Middle Earth DEM Project

[monks]

A quick update on where we're up to. All of the mountains are completed. The terrain still needs a few fixes but the difficult stuff has been done. Here's some shots with hills and lowlands too. In a few weeks we'll be able to drop this into Outerra and post some pics!



http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/De...owlands_03.png


http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...owlands_01.png
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...owlands_02.png
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...owlands_04.png

monks

[Lukc]

Wowza, this is getting quite big! So, you now basically have a full sized virtual world DEM? Interesting!

[monks]

Hey lukc, yes!, we're pretty close to a version 1.0. The dem is currently at 100m res- in the pics it's at 200m. Best viewed in your favourite engine or renderer. I think we'll
be making it available for Outerra users- don't know the details of how that will work but Outerra is extremely affordable and the
flying from high orbit into the Earth is not to be missed!
A few more fixes and then we'll generate a texture in Robes' GTS. We'll be using that ultimately to procedurally generate maps to texture it with in the renderer.


monks

[monks]

I'm in the process of adding in estuaries and the major river valleys that define the geography. When adding the hills and lowlands there is a tendency for the geographic features to get swamped. This helps divide the land up along the major rivers. This is a test of a method of creating lowlands and potentially hills too. We also have the option of adding in hills via GTS procedural texturing. The dem will end being a combination of the two approaches.
I've also sourced dems for the deserts of Africa. They will replace the stuff currently south of the River Harnen (south of Mordor).

Tex1_small.png


Full size:
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...01012/Tex1.png

Tex10.png

Full size:
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...1012/Tex10.png

Tex12.png

Full Size:
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...1012/Tex12.png


http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...1012/Tex15.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...Tex1_small.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...01012/Tex4.png

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/file...01012/Tex9.png


monks

[kenny3]

Woah!!!!!!!!
*applause*

[monks]

Thanks Kenny!

Quick update. A wip of the desert area of Harad (south of Mordor). It uses dems from the Sahara. I was happy to use it
because there is no software that easily create convincing procedural sand deserts.



full size: http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/De.../Desert_01.png


Desert_03.jpg


Desert_17.jpg

More here:
Dev - Real Mountains

monks

[monks]

At the moment we're preparing for a version 1.0 release. Maybe that should be 1.5 but who's counting?
If I travel in a straight line it'll be weeks not months.
Things to do:
* Improve the coastlines. The previous version had much better coastlines. Here's a shot of the new stuff. You
can see that there are many more crinkles and outlets into the sea. The trick is to not affect is so much that
it changers the map at the edges too much. I'm not sure about the underwater channels. I've not given that much
thought to bathymetry yet, but I did download a 1 km res data set recently.


Coastline2.jpg

* Finish the lowlands and hills. At the moment the coverage is patchy. It's a case of either creating a multiplication mask
or directly changing the dem itself. Mask preferred.
* Add small scale noise to the mountains. This tends to create better mountains when you get in really close to them in
Outerra. At the moment this has been done already via the base dem being noised, but that's not an ideal solution, but it
would probably achieve the desired result quickly for the mountains. The other option is to use masks and noise the mountains
separately from the rest of the terrain. That would take a bit longer so may not make it into the release.

The release will be in Outerra's native format packaged up so it can dropped in easily to the install dir. We'll
have to arrange some download.

monks

[monks]

Ok, update, the coastlines are in.

I've settled on which dem I'm going to use now for the lowlands so I'm working to that
setting up the mountains right. A couple of pics of the Blue Mountains.

Full res:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/De...BlueMts_01.jpg
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/De...BlueMts_02.jpg

Apart from the mountains, I'm going to add some hills in a few places.
The blue craters are lakes and wetlands. Not sure what to do with those since Outerra doesn't distinguish
between multiple levels of water at the moment. I'll probably leave them in as is this time.
There's a few finessey things I could do I suppose, but it's never ending...

Then I can build it and run it through our make system which produces a procedural texture via GTS software.
That will probably take a few days in itself, but that's down from 10 days!, it seems to now...almost fly :p.

The terrain here is covering half the area it should (4000 km ^2) so there's x2 vertical exaggeration.

monks

[monks]

I've tinkered with this for long enough for the time being. Time to pack it off to make!


More images here:
Development

monks

[Lukc]

Beautiful stuff there! Makes me want to load it into a flight simulator!