Hi Jez, if you're using FT then you'll pretty much have everything regards terrain that you need. I have a copy of the latest version as well, but not used if for a wee while. We use real satellite data so that adds some more steps to the process of modelling the terrain. We use Global Mapper to store all of our data and it assists muchisimo with using real terrain. Outerra will be using vector import at some point in the future, so having your enviroment/ game maps stored in vector format will be helpful- but at the mo, it's image maps.
I see World Machine 2.3 supports the preservation of gereffing data in the bt format.That's a good trend but not that helpful to us as we use hfz because it's a much smaller compressed format (plus supports gereffing info). I tend to use Wilbur for certain global processes so I need to be able to get the entire map into Wilbur. Hfz helps do that.
Basically all you need to do, like Robes said, is speak to Cameni. There's another chap over on Outerra who's also interested in getting his own terrain in there. Biomes are being developed at the moment. I imagine they'll be with us within 6 months. There have been some pretty cool enhancements to the enviroment recently- better textures, different colours in the trees, large boulders with overhangs, and tweaked the fractal for outcrops.
I''m talking purely about the terrain (not texturing). I should say though that you might be disappointed with the results of using procedural terrain in Outerra. The sheer scale of draw distance is great but it also allows people to see the terrain warts and all...as geography (rather than a restricted film set, render,/ game level, etc). You will inevitably compare your world to the Earth data. The first time we got our terrain into Outerra Robes, Cameni and myself thought the procedural stuff was disappointing. So I demoed a new process I'd wanted to try for a while, using real world data to create Mordor. The results were pretty spectacular compared to the old stuff, so we decided to do the rest that way too. I suppose it depends on what you want. If you want Earth-like land forms, then you need the macro forms of the mountain chains. FT will do a pretty good job of the rivers (only Robes, Joe Slayton and Johannes of GeoControl have tackled that problem), so that will help but it doesn't do convincing mountain chains. If you don't, then FT terrain out the box will be fine.
I think there may be an iterative process you could apply to try simulate them using Wilbur (and no doubt FT could do it). Basically the idea is to run the erosion processes. Then mask out the rivers, and run noise and incise flows again on mountain areas. Mask rivers, add noise and repeat. That way you might get tree-like river/valley networks growing. You might need to add some height at each step though as erosion would wear down the terrain to nothing. Scripting would be great, but unfortunately we don't have that. Maybe you could put in a feature request? :-D I use Wilbur to create coastlines- crinkle up the terrain at the edges. A bit of noise and a few iterations of incise flows creates some pretty cool fractal erosion. I'm thinking that maybe that might do it.
Or you could use satellite data. I think there was a small tut or something on WM recently about how to use it. But it's pretty straight forward really.
Presuming you would want the realistic macro land forms, this is what I'd do. Create your terrain in two layers. A base, and the top layer. The base gives you a more or less flat surface onto which to add the top layer and it controls the landforms (height) at a geographic level. (In our case it also controls water flow but that might not be important to you). The bottom layer doesn't need to be at full project res- I usually apply global processes to it at 1/4 res. The top layer is the satellite data and any procedurals. I don't use procedural terrain now, just erosion. Layering allows you to just "add" terrain and it's clearer what's happening to the heights. For us only using the add operation helps preserve the correct water flow set up in the base layer or any layers beneath it.
I've not used FT for a while but what I'd do is maybe try running the erosion to get all the rivers, then mask out the rivers and remove all of the terrain detail between rivers (blur or whatever other tools there are available). Grab the river mask and export to World Machine.. and import your satellite data as patches. For the raminaing spaces you could fill them with procedural noise or you could selectively apply another satellite data layer to fill them in. I might reverse the order of the last two steps, ie add the mountains last.
I'd also create an estuary map- a river mask which controls the width of rivers along their course. That's another strong visual cue when seeing things in Outerra. There's a couple of tuts on here on how to do it in Photoshop. You might also use that or some variant of it to control erosion. That might help give you wider/deeper rivers towards the coast- something you probably won't have. I'd apply that erosion at the beginning of the tmd to the bottom layer.
(We created our bottom layer using vectorised contours -that's a very natural way to get those river forms but it's a pita to create it, and you need Photoshop, Global Mapper or WinTopo).
Basically my tmd network is the two layers are added, and the placement of the fill-in data is controlled by masks.
At the end sprinkle some erosion in WM to knit together the layers with the sediment carry and the channels. It might take too much height off, so clamp the output.
...this was only meant to be a short post so apologies...I'm sure you have tons of alternative ways of doing the various steps. Hope this helps. Feel free to drop us a line
I looked at your site btw. Very cool stuff, I especially liked the terrain and the splat maps using the channels. That's something I should learn how to do.
monks
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