The Big Island of Hawaii- draped with a composite of LandSat and various geographic raster data, and then resized to 4097 x 4097 and rendered in Vue 5 Inf.

I was mainly excited by being able to identify the various lava flows and other geographic features- especially the flow that is seen at the right in the lower image that is coming from Mt. Hualalai- a volcano that could potentially explode and destroy with lava the town of Kailua-Kona and various other communities. (Back in the 80's a major Hollywood disaster flick was filmed there with this same theme.)

And yes, the vertical scale HAS been exaggerated by at least 2X...

Attached Link: http://www.shadedrelief.com/

The actual Big Island as one BIG file and then draped Un-Bumped.

While I already have the Islands in 10 Meter DEMS, NED BIL's, etc. I went ahead and downloaded and used the really excellent data created by Tom Patterson US National Park Service. This data is for personal-educational use only as he created it, NOT the US Park Service- via his personal shadedrelief.com website.

MAC Users will be especially happy as Tom is a Mac user and shows where to get some Mac DEM utils to do conversions. He is also a Wizard with both Photoshop and BRYCE 5 and his entire website is fascinating reading (at least for me).

Attached Link: http://www.shadedrelief.com/drape/index.html

Go to this link, read the tutorial and download the Zip archive (3.0MB) While He uses Bryce 5, his Archive Zip contains a DEM in 16 Bit PGM format and a Photoshop PSD file. These files can be read on Windows machines and the data can be loaded into VUE - which is how I made the above renders.

The term for this process is called "draping" and it creates the most realistic looking landscapes possible in Vue- as the mapping imagery is the REAL THING as gathered by aircraft and orbiting data satellites.

Attached Link: http://koti.mbnet.fi/pkl/tg/TerraConv.htm

Tom provides a link for Mac users to a Mac converter. For Windows users you need this incredibly useful program by Pauli Lindgren. TerraConV Reads and Writes 16 bit PGM, as well as 16 bit TIF and Terragen TER files.

However, it does not write 8 Bit TIF files- so you will need to convert Tom Patterson's 16-Bit PGM into a 16 bit TIF, and load that into Photoshop (or whatever) and convert that to an 8-bit TIF. Then you can load that into Vue's Terrain Editor at 100% Blend and apply the PSD Terrain map onto it.

Attached Link: http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/VueLab/TerrainMapping.htm

O.K. But I wanted to BUMP MAP the terrain map- like Tom easily did in Bryce 5, so that I could get added realism in my Vue 5 renders. Heh! Well this became a NIGHTMARE as unlike the EASY Bump Mapping Vue does with object materials, --for some TOTALLY WEIRD reason, --Bump Mapping a Terrain makes the map really $#&%!! messed up.

After a week or so of getting frustrated with this I discovered Chipp Walters excellent tutorial on how he made an HP computer using Vue's Terrain Editor. The really IMPORTANT info in there was the EXACT formula and method of applying a Bump Map to a Terrain. You have to follow it very carefully!

E-On MUST Change This! It is extremely easy to bump map a terrain in Bryce 5...

Attached Link: http://www.shadedrelief.com/bryce_dem/index.html

Here's the link to Tom Patterson's explaination on importing a 16 bit PGM into Bryce 5. His render of the Big Island at a HUGE scale with a Hi-Rez bitmap draped over the Terrain shows how incredibly great this can look.

Bryce 5 finally made the jump to allowing 4096 x 4096 DEMS- but where Bryce 5 really moves ahead of Vue here is support for importing USGS SDTS, USGS and Vistapro DEM's (a real confusion for many people- nice to support BOTH) as well as WCS (World Construction Set) files. (I HATE WCS- anyone want to buy my copy?) as well as PGM.

I read that E-On is considering supporting more architectual file imports- a great idea- but they really need to consider how BIG the GIS-Geographic,Cartographic market is in the U.S. It's a really HUGE market with U.S. States, Counties, Cities, the FEDS, the Military, Universities- AND all the Hikers, Bikers, etc with GPS systems- who are increasingly getting interested in making their own personal maps, etc- and you have a BIG and rapidly growing market that E-ON is missing out on.

Attached Link: http://www.shadedrelief.com/3D/maui.html

Check out this incredibly beautiful panorama by Patterson of the County of Maui (Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai and Molokai). He also discusses here terrain exaggeration, putting in clouds, water and other very valuable tips. Really worth reading!

The only thing about Tom Patterson's tutorial on importing 16 bit PGM's into Bryce 5 was that I could not duplicate it myself with a TEST GRAYSCALE. This is by no means Scientific Proof of anything...

What I did was make a grayscale ramp as seen behind the samples of the Bryce, Vue and Terragen renders. I made the ramp using Chipp Walter's OTHER tutorial in which he has an exact formula for getting rid of STEPS using Gaussian Blur.
(If you don't follow his formula- you will ruin the ramp.
Still- I won't call MINE "Perfect" either.)

But what you can see is that an imported 16 Bit PGM looks like the fur of a Wooly Mammoth in Bryce and a pile of Lumber when I imported a 16 bit TIF into Vue's Terrain Editor. Only Terragen seems to think this was a smooth RAMP and rendered the imported TER (a 16 bit file native format)
with a smooth slope. I used TerraConvert to make these test files.

Of course you WILL see steps in the attached picture NOW because I have converted it to 8 bits and JPG'ed it!
But-what happened to the 16 bit PGM? Is Bryce REALLY importing it at 16 bits? Hummm...

Thanks for the tutorial. I didn't know that VUE worked with 16-bit grayscales, but after some tests, it appears to work a smidge better than 8-bit versions. I just copied and pasted into the terrain directly the 16-bit data.

Of course, if you really want to smooth out your terrain, just use the Diffusive button under Erode tab, as it is basically a guassian blur-- in 16 bits. Works very nice.

Message edited on: 09/13/2005 00:04

THANKS for YOUR tutorial, and very helpful!

Based on my own tests- Vue will load a 16 bit DEM, or 16 bit TIF, but immediately samples it down to 8-bit. So you don't get the type of terrain detail that Terragen has.

This is why I would really like to see E-On support the loading of TER files as Vue Terrains. TER is a true 16 bit file format and if E-on supported it we would see much better terrains in Vue. However, just supporting TRUE 16 bit TIF import would be great as well.

And I would also hope they fix the bump mapping of terrains.
It shouldn't have to be that complicated. It should work the same as a regular texture mapped object. E-on should factor in the bump formula automatically the way Bryce does.

Message edited on: 09/13/2005 14:09

Chipp- I just took a look at your new "altTerrain Builder" and can see that this could really spin off some INCREDIDLE new terrains as models- even for people that might want to SELL them. Obviously- CASTLES and CLASSIC buildings come immediately to mind for me. How much EASIER to would be to assemble front facades of buildings in Photoshop and apply them as highly detailed terrain maps. I think this could be really a BIG THING once people grasp this idea. For Photoshop users this could be the way for them to build 3D Models- without a 3D modeling app. One other area that you (or someone) should look at is a way to make TERRAIN DRAPING even easier to do reguarding registrations to DEM terrains. I think Photoshop artists could create highly detailed terrain maps- like castles on hill tops- with all the roads, paths, etc. all TERRAIN DRAPED with BUMP MAPS