Re: WorldMachine and RS and Displacement and Height maps ...

[Aidan O Driscoll]

Hi Guys,

My apologies George - I mixed up names somehow. I MEANT NEIL who asked previously:

 > BTW: see http://www.world-machine.com for some fascinating new landscape
> simulation software!
Is the interface with RealSoft real easy?

So sorry to Neil too BUT ye both replied as well as Garry and may at some stage use and tweak my step by step tute, so all worked out in the end.

So George [ this time ]:

"So what I understand is that Realsoft will do some subdivision of a mesh using a bitmap texture, but the resolution is not high. Is that resolution documented somewhere or do we have to just experiment to find out what works."

Not documented as far as I know so experimentation. I did some delving into past posts and found that the Bump Height and the Max Displacement values have to be set to the same for best results [ according to one of the guru's ]. It would seem a good resolution to start with for the mesh is 10 x 10 as opposed to the 2 x 2 default - I have not tried but I would imagine that a higher res mesh and higher disp height values would lead to higher render times. So its whatever your processor and your patience will handle.

"Did you try using the bitmap to displace a nurbs mesh?"  No not yet - over to you - A George tute addendum :)

 

THANKS GARRY FOR THE COMMEND. As I said I will always try to write stuff "for the rest of us". I dont like things to be assumed - myself and write accordingly.  I look forward to other observations by those who try this little tute - please post your thoughts and additions.

GEORGE: "The rocket science at this stage is beyond my time resources to even get
close to. I have "stolen" the various procedures posted, of course, and they
are in that bulging file called "how-to-in-RS"."

The steps I outlined would take you about 30/40 seconds to get through once you try it once. Heres an image [ link below ] I did in RS with a Bump and  a Texture Image I took from TERRAGEN. I created a MATERIAL as in the tute I posted, but added an extra TEXTURE object into the MATERIAL under an additional  SURFACE PROPERTIES Shader [ Right Click Material, New, Shader ] above the SURFACE GEOMETRY Shader. I added the texture object from the VSL Objects subsection [ Drag/Drop ]. The bump image into the GEOM Shader and the Texture Image under SURFACE PROPERTIES Shader. Like this:

Material
     I_____Surface Properties
            I_____________Color=Texture [ Map coords ]
    
    I_____Surface Geometry
            I_____________Bump Height=Bump [ Map coords ]
 
 
The Sky is just a BAD environment map, mapped to a large Sphere around the Terrain. The terrain mesh is a rectangular 10 x 10 SDS mesh.

http://tidalsound.com/3dstuff/landscape.jpg.

This image is complete Displacement in RS - value 0.05

Two shakes of a lambs tail is when you would have it done by [ as we say here in Ireland, one of many strange ways to denote time passing :) ] once you exported the JPGs and / or converted them from TGA to Jpgs post export and then into RS. RENDERING took about 3 minutes - P4 2.8 XP Pro.

Cheers lads,
Aidan