Middle Earth DEM Project

[Nomadic]

We got it into Outerra's Anteworld demo last night with the new mountain texturer applied to the terrain so I thought Id post a few pics. We need to fix a few issues but the process is pretty well debugged now so we should be able to make better progress. Monk's Mordor looks great, my mountains look a bit too noisy, I need to tone that down.

I have been messing around with Outerra and absolutely loving it, how did you do this? I'd love to give this thing a look in Outerra if possible.

[Redrobes]

We have been working on the MeDem map for some time - heck... years ! We were looking for a good 3D world renderer and we looked at a few like Proland from Eric Bruneton and Ogre engine etc but Outerra seemed to have the most of what we need. The best bit about it is that for us, we can only create a limited resolution. At the mo its about 100m per pixel. We would like much better than this but its a lot of work shuffling files. But Outerra can create fractal res on the fly in 3D. That was the clincher.

We mailed Outerra team and they thought this was a cool idea to link the world and the engine together so Cameni has helped us get our data into it. I have to say that Outerra shows up any imperfections in your data so we have had to go back and completely redo the mountains and I have wrote two new apps to help insert real mountains into the fantasy map. Now its looking much better but Monks is working away on that right now to solve a few issues and generally get that improved based on the new apps requirements.

We will be releasing it soon with no fixed idea of the date when. It comes down to when it looks good enough. Almost certainly this summer tho. No idea how the data will be delivered. I am guessing via the same system as the earth but that's up to the Outerra team I think. Ours is a fan project & non commercial so it will be free.

I'm just doing the new place name texturer which is a new set of scripts. So hot off the press rendered ohh about 2 minutes ago is this... As you can see theres a few tweaks to iron out in the name tags. Outerra does not have the names and currently does not have a vegetation mask so we cant actually specify a Fangorn there. But I hear they are working on that aspect of it.

edit: Another image of the shire. A few more issues showing up on this map too. Some names are too small and sometimes the shadowing of the map is obscuring the text. A few tweaks and this can be fixed tho.

edit2: Fixed it up a bit but the red line text is not saveable. I think it needs to be bigger.

[Nomadic]

We have been working on the MeDem map for some time - heck... years ! We were looking for a good 3D world renderer and we looked at a few like Proland from Eric Bruneton and Ogre engine etc but Outerra seemed to have the most of what we need. The best bit about it is that for us, we can only create a limited resolution. At the mo its about 100m per pixel. We would like much better than this but its a lot of work shuffling files. But Outerra can create fractal res on the fly in 3D. That was the clincher.

We mailed Outerra team and they thought this was a cool idea to link the world and the engine together so Cameni has helped us get our data into it. I have to say that Outerra shows up any imperfections in your data so we have had to go back and completely redo the mountains and I have wrote two new apps to help insert real mountains into the fantasy map. Now its looking much better but Monks is working away on that right now to solve a few issues and generally get that improved based on the new apps requirements.

We will be releasing it soon with no fixed idea of the date when. It comes down to when it looks good enough. Almost certainly this summer tho. No idea how the data will be delivered. I am guessing via the same system as the earth but that's up to the Outerra team I think. Ours is a fan project & non commercial so it will be free.

I'm just doing the new place name texturer which is a new set of scripts. So hot off the press rendered ohh about 2 minutes ago is this... As you can see theres a few tweaks to iron out in the name tags. Outerra does not have the names and currently does not have a vegetation mask so we cant actually specify a Fangorn there. But I hear they are working on that aspect of it.

edit: Another image of the shire. A few more issues showing up on this map too. Some names are too small and sometimes the shadowing of the map is obscuring the text. A few tweaks and this can be fixed tho.

edit2: Fixed it up a bit but the red line text is not saveable. I think it needs to be bigger.

Man that is freaking beautiful. I eagerly await the release of this on Outerra. You guys should be really proud of how far you've come with this thing, it's looking amazing.

[monks]

Hi Nomadic, thanks very much! Yes, we want to get it out to people. I'm going to upload a large topo map download shortly to give folks a taster. Improved mt ranges will be in the next version. Followed later in the year by improved hills. One of the things the Outerra devs are working on is the climate model. I believe improvements will allow for user defined textures, and texture/forest, etc placement in the world. It already allows for models/roads of course. We'll be using those texture maps in the pics above to drive the enviroment.
Once we release, we're looking for folks to get involved and build stuff like buildings, etc.

monks

[monks]

Here's the topographic map generated in Global Mapper, split into 4 tiles at 5000 pixels. This is one quarter resolution of the map. The files are around 30 Mb each.

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...arth_A1_5K.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...arth_A2_5K.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...arth_B1_5K.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...arth_B2_5K.png

monks

[Nomadic]

Here's the topographic map generated in Global Mapper, split into 4 tiles at 5000 pixels. This is one quarter resolution of the map. The files are around 30 Mb each.

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...arth_A1_5K.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...arth_A2_5K.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...arth_B1_5K.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...arth_B2_5K.png

monks

Very nice. Just one thing I noticed is that Trollshaws has a spelling error (Trollsahws).

[monks]

Thanks. There's probably a few more too. If you spot any more on your travels let us know.

monks

[Redrobes]

I have spotted two issues. One is Balfalas Bay instead of Belfalas Bay. But I notice that on your pic you dont have it so I dont know whats going on there. In another area I can see two labels for a river on top of each other but at slightly different positions and angles. Still, it will all be easier to look at when you run it through and generate the full set.

I ran the process again with yesterdays tweaks added and it looks real nice now. I am particularly pleased with the way its changing the colour of the text depending on where the text is placed. That seems to be working out real well. Heres a little pic showing some sea, some land etc and the text is mainly dark but changing from dark blue to grey or brown.

[monks]

I thought I'd revisit my Misty Mountains project from last year. This time using much higher res terrain. What I've done is to use the base mask I made for use in the texturer (the one that sits directly on the base), and used that as a mask multiplier over the height data. With a bit of help from a curves device (which allows for curve profiling of fall-off) and some erosion it's looking pretty good in all parts except those really bad parts down the eastern flank caused by the base dem hills I put in. *tut*
I've also used layout devices to lift up some mountain areas higher than others. It would be more accurate to Tolkien if I raised up the eastern flank more. I can do that with either a layout or via levels in Photoshop. I reckon using the levels is the best way as you get to contrast the forms better than raise a blob which is what tends to happen with the layout.
I'll probably get this into Leveller to smooth out the extreme cliff edges. I wanted to show the mountains/lowlands interface at a number of locations to illustrate. There's erosion on this which has helped a great deal. That could be easily applied during the make process in the future, and in the current terrain build. I think limiting it to the mountain edges would be enough to blend things in. Also, the process is quicker each time I do it, now that I know what I'm doing more or less.

www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_01.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_02.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_03.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_04.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_05.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_06.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_07.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_09.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_11.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_14.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_15.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_16.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_17.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_18.png
www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Te...ens/MistyAlps_19.png

monks

[monks]

Been doing a lot of the mountain ranges recently. Here's a render of Harad Hills in the far southern deserts. These are lowish peaks around 6k feet high.

http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/re...HaradHills.png

monks