I Thought Tectonics Would Be Easy But...

[johnvanvliet]

WorldEngine works
BUT
very slow ( DEAD SLOW ) and it outputs a mostly useless EIGHT BIT height map ( -gs Height.png )
-- a 8bit 0,255 4 band rgba image and using tiff or tga or pgm also outputs a 8 bit image

it is not yet in pip
the setup.py uses "wget" to grab needed things

also tho resulting image dose map to a CYLINDER( not sphere ) it is sort of a Mercator projection and is 4 way tillable

[Azélor]

What's World mapper?

[johnvanvliet]

mentioned on page #1 and #2 is

https://github.com/Mindwerks/worldengine

a merger of two other programs "lands" and "WorldSynth"

the examples on the git page are from WorldSynth
and do not yet match the current program

[acrosome]

Here's one result, Wilbur'd a bit and colourised. It doesn't look great.

Odd. There are tiny islands everywhere. Almost like it is assuming a uniform shallow sea.

Maybe just keep trying seeds?

Anyway, I see you on the WorldEngine google group. Good luck.

WorldEngine works
BUT
very slow ( DEAD SLOW ) and it outputs a mostly useless EIGHT BIT height map ( -gs Height.png )
-- a 8bit 0,255 4 band rgba image and using tiff or tga or pgm also outputs a 8 bit image

it is not yet in pip
the setup.py uses "wget" to grab needed things

also tho resulting image dose map to a CYLINDER( not sphere ) it is sort of a Mercator projection and is 4 way tillable

Can't you make the heightmap something more reasonable in an editor like GIMP, then load into Wilbur and smooth it and otherwise make it more presentable? I mean, heck, some of the gurus here make impressive stuff from scratch starting with one bit images (a B/W ocean mask generated at random).

So, it's not equirectangular? That seems like a hell of an oversight on their part. I see what you're saying though- when I map their examples on a globe the islands near the poles are clearly distorted. Of course, for now one could just pick seeds that produce large polar seas or continents without islands...

I have no idea what 4 way tillable means. But... it doesn't do the temp, precip, and Holdridge zones yet? Bummer. Major bummer. But frankly, having read some more about it they need to take winds into account better, anyway. I'm not sure how they can claim to model rainshadows without better accounting of prevailing winds.

So... I guess my "it'll be a hell of a utility some day" statement stands.

[johnvanvliet]

Can't you make the heightmap something more reasonable in an editor like GIMP

gimp 2.8 is EIGHT BIT
the development ( odd numbers are DEVELOPMENT ) version gimp 2.9 handles 16 and 32 bit images

but converting a 256 tone image ( there are only 256 shades of gray in a 8 bit image )
to a 16 bit image ( 65536 tones / shades of gray ) never works out well

you have to ARTIFICIALLY inpaint synthetic data to remove the "step pyramid" look
( or one of the other ways to smooth it - like raster to vector (and enlarge) back to raster ( and shrink))

then load into Wilbur and smooth it

why the bleep should someone have to do that

fixing the original code is what needs doing

right now the code is such a mess i would not even look at it yet
( still being ported from two other programs into one )
it is still in the " KLUDGE " stage .

give it a year , if it is still being worked on and updated it should start to be good to use

[acrosome]

why the bleep should someone have to do that

fixing the original code is what needs doing

Gee. No kidding, john?

But this observation doesn't help Umbral right now. Does it? Not to mention that whether or not 8 bit works for you is heavily dependent upon what you want to do.

Yes, WorldEngine is clearly still in early development- which you'll recall I mentioned in my first post. You're kind of preaching to the choir on that one. Hell, I can't even get it to install. That's why the 'bleep' you have to play with it in GIMP and Wilbur- WorldEngine doesn't have full functionality. Does it? As you said, it's still in kluge stage.

But, as I mentioned there are people here who build great maps from scratch starting just with a random noise-generated coastline. So surely an 8 bit map is a step up from that, neh? Especially for someone who wants to have believable tectonics but is frustrated by doing it by hand.

[Umbral Reaver]

Oh well. Maybe I'll have to go back and just draw in the mountains the old-fashioned way.

[su_liam]

Try googling, "tectonics.js.
Limited to 8 bit elevations, often requires several iterations to get a desirable configuration and still needs work, but it creates a plausible base map on a truly spherical surface. If nothing else, it's a dandy guide for building a final elevation map.