl.
In general: This is a simulation, not really water. In most landscapes it will create convincing details, but not in all. As always, it is fast. It needs a lot of memory, but not more then the rendering, so even 8192 terrains shoould be possible.
The tool has new sliders, which will step for step replace all windows sliders.
The water system is losseless, not really realistic, but better for rendering.
Short intoduction into the functions:
There are two different coloured sliders: The more dark and with a light red text coloured sliders cause a complete new calculation, while the others use the generated datas and are much faster.
From top to buttom:
The "Place springs" button
is for placing the springs and for showing the placed springs. To hide the springs use the menu "View - Redraw"
You can place springs above each other. This may be sensful for greater valley rivers to get enough water.
Area
Additional springs are placed around every spring.
Randomness
Adds random to the flows. Use it, otherwise the rivers will get very small. It may happen, that the randomness produces broken flows, then try another randomness value.
Deepness
Sets the general deepness of the flows.
Deepness developement
The higher the value, the faster the flows get deep. Whether this is realistic or not depends mostly on the material of the landscape.
Smoothing
Smooths the river beds
Enable lakes
Normally this checkbox should be checked, else the river tool works more like an erosion and the flows will stop soon.
Lake reduction
This enables GeoControl to caculate break throughs. In general the value should be not lower than 5, else the rivers might stop. High values may produce unrealisitc results.
Max lake height
If GeoControl finds a lake, which is deeper than the max lake height, the flow will stop in this lake, else GeoControl will create a flow out of the lake. The max lake height has a great influence how the break throughs and the flows are calculate. Best is first to search for the deepest lake and then to play a bit with higher values and look for the best result.
Precision
Sets the precision for the lake search. You will see that different precisions create different flows and lakes. The higher the precision (=low value), the longer the calculation. Sometimes low precisions (10-1) can produce very convincing break throughs.
Waterlevel
This slider has only influence to the "water filled" and "water rised" terrains. It sets, how much water is in the river. This works very convincing within the flows, but the water of the lakes is also reduced, which can cause broken flows in the flows out and into the lakes.
Rivertyp
The dry typ produces the dried out rivers. Use this rivers in combination with the "water rised" typ, to combine two terrains, one for the water and one for the terrain and river beds. This method will work in Carrara, Bryce and hopefully TG2.
In the other applications use the "water filled" typ. The flowmap then is generated as mask and fits exactly to the water parts, which are flatt and fill the river beds.
Create
Creates the rivers and lakes.
Clear
Deletes all springs
The wideness of the rivers depends on the flatness of the terrain - not the slope!
So, if you need wider rivers, use erosions with a high "slope depence". This will smooth the low sloped parts and the rivers will get wide in this areas. "Thin Flows 2" has here the advantage, that with a middle slopedepence the high sloped parts keep sharp.
Also "This flows deep" is able to create rough erosions in high sloped areas, while low sloped parts keep smooth.
Bug fixes
Thin flows deep and Hard fluvial terraces were not correct initialized, if the "change" filter menu was used.
Isolevel control now also reacts to a single click.
The status bar no shows, when the saving of terrain settins is done.
Position of 2D/3D button was to far right.
Soft fluvial and soft fluvial inverse did not work correct with a selection.
Shader mismatch in the shader list - shader did not correspondent to the selected.
Color for shader was resetted, when the dialog was canceld.
Artefacts showed up after deleting an isoline.
After clear isolines the view was not actualized.
Artefacts when using the isoline tool (or spring tool) while GeoControl generated or rendered a terrain.
Have fun
Johannes Rosenberg
-cajomi-
PS Next tool: Roads
downloadlink:
www.cajomi.de/Up/GeoControlAlpha_Build15_Setup.exe (http://www.cajomi.de/Up/GeoControlAlpha_Build15_Setup.exe)
This was the may be most challenging algorithm to develope since the start of GeoControl.
In general: This is a simulation, not really water. In most landscapes it will create convincing details, but not in all. As always, it is fast. It needs a lot of memory, but not more then the rendering, so even 8192 terrains shoould be possible.
The tool has new sliders, which will step for step replace all windows sliders.
The water system is losseless, not really realistic, but better for rendering.
Short intoduction into the functions:
There are two different coloured sliders: The more dark and with a light red text coloured sliders cause a complete new calculation, while the others use the generated datas and are much faster.
From top to buttom:
The "Place springs" button
is for placing the springs and for showing the placed springs. To hide the springs use the menu "View - Redraw"
You can place springs above each other. This may be sensful for greater valley rivers to get enough water.
Area
Additional springs are placed around every spring.
Randomness
Adds random to the flows. Use it, otherwise the rivers will get very small. It may happen, that the randomness produces broken flows, then try another randomness value.
Deepness
Sets the general deepness of the flows.
Deepness developement
The higher the value, the faster the flows get deep. Whether this is realistic or not depends mostly on the material of the landscape.
Smoothing
Smooths the river beds
Enable lakes
Normally this checkbox should be checked, else the river tool works more like an erosion and the flows will stop soon.
Lake reduction
This enables GeoControl to caculate break throughs. In general the value should be not lower than 5, else the rivers might stop. High values may produce unrealisitc results.
Max lake height
If GeoControl finds a lake, which is deeper than the max lake height, the flow will stop in this lake, else GeoControl will create a flow out of the lake. The max lake height has a great influence how the break throughs and the flows are calculate. Best is first to search for the deepest lake and then to play a bit with higher values and look for the best result.
Precision
Sets the precision for the lake search. You will see that different precisions create different flows and lakes. The higher the precision (=low value), the longer the calculation. Sometimes low precisions (10-1) can produce very convincing break throughs.
Waterlevel
This slider has only influence to the "water filled" and "water rised" terrains. It sets, how much water is in the river. This works very convincing within the flows, but the water of the lakes is also reduced, which can cause broken flows in the flows out and into the lakes.
Rivertyp
The dry typ produces the dried out rivers. Use this rivers in combination with the "water rised" typ, to combine two terrains, one for the water and one for the terrain and river beds. This method will work in Carrara, Bryce and hopefully TG2.
In the other applications use the "water filled" typ. The flowmap then is generated as mask and fits exactly to the water parts, which are flatt and fill the river beds.
Create
Creates the rivers and lakes.
Clear
Deletes all springs
The wideness of the rivers depends on the flatness of the terrain - not the slope!
So, if you need wider rivers, use erosions with a high "slope depence". This will smooth the low sloped parts and the rivers will get wide in this areas. "Thin Flows 2" has here the advantage, that with a middle slopedepence the high sloped parts keep sharp.
Also "This flows deep" is able to create rough erosions in high sloped areas, while low sloped parts keep smooth.
Bug fixes
Thin flows deep and Hard fluvial terraces were not correct initialized, if the "change" filter menu was used.
Isolevel control now also reacts to a single click.
The status bar no shows, when the saving of terrain settins is done.
Position of 2D/3D button was to far right.
Soft fluvial and soft fluvial inverse did not work correct with a selection.
Shader mismatch in the shader list - shader did not correspondent to the selected.
Color for shader was resetted, when the dialog was canceld.
Artefacts showed up after deleting an isoline.
After clear isolines the view was not actualized.
Artefacts when using the isoline tool (or spring tool) while GeoControl generated or rendered a terrain.
Have fun
Johannes Rosenberg
-cajomi-
PS Next tool: Roads
downloadlink:
www.cajomi.de/Up/GeoControlAlpha_Build15_Setup.exe (http://www.cajomi.de/Up/GeoControlAlpha_Build15_Setup.exe)