in-freakin-credible.
looks amazing.
I haven't seen monks around for quite some time but Red will be along tomorrow to answer for ya.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
in-freakin-credible.
looks amazing.
Yeah I almost live on this site....
The Me-Dem project is still running but what basically happened is that when we had a more active forum the technical difficulty got higher and higher until there were about 4 of us doing stuff and then the site got hacked and it languished in a hacked state while we waited for the webmaster to get a reboot. We got that but it was insecure so was hacked again. All out of our hands really. Then we got an upgrade about middle of last year which gave us the forum back again but there are no images loaded into the archive. So we lost all the guests and basically on a small handful of people resigned up.
At mo I am still in touch with Monks who does add a little more now and again and who does the DEM side of the map. I do the resolution upscale and procedural coloring based on climate maps that are defined, so I dont do any mapping of it whatsoever. For me its more about the tools to enable us to get to the next technical level with it all. I modified by terrain making app to cover some of the requirements of this project and renamed it GeoTerSys which is in my sig. I should mention before anyone else asks that its not a released app - its fearfully hard to drive. Monks runs some 3D views from Global Mapper or Worldmachine. Seer Blue is also a little involved tho I think his main PC failed some time back and has been quieter since then and SuLiam is one of the more stalwart passive observers.
So technically its not abandoned but its not going forward very fast at this point either. Sort of arthritic snail pace. You can post onto its forum and I think we still get notifications tho its been so long that anyone has I cant remember if it still works. We generally private mail between us now. Monks has a MySpace page with some pics on it too which I reckon is about as up to date as it gets tho he is busy with his band which is doing better and more active than the map
I think that Tolkien Enterprises should capitalize on their IP but this is a non profit, non money making thing. You sign up for free and Monks gives it out. There's no sales based on any of this stuff. Its just a fan based bit of fun really. Most people including me don't have Global Mapper to add to the data set or use it in native form. It normally has to be converted to something more common most of the time. If they yanked it then it would be a loss for everyone including them. If the project got somebody who wanted to use it for something bigger and commercial then I think we'd be onto T.E for a licensing deal. I don't think any of us are intending to go that route or seek it out tho. Were just happy to play with it as and when. Any sort of licensing deal is never going to happen if its just yanked off the face of the internet tho so why do it. But then I can never understand half of the decisions that lead companies to fail.
Hellooo If you register on ME-DEM, I'll be able to give you the data for a dem via ftp.
I'm testing World Machine 2.2 right now, so I'm back with things a little, but not modelling at the moment.
A chap contacted me via email over Christmas...was that anyone on here? I've yet to reply but I do intend to soon.
monks
The web site is over here. Mail if there are any login problems.
http://www.me-dem.org/index.php?opti...nena&Itemid=43
Its not my data I just color it up a bit with some procedural oompa loompa scripty stuff. Monks does the 3D bit. And now that you have ventured over there you can see how amazingly active its been. No need for Tolkien Ents to come in were doing just fine fossilizing all by ourselves
For your project maybe you should try Global Mapper and ask Monks for some tips. I don't have it and have no idea how to drive it.
Ha! "Tolkien Ents," that's rich...
Well, I'm not really intending to map the entirety of Middle Earth. Basically, I look at the maps used for the particular MERP module and see if I can grab just that small section from a larger DEM file. Then, I'll try to provide fine detail to the much smaller map, making it suitable for import to NWN2 where I'll add the man-made stuff.For your project maybe you should try Global Mapper and ask Monks for some tips. I don't have it and have no idea how to drive it.
Probably too ambitious a project - but, hey, why not?