Best practise to create terrain from DEM or original geo map

#1

Hallo everybody,
I’m a Vue 10 user (on Mac Os Leopard) and I was going to recreate some original territories (of the world) utilizing DEM file and/or Geo map (topological maps or image took from Google Maps (SAT).

I met many problems…
DEM file we need must to be in hight quality and we can find freely only the USGS DEM file just for US territories (DEM quality 30 mt 1 arc second end 10 mt 1/3 arc second) . For other world territories are not avaiable Hight quality DEM file (you can find 90 mt an over DEM file…) and therefore you can recreate in Vue a decent terrain with these file…
The questions about DEM file therefore are these:
if and as we can improve in VUE the DEM file of low quality (great of 1 or 1 / arc second) directly imported in Vue as DEM file or as geotiff?

About create a Map to import in Vue (Terrain Editor/Picture/Import terrain data) I don’t know if is better to prepare these map (in Photoshop) in gray-scale 16 bit OR in RGB 16 bit. At the same time, I don’t know if is a good idea bring these maps directly from Google Maps (Satellite) OR from from Google Maps (Relief) to create in Photoshop a greyscale o B&W maps to import in VUE.

In general I’m very interest to this argument and I hope there’ll somebody who can help me and talking about these fascinating techniques.

Many thanks!

#2

usually i grab some google mesh with sketchup, create a differencemap via mudbox and refine it with worldmachine, then load this map as a hightmap in vues procedural terrain. most difficult task is with worldmachine to get more detail while keeping the general shape.

#3

Hi K,

I utilize Mudbox but I know now just how to make a Displacemente and Normal maps … how can I make a Differnt maps?

I’m a MAc user and I didn’t know World Machine… but why I cannot directly in Vue the Different maps created in Mudbox?

Many thx!

#4

Anybody is there?:shrug:

#5

There are not enough Vue users in the gene pool.

#6

Hi Schawn,
Gene pool???
:hmm:

#7

There are more e-on Vue forums than there are Vue users that post in them. Anyway, do you have GeoControl? It is a good terrain generator for Vue.

#8

Hi Schawn, no i didn’t know it. I a Mac user but Geocontrol maybe can go with Parallels desktop. Anyway, which is the integration between two software? What make you in GeoControl and what in Vue…?

#9

Don’t know if you wanna spend money but this tutorial helped me out a lot.

http://www.cmivfx.com/tutorials/view/259/Vue+Moving+Matte+Paintings

It shows how to find good DEM References and how to import and use it in vue.

I didn’t bought it because of DEM I bought it for vue mapping and AE explanation but the DEM chapter ist pretty nice and good explained.

#10

I already bought this awesome tuts BUT, BUT, BUT it talks about only DEM file from USGS (very HQ DEM). For the rest of the world are freely avaiable low quality DEM files… I know, it’s already hard to make a good terrain in Vue from High quality DEM files… can you imagine what happens when you dale a low quality DEM files…

Anywhere thx!

#11

sorry for not replaying earlier…the difference map can be done by creating a simple plane with the same dimensions like your hightfield-mesh…the render out a displacement map with the plane as lowdetail object and your hightfield as highdetail object. just tweak the maximum displacement value abit to have a high contrast map and no clipping at the peaks. this displacement/difference map can be loaded into vue, or photoshop or worldmachine for further refinement

#12

Hi KRZ,
I didn’t understand what you mean by “difference map”… until have you specified that it is a Displacement map.
Good.

THX!

#13

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