Your advice conc. Fractal Terrains 3

[Pontus Bergman]

Hello!

I'm new here and need some advice from you talented guys. First, I have to say I'm very stoked by your maps and efforts - it's really extraordinary work.

I want to draw a relief shaded map from a very rough vectorized map, which only contains the country borders and the coastline dividing land and sea like a political map. After some research I'm keen on using Fractal Terrains 3 (FT3), the amount of possibilities is simply huge. Before I'm going to buy it I want to make sure that FT3 can import my vectorized map (even as a background, simply to use it as a reference) so "painting" the relief on it would be much easier. And if so - do I have to resize my vectorized map to the size of the final map first?

I've been searching for tutorials but only found some which start by creating a new map in FT3 from scratch. Thank you in advance!

[waldronate]

FT3 can import image overlays as bitmap files, but it does want them to be in the Equirectangular projection. There are tools out there that will likely be able to convert whatever projection your map currently uses to the Equirectangular projection. I wrote ReprojectImage ( http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/ReprojectImage.zip ) specifically for this purpose.

FT3 doesn't much care about the size of your image, but it is a 32-bit program, so I would recommend keeping your total image size to 20 Mpixels or less. If you want to use one coarse image for the world overlay and higher-resolution images for detail areas, that also works. I am assured that there is an experimental 64-bit version out there in private beta, but it's not particularly well tested at this stage.

[Pontus Bergman]

There are tools out there that will likely be able to convert whatever projection your map currently uses to the Equirectangular projection. I wrote ReprojectImage ( http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/ReprojectImage.zip ) specifically for this purpose.

Thank you for your response! The world map uses Wagner VII projection and it seems possible to get it into Equirectangular projection with your tool. Is there any documentation about ReprojectImage? Opening the map in it skews it into a square and it loses its proportions.

If you want to use one coarse image for the world overlay and higher-resolution images for detail areas, that also works.

So I can use my world overlay and "zoom" into more detailed areas and at the end merge them into one?

And, uh... I always like to recommend buying several copies of FT and giving away the extras to friends. I say that because I think more people should get a chance to use FT and also because I get a royalty on each one sold. Yes, I did write the beast.

First, you did a really good job. Great tool. Love it, even the demo looks complicated like hell. So... you say I should buy more than one copy? What "extras" do you think of?

[waldronate]

And, uh... I always like to recommend buying several copies of FT and giving away the extras to friends. I say that because I think more people should get a chance to use FT and also because I get a royalty on each one sold. Yes, I did write the beast.