Making heightmaps with World Machine
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Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
bumping
someone shoudl sticky
someone shoudl sticky
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
why not unsticky all the tutorials we have stickied now?
this one is nicheier i guess but i still get people asking me shit
this one is nicheier i guess but i still get people asking me shit
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
we need a master section or at least someone to FIX THE WIKI so images can be posted to it and restore the old images so the old tutorials work.
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
You may already know this, but the mathematics of the gaussian blur dictate that multiple applications of the blur filter yield exactly the same results as a single application of the filter with a higher blur radius. Of course you'd have to either experiment or know how to calculate the bigger radius to get the same results.i immediately run four sequential gaussian blurs of high power
Just thought I'd mention that since I thought it was odd that you were running several blurs in a row. Is there a maximum blur radius that was constraining you?
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
some of those tips actually hurt you if you are doing pro with tiled builds.
Many things like blurs etc should use a preprocess pipeline and then have the final pipeline using the exported altered heightfield. For example, items with ! have special considerations when using a tiled build which is what you would use when doing real textural building.
There are many many many things I could write about worldmachine and it's usage as I have been drilling the fuck out of it's potential
http://smoth.net/foram/download/file.ph ... &mode=view
Thing is worldmachine is very good but it also does not have much suggestions on how to do any sort of optimized pipelines and the forum is a bit sparse as far as discussion.
some things like flippers, blurs and erosion should be handled prudently. Also a good bit of what makes wm2 impressive is the textural capabilities that have not really been explored. I have a great deal of experiments going but if you guys want try and get good heightfields out of world machine and not actually do any texture generation you can pretty much ignore me :\
Many things like blurs etc should use a preprocess pipeline and then have the final pipeline using the exported altered heightfield. For example, items with ! have special considerations when using a tiled build which is what you would use when doing real textural building.
There are many many many things I could write about worldmachine and it's usage as I have been drilling the fuck out of it's potential
http://smoth.net/foram/download/file.ph ... &mode=view
Thing is worldmachine is very good but it also does not have much suggestions on how to do any sort of optimized pipelines and the forum is a bit sparse as far as discussion.
some things like flippers, blurs and erosion should be handled prudently. Also a good bit of what makes wm2 impressive is the textural capabilities that have not really been explored. I have a great deal of experiments going but if you guys want try and get good heightfields out of world machine and not actually do any texture generation you can pretty much ignore me :\
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
No...IIRC I was having trouble with large radius blur killing the tops of my hills, and low radius were too steep so I just did a bunch of sequential low radius. I don't think i was able to just pick out a radius and have it work.RogerN wrote:You may already know this, but the mathematics of the gaussian blur dictate that multiple applications of the blur filter yield exactly the same results as a single application of the filter with a higher blur radius. Of course you'd have to either experiment or know how to calculate the bigger radius to get the same results.i immediately run four sequential gaussian blurs of high power
Just thought I'd mention that since I thought it was odd that you were running several blurs in a row. Is there a maximum blur radius that was constraining you?
Anyway, I really don't think it's not mathematically the same....
Here's three jpgs - one with no blur, one with 1x gaussian blur radius 16, and the last with 4x gaussian blur radius 4.
Of course different blur algorithms are going to have different results, but just going by logic it seems like the blur's inherent gradient curve will be altered simply due to sequential blurs vs one single big blur. That is unless theres some kinda golden ratio shit going on with gaussian blur curve and it always ends up the same, but I don't know the equation for the ratio of radius : number of applications. Its obviously not radius1 * applications1 = radius2 * applications2
Last edited by hunterw on 24 Jun 2009, 03:52, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
By all means add to the tut/modify it/whatever. I only have experience with WM1 so this tut is primarily for it. I should also add the part of how to export and compile with 16 bit goodness, since its a lot of hoops to jump through, but the reward of doing so is immeasurable. Actually it is measurable, by a factor of 256 ;psmoth wrote:some of those tips actually hurt you if you are doing pro with tiled builds.
Many things like blurs etc should use a preprocess pipeline and then have the final pipeline using the exported altered heightfield. For example, items with ! have special considerations when using a tiled build which is what you would use when doing real textural building.
There are many many many things I could write about worldmachine and it's usage as I have been drilling the fuck out of it's potential
http://smoth.net/foram/download/file.ph ... &mode=view
Thing is worldmachine is very good but it also does not have much suggestions on how to do any sort of optimized pipelines and the forum is a bit sparse as far as discussion.
some things like flippers, blurs and erosion should be handled prudently. Also a good bit of what makes wm2 impressive is the textural capabilities that have not really been explored. I have a great deal of experiments going but if you guys want try and get good heightfields out of world machine and not actually do any texture generation you can pretty much ignore me :\
WM is IMO the best heightmap software available so it deserves springtut lovin.
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
definitely a great heightfield tool
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
I still don't see why you need a tool for heightmaps. I'm more interested in the texturing half of WM.
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
because wm2 allows for great heightfield control. The texturing is handy and my work in the tool has been fruitful but there are some issues that I have not been able to get around, trying to get some attention from stephen or nikita on it.
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
neddiedrow wrote:I still don't see why you need a tool for heightmaps.
you need a tool to make a heightmap be shaped like that
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
I admit, that is beyond my handiwork, but I'm not interested in realism for anything I don't intend to merely reconstruct from satellite/aerial photography.
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_blur:
So in your case, hunterw, 1 blur application of size 8 would be same as 4 times size 4.
( sqrt(4^2*4) = 8 )
There you have the relationApplying multiple, successive gaussian blurs to an image has the same effect as applying a single, larger gaussian blur, whose radius is the square root of the sum of the squares of the blur radii that were actually applied. For example, applying successive gaussian blurs with radii of 6 and 8 gives the same results as applying a single gaussian blur of radius 10, since sqrt(6^2 + 8^2) = 10. Because of this relationship, processing time cannot be saved by simulating a gaussian blur with successive, smaller blurs ÔÇö the time required will be at least as great as performing the single large blur.
So in your case, hunterw, 1 blur application of size 8 would be same as 4 times size 4.
( sqrt(4^2*4) = 8 )
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
personally i'm not terribly impressed by "hey look i can erode the shit out of my heightmap"
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
yeap worldmachine has 1 setting, ultramax erosion...cant make any good gameplay maps w/ it, might as w
http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=670
http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=670
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
thisBeherith wrote:paradigm shift of procedurality.
btw acid water / lava for the win. highly gameplay relevant - define your map's borders instead of another big square to play on.
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
yeah i wouldnt have figured that equation out on my ownTobi wrote: ( sqrt(4^2*4) = 8 )
heeh
Re: Making heightmaps with World Machine
who said that?ralphie wrote:personally i'm not terribly impressed by "hey look i can erode the shit out of my heightmap"