Need advice on terrain building [hi-res terrain with low-res height map]

#1

Hi there!

Hope this doesn’t get too long…

I’m new to Vue and have just watched a couple of hours of tutorials covering the basics, terrain-building, ecosystems and stuff.
Unfortunately I still have no clue how to achieve what I have to (in very short time, of course…)
I need to build a mountain terrain for a hi-res render. The furthest mountains are about 25km away from the camera, thus it has to be a huge terrain. Camera is near the ground so the closest areas have to be suitable for close-up rendering.
Guess I have to use several terrains where the closest is small and hi-res, the furthest huge and low- to mid-res.
Problem is, following an fxphd tutorial I was able to generate some nice mountain landscape with a procedural terrain and a terrain fractal node to drive it but the overall mountain shape is always random. However, I have to build a special, existing landscape so the shape of the mountains is determined.
My first approach was to download ASTER DEM files (16bit tiff) of the area but they’re only accurate to 30m and thus everything but hi-res. No ridges at all. I hoped I could use them for the rough shape of the landscape and carve out the finer details using fractals in any way. So far no really satisfying result, however, but then I don’t really have too much experience with the function editor, either…
Second approach was to model the mountains using standard terrains and deforming the mountains with the raise brush according to the desired shape but those didn’t look real at all… Guess procedurals are superior but maybe harder to sculpt.

Anyone know how to tackle this the right way?

Now I could go on and tell you that the mountains have to be partially covered in snow and I guess the snowy areas should be smoother than the rest and so on but that’s not the primary concern now.

Hope someone can point me in the right direction!
Maybe I should add that I use Vue 9.5.

Thanks and cheers!

#2

I am still on Vue 8.4, so I can’t help you specifically, but I know that Vue 9/9.5 has a couple of new zone features in the terrain editor. One enables you to “extract” a specific portion of your procedural terrain as a seperate terrain. You should probably try this and edit your extracted terrain seperately. This way you should be able to use your 30 m image map and blend it with fractals to increase detail while still maintaining all the other procedural things in the distance.

I don’t know if this feature is covered in this tutorial, but you could give it a try. http://www.geekatplay.com/flvplayer/player_full.php?pathinfo=http://www.vcode.com/tutorialsvue9/terraineditoroverview2.mp4

Else just wait until somebody with Vue 9 comes along :wink: or consult the manual for “zone extraction”.

Edit: If you’re on Facebook there’s a very active Vue group there where you can get help a lot quicker than at CGtalk. Unfortunately the Vue specific forum is not that frequented here :frowning:

http://de-de.facebook.com/groups/vuegalleries/

#3

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