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Vue F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Oct 26 8:50 am)
Subject: Terragen Terrain files exported out to Vue?
I have no problem importing the 8 bit (which is the same terrain size) so I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that all I've got so far is a .ter file (terragen native file) and haven't found a way to export it out to a dem file (terragen only has options for a 255x255 chunk export to lightwave, or the 8 bit or 16 bit raw files, and finally a vistapro terrain file (totally useless at this point). If I could get a hold of the original dem file it would definately solve my problem, the problem is I can't get ahold of it so I'm trying the "reverse engineering" approach. The Dem is the new 3meter resolution file created by the usgs of Mt. St. Helens. I've found where to get it but the interactive map that allows you to locate the data to download doesn't work (displays a blank blue screen where the map should be). The help file they provide simply says "if the map doesn't work, change your screen resolution to 1280 x 1024" which when I do doesn't fix anything. I've sent them an email but I'm not holding my breath on whether or not they'll actually pay it any attention. If anybody wants to give it a try, here is the link to the usgs site I'm trying to get the DEM data from: http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/Seamless/# Anyway, I'm not sure what else to do at this point, I'm getting annoyed at the inability for people to make a simple website that actually works rather than trying to do all this fancy crap that doesn't work unless you stand on your head and touch your toes while juggling 3 watermelons :)
They totally are!! But sometimes (it's very very rare) it actually ends up being worth it. I've done some test renders (which are terrible of course) in terragen of the terrain model and they are absolutely incredible when it comes to the amount of detail available. I've been dying to get ahold of a better terrain model of Mt. St. Helens for so long (I started in Vue 3 with the 30 meter res, went to 10 meters with Vue 4 and now...3 meter res data right there!!!), it's really frustrating to have it right freaking there and not be able to get it into the program I can actually make decent renders in because somebody somewhere decided that "it would just be too easy to simply put plain ordinary links to the data, we should bury it so deep that they'll have to spend months just to get to it."
Hah!! when all else fails, try blind groping!! The map doesn't work, so I managed to find it by dragging over areas till I saw something remotely like it in a little 1" x 1/2" preview that you eventually get when you actually want to download something. Now I just have to figure out how to actually get it into Vue (which is about as easy as finding the data in the first place). I'm still more than open to any suggestions anybody might have on converting the terragen file, as that is still likely to be much much more painless (as painless as these things can be anyway) than what I'm about to try. Oh, and that "new format" ended up being even worse than dem's (if I'm remembering correctly) The new usgs sponsored format was supposed to be SDTS, but unfortunately that has proved to be even more horrible than dem files, not to mention unsupported as yet in the 3d community.
A lot to cover. I'll get right to it. First, DEM is "Digital Elevation Map". It's a generic term that has been incorrectly used to refer to many different specific types of digital elevation maps. There is a USGS DEM format with the extension .dem for example, but you can also get "DEM's" from the USGS in many other formats. SRTM and SDTS are both DEM formats. ;) The USGS seamless data website is admittedly complicated, but it's also incredibly powerful. They simply would not be able to provide the breadth and detail, the sheer variety of data they make freely available with any normal HTML system. It's unfortunate that the system is rather demanding, but there is an FTP fallback for many of the data types. The map interface is just way easier and faster (for those that it works for). I have been working the past week or two off and on to get this new high resolution data into a number of good formats. I have used it at 8193x8193 (native resolution, no downsampling) in Terragen and Terragen 2 alpha. I would love to see it used in Vue and see how well Vue 5, and especially Vue Infinite, match up to what Terragen and TG2 can do. To that end I would be glad to provide the data in whatever format would work best for Vue. I have access to Global Mapper for the original export from DEM, and then Leveller for exporting to many other formats - both have very powerful import/export capability. What you need to do is find the easiest and most widely