Fractal Terrains Image Resolutions

[Alistair]

Can anyone out there with Fractal Terrains tell me what resolution images it is capable of outputting?

I'm looking for something that will put out on the scale of 5000+ pixel images while being able to import and export from various formats (NASA's shaded elevation maps and .bin files most notably). Fractal Terrains seems like it might be a good fit for my purposes if it is capable of this.

[NeonKnight]

Can anyone out there with Fractal Terrains tell me what resolution images it is capable of outputting?

I'm looking for something that will put out on the scale of 5000+ pixel images while being able to import and export from various formats (NASA's shaded elevation maps and .bin files most notably). Fractal Terrains seems like it might be a good fit for my purposes if it is capable of this.

First, YES, Fractal Terrains can import BIN files.

As to output

As to the exporting, the help file has this info:

When you are saving or exporting a map as a bitmap, JPEG, or MDR file, you will see this dialog box. To see this dialog box, select File menu >> Save As... then select JPEG from the Files of type list.Type in a width in pixels for your map. If you want to keep the same the ratio of the height to width as the current window, then select the Keep Main Window Proportions tick box. If you want to specify a different ratio, uncheck the Keep Main Window Proportions tick box and type in the width you want. The JPEG Image Quality slider controls the size and quality of the exported image.

Not sure if this fully answers your question

[alucard339]

Hi there,

Has for the export of FT files with a big resolution, I discover that you must have a pretty big computer to do it in 1 shot. I've got a 6 month old computer with 2 gig of memory and to get the good look of my FT map in cc3, I've decide (after many test) to zoom the map and save each zoom windows has an individual file. It gave me 12 files for a total of 70 Mo. Then I use Photoshop to put them together in a png file of 45 Mo that I then import in cc3.
Here is the link to my map.

Hope It helps you,
Alucard.

[HandsomeRob]

When I work on my maps, I export images from FT that are 4800 pixels in width. I don't think there's a limit on maximum size, but the larger you go the more time it takes to export.

So whatever resolution you are looking to hit, FT can provide.

-Rob

[Alistair]

Thanks for the responses. It sounds as if this will be a good solution for my campaigns. Thanks for the tips as well

[waldronate]

Can anyone out there with Fractal Terrains tell me what resolution images it is capable of outputting?

I'm looking for something that will put out on the scale of 5000+ pixel images while being able to import and export from various formats (NASA's shaded elevation maps and .bin files most notably). Fractal Terrains seems like it might be a good fit for my purposes if it is capable of this.

There isn't a hard limit in the Fractal Terrains source code, but the program reaches a practical limit beyond which Windows refuses to allocate the image. I vaguely recall it that it will tend to top out around 8000x8000 pixels or thereabouts. That works out to about 256MB of image data, so that's really not too bad on a 32-bit program that can only address 2 GB of memory at the best of times.

Note that playing with very large images in FT tends to cause crashes as it runs out of memory. It's not a terribly well-behaved program with regard to how much memory it allocates. I have been informed that efforts are being made to reduce this problem for future versions, however.

[Alistair]

OK I'm having some trouble importing binary files... My problem is that I can't seeem to figure out the line width and header length of the files. Is there some sort of method I could use to figure this out as the rest of the data is being filled out from the header files.

Also, I have some map files I created in Fractal World Explorer (came with Astrosynthesis 2), but it only exports .bin files with no header information at all. I'm guessing most of the settings would be based on the resolution of the base map, but I can't be sure right now as I can only import a handful of binary files from specific data sets. Not even all US Government binary files will import properly for me.

[Antony]

I know its awhile, but I only just found this post.

For the rectangular files from FWE the settings which worked on my machine are;

Per Sample setting was 4 byte LSB First (Intel)
Line Width = 4x File width (ie for the 2880x1440 "globe") Line Width = 2880*4=11520 File Data Width = File Width (ie for this example 2880 samples) File Data Heigth = File Height (ie for this example 1440 samples) Map Edges were set: Top 90, Left -180, Right 180, Bottom -90

The 2880 x 1440 is the largest file FWE generates so it takes some time, but with the above it came into FT without a problem. You need the large file though as the resulting image can be quite pixelated. I successfully saved the file as an FTW file and managed an export to CC2. Some work would need to be done on the CC2 image as the resulting map is made up entirely of straight lines. The settings though cannot be saved as an srf file (no surprise there really as no settings are changed via this method)

On the whole though if you can clean up the CC2 files this is workable.

CC2/3 does not like to change too many lines from straight to curved though at one time. I crashed CC2/3 several times doing this.

Antony

[Alistair]

Thanks! That did the trick!

[vooood]

When I work on my maps, I export images from FT that are 4800 pixels in width. I don't think there's a limit on maximum size, but the larger you go the more time it takes to export.

So whatever resolution you are looking to hit, FT can provide.

-Rob

This is not entirely true.. Try exporting at 10000 pixels and a crash happens.. ^^

And the other thing I don't like is that you can't change the JPEG quality when exporting as multiple images so I'm stuck with manual export as several images and then stitching together..