Creating precise landscapes

[stigbn]

Hi:

I want to buy Geocontrol, to use the isolines and roads in version 2, however I have a question:

Most of the things I see in the tutorials are sort of fantasy landscapes, real looking, but not copies of real landscapes.

Can you create a precise landscape from af map? I need to re-create real landscapes for visualisation. (And I don't have access to DEM-files or similar in this case)

I have maps with height-curves (also called isolines, but not quite the same as in GeoControl as I understand it). I use to draw the height curves by hand in photoshop and make various shades of gray to represent the heights. I usually blur it a bit afterwards, and then I use this as a height-map in Vue. But it doesn't look good, it's often very terrassed.

I like to get something better, but I still need the exact same heights along the height-lines, and the same rivers and roads as there are on the original map.

So all I need from GeoControl is its ability to create natural looking ground between the height-lines.

Is this possible?

[cajomi]

Hi,

it's in principle possible create a real terraine in GeoControl2. But it 's very difficult and need a lot of patience.

Johannes

[patrakis]

Hi Johannes,

Would it be possible to develop a tutorial to do just that by any chance? It would be interesting for me also. Or would anyone know of a software that permits just that?

Thanks

Pat

[TJ_Dave]

This is basically what I need as well.

The ability to draw lines for the coast, the highest points, roads, rivers etc and have it interpolate between and make it really detailed would be fantastic. It's all well and good having a tool that can make fantastic looking landscapes but would be far more useful if they could be half accurate as well, would make the job of pleasing art directors a bit easier!

[patrakis]

Here you go! 3 users in need of the same tutorial. Now if that doesn't warrant a little tutorial...i don't know what does :)

PAt

[patrakis]

Bumping up this thread in case you didn't notice Cajomi. I'm still waiting on this to buy.

Pat

[cajomi]

Hi Pat

what mean you exactly.

Johannes

[patrakis]

Hi there,

I mean that i'm waiting to see how i can do what the original poster of this thread described before buying Geocontrol.

I would really like to see a tutorial showing me how to take an existing fantasy map with contour lines, incorporate that in geocontrol, and get a real representation of the terrain based on the contour lines.

Would that be possible and could such a tutorial be made?

Pat

[cajomi]

Hi Pat,

I am sorry but there are not tutorials for conture lines.

In principle it is possible with GC2 to create and modify exactly conture lines, but it is a lot
of work. A very exactly work is possible only for experts.

A tutorial for this work is in programm at a later time.

Johannes

[patrakis]

Thanks Cajomi,

Yeah i knew there wasn't one currently in the program but i'm happy it can be done and i'm happy you'll do a tutorial about it in the futur.

thanks for your response.

Pat

[Patrick210]

I have been working on a project using GeoControl and Photoshop to generate some varied and fairly specific terrains. I've been combining multiple terrains into one map by exporting from GC as 16 bit tif's and then combining them in Photoshop. By the use of cloning and layers it is possible to create quite a varied terrain. I then export out as a 16 bit raw file and render in Carrara. I was thinking about about your problem of precise landscapes. You could generate a number of terrains in GC with single large specific features such as mtns, etc. Then start with your base map in Photoshop and bring in your GC maps on different layers and resize and postion the individual features to match your layout and then clean up with cloning, etc. It's really not that much work and opens up a lot of possibilites.

[GunnerMan]

Why can't you use DEM data? http://www.wooblelab.com/command/show/67-3d-height-map-from-usgs here is a tutorial on how to convert DEM data to a height map.


http://seamless.usgs.gov/ for the free satelite data.

[Patrick210]

I think they are talking about creating specific fantasy terrains, such as folllowing the hand drawn maps of LOR or such.

[patrakis]

Yep,

DEM data for a world that doesn't exist is difficult to find. :)

Pat

[GunnerMan]

Ahh well here is a tutorial on making heightmaps from regular images. Check it out http://geekatplay.com/tutorials/islandext/