available, compatible, and highest detail terrain format that Vue supports. Let me know here or in private message or e-mail. Beware: all terrains of this data so far made available are "compromised" in some way! Manel's terrain, which I believe you are using, is in Geographic projection, which is less accurate, and it also is only 16 bit accuracy - in Terragen you can see visible "stairstepping". The Terranuts version posted by Aaron Tyler from the TG community is very small, downsampled, and is also stretched vertically. Furthermore all uncorrected data has stitch seams. I have taken the time to remove the DEM seams by hand. This will be the best, most artifact-free data you can get out of the available raw data. I've taken the time so you don't have to. The Terragen .ter terrain files from my work should be available by tomorrow on Ashundar. Specific formats for Vue can be made available once I know what format will work best. Let me know. - Oshyan
I don't think my render of the 1024x1024 terrain from Terranuts looks all that lacking in detail or overly vertically stretched comparing it with yours Oshyan and I guarantee it rendered a lot quicker:
http://www.terranuts.com/photopost/data/501/mtsthelens.jpg
I'm currently downloading two 65MB GeoTiff files made from the 1/9 NED map so I can play in Terragen and Vue5 so we can compare (if it works) :-D
Message edited on: 03/10/2005 08:59
JavaJones: The easiest format to work with overall would definately be an image file, however I'd lean towards tiff or bmp, I have heard rumors of Vue 5's terrain editor crashing when trying to import some png's. The maximum size for a dem import in Vue seams to be about 2048 ish, but since I'm using 3dem I would still definately like to get ahold of the full resolution dem file, so that for wide shots I can get away with the image file and a predetermined Vue terrain (which the editor will allow you to make larger) and for close up shots I can crop out (using 3dem) the area that I need. Thanks a bunch for your responses, that covered everything that I was wondering about (as I too had noticed the slight stepping in the terragen file as well). I'm really jazzed to see what I can do with this in Vue, especially with the 86 lava dome in there (finally) it will be nice to see if I can do some in crater and pumice plain images that actually look decent. As far as model imports go, the best options Vue can import seem to be obj, lwo and 3ds. I'm not sure which of those will provide the highest detail but I would say obj is probably the preferred alternative (if possible). Thanks for providing this data, keep us posted!
Well this sucks, in 3dem I have no problem getting the geotiffs opened and saved out as dem's but when I try to mesh them together I get this message: "DEMs Have Differnt Map Projections" (check out the spelling on "different" too, that's the exact message I get from 3dem). Anyway, it won't merge them together, just give me the finger and aborts.
It might have to do with the way that I downloaded them, but at this point there's not well, much point, I've verified that both Vue 4 and Vue 5 will not import a dem file larger than the basically the immediate mountain (largest size 2048ish). So at this point the image file option or another actual 3d file seems to be the best option for getting the data into Vue rather than trying to get the dem in (this has always been a bit of a problem for Vue to do flawlessly anyway, it's just a little disapointing that they haven't bothered to improve something that most other terrain programs seem to handle just fine).
Rids, the vertical scaling is not extreme, but I'm fairly sure it's there. I agree the detail difference is not that great, but you're also seeing St. Helens from a closer perspective in your image. If you got that close with the terrain I am using, the detail would definitely be more noticeable. That terrain is also in UTM projection which is slightly less accurate (the wrong shape). I'll illustrate this in the page I post today. I am curious about your render times btw. ;) That being said I will be the first to admit that 8193 terrains are more of a novelty than anything. I will be posting images showing the actual detail differences, and they are there to be sure, but fairly minor. There are 2 uses I can think of for such large terrains. 1st, simply to get the maximum amount of detail in any position on the terrain, especially when close to the ground. The higher resolution the better, in this case, though I would venture to say unless you're working at ant level, 8193 is probably as high as you'd want to go for a heightfield, even in Terragen 2. With such a high resolution terrain, while it's still far from a whole world, you do end up with a lot more camera positions that show interesting details. Small, close-up nooks and crannies that would be otherwise uninteresting become reasonably detailed and often worthy of focus in an image, whereas in lower resolution terrains that wouldn't be the case. 2nd, for large, lengthy animations that make close passes to the terrain. You could either use the large terrain size to make a much larger terrain area to cover (with more proportional detail), or to allow a greater amount of detail in the same area as a smaller terrain. Either one would produce a nicer looking animation. However it's debatable whether you would notice much difference in many cases unless you were working at least at DVD resolution. But back to Vue. Unfortunately using an image format is not a very good solution. Unless Vue supports 16 or better yet 32 bit/channel TIFF's, in which case that would be our best option. If not, I would really like to avoid any of the image formats like .bmp as there will be severe detail loss. Sadly that limits our options quite a lot. 3D data formats are not much more feasible. They will maintain the detail of the terrain, but an OBJ of even a 2049 terrain is enormous. The output is something like 8 million polygons resulting in a 327MB file. Compressed it turns out to be about 60MB, which isn't so bad. The 4097 terrain is something like 34 million polies and nearly 1.4GB uncompressed! I have no 3D application that can load these (because of their geometry load), so I can't even test if it works, but I'm willing to make the 2049 available if it is the best format (maintains the most detail). In considering formats, remember that non-3D formats (i.e. not dxf, obj, etc.) are best both because of smaller sizes, and lower geometry loads (the application generates its own geometry), and that for image formats, 16bit per channel or higher data handling is necessary to maintain detail. Right about now I wish I had Vue so I could just experiment with this stuff directly. sigh I agree it's frustrating that Vue doesn't have better import options though! Let me know how you guys would like the terrain and I'll try and get it to you in that format. - Oshyan
Yeah, the shaded view in Leveller is really about the best view you'l get of the whole terrain. I'll be posting some exported shaded views with my terrain later today. Some of the features around St. Helens are amazing, the detail in the lava flows, even roads and what look like they might even be trails! Cool stuff. In any case a 24bit .tga file will, I believe, only have 8bit/channel resolution, so it's no better than the .bmp option. Did you notice stairstepping in the imported terrain? What about .tif? - Oshyan
Attached Link: 2048x2048 terrain
Here's a quick render of the terrain from the tga file... I couldn't see any stepping at all and Leveller gives the option to export to 8 bit, 16 bit and 24 bit and I selected 24 bit TGA.Message edited on: 03/10/2005 15:23
Unfortunately I'm leaving for the weekend in a few hours, but I will work on this as soon as I get back, if you have not yet found a solution. Keep us posted! I have been waiting a long time to see good resolution DEM terrain in Vue. Considering the variability of procedurals from one application to the next, it's the only way we can truly compare apples to apples between terrain renderers. - Oshyan
Oh and Java Jones: I definately would still like to get ahold of the fully meshed dem (or geotiff, whichever is easier) so I can crop out sections I want, right now I've got chunks meshed but there's still some pretty big seam lines to clean up and I don't have an appropriate software to do this in. Thanks! Have a good weekend.
I'll at least put the 24bit 2048x2048 .TGA file in the download section of my site, its about 12MB. What I really want to do is create 6 tiles that cover the whole area with a 2048x2048 TGA terrain file for each but thats looking quite difficult at the moment as I need to find a way of accurately splitting up the DEM. Maybe if I create a 24bit TGA file of the whole thing and then slice it up into 6 but thats bound to require some resizing to make the tiles the right size and that will introduce inaccuracies... hmmmm
I know, this just keeps getting more and more complicated doesn't it? Thanks in advance for putting that up. Now that the map is finally working for me on the usgs site I'm downloading different versions of the files to eliminate the seam, and seeing if I can do something similar to what you're trying to do with the TGA files, since Vue is supposed to be able to align dem files using real world coordinates I figured I'd give it a shot and see what I can do with that. This is actually fun in a weird sort of way, I haven't had to put this much effort into getting what I want out of the program since the last time when I was trying to get seamless 10 meter data into Vue, I figure we'll find a way, the data is there, it's just figuring out how to manipulate it at this point.
Attached Link: St. Helens 3M DEM Terragen Terrains
My Terragen terrains from this data are finally available, seams are stitched, in UTM projection, 6 different sizes, including 2 at *native*, non-downsampled resolution. http://ashundar.com/forums.php?m=posts&p=12814 I'll be gone for the weekend but I'll see where you guys are at with getting this data into Vue next week and I'll assist where I can. Have a good weekend! :) - Oshyan
Okay, I'm not getting as into this as you guys are, some of this stuff is way beyond me! Interesting read, though. I'll keep an eye on this or other threads to see what you guys come up with. I have a quick question, though. After reading some of this stuff, I went and DL'd a couple of 10 m DEM's from GIS data depot. When I unzipped the archive, the only files in there were .ddf files, which no program that I have can open (Vue or 3Dem). I thought these were supposed to be SDTS files. Help?
miden1138: It's a bit confusing, but basically what I'd recommend you do is download a free copy of the program 3dem and use it to open the zip files (which should be in sdts.tar.gz format) rather than extracting them. This will open them up and allow you to save them to a usgs dem format for import into Vue. A note, when you try to import into Vue you will have to use 3DEM to crop out an area no larger than 2048 x 2048 (I recommend slightly less due to it seeming to still get hung up on anything that's slightly over 2048 but not yet at 2049, and there is no accuracy gauge in 3dem so you'll just have to play with it till you find the crop area that comes out in Vue to be less than 2048. A couple other notes, when downloading for the 10m mt. st. helens, you'll want to download the mountain itself as well as the files of spirit lake west and east, as well as one other one that I can't remember off the top of my head that is the southeast quadrangle that lies under spirit lake east, this will give you a nice area to start cropping out sections you want that have more than just the mountain as like Rids said, there is a lot of interesting terrain around the mountain as well. War2: Yes!! It would definately be nice to see Eon improve the dem imports and lift the annoying terrain size limit restriction, let us do it and deal with the memory issues later, most of us using Vue have the system specs to be able to do it anyway (at least for the 4097 x 4097 size) JavaJones: I'll keep you posted on what progress I end up making with Vue auto aligning the dem files, I'm hoping I can just crop out chunks and bring them in with a little bit of overlap so that 1: there's no seam lines, and 2: so that I have a point of reference to rescale and adjust as needed. Rids: Oh yeah, I know, I checked out the little lake up in the hills to the north (st helens lake) as well as coldwater lake, I still want to check out the Toutle river drainage (which I need to do a new download for to get it as one thing) and the debris hummocks at the entrance to the Toutle River, Very cool stuff to see all around the volcano.
I am still getting an error when I try to mesh the two dem files (I tried re-downloading so I only had two to worry about) Should it matter if I'm using geographic or UTM projection? When I set it to UTM it will mesh them but there's a big gap between them, but if I leave it at geographic it gives me the message "DEMs Have Differnt Elevation Resolutions" which shouldn't be the case at all. I'm using the latest version of 3dem so I'm not sure what it doesn't like.
Thats an odd and annoying problem. I downloaded the whole of the St Helens area and the two resulting GeoTiff files, after being converted to DEMs meshed perfectly. However, I downloaded another area from further NE and this resulted in 4 GeoTiff files but when I converted them they wouldn't mesh due to the same error you are getting.
Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Support/Forum/post.php?fid=2&cat=2&pid=549
posted a request for better dem implementation in the vue5 generation on e.ons public forum, so feel free to raise your voice there aswell, even tho its just the public forum section e.on notices it so speaking up in public is never wrong :)
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Hi, I've already searched through the archives here looking for an answer that will work and have tried out a bunch of the ones that were discussed to no avail. I'm trying to get a fairly large terrain (4097x4097) exported out from terragen in a format that retains all the details for import into Vue 5. So far the best I've managed is using the export to an 8 bit raw file and then using PSP 9 to convert it to a tiff for import into the terrain editor of Vue (attempting to directly import the file causes a total crash) I've tried exporting to the 16 bit raw formats in terragen but neither will open correctly in PSP or Vue (PSP reads it as weird jagged lines and Vue simply hangs up). The result of the 8 bit is a bunch of stepped terraces forming, which of course can be smoothed out using erosion, but this results in smaller terraces and also smoothes out the details I want to remain in the terrain. Any advice on getting a terragen terrain file out of terragen and into Vue without any data loss would be much appreciated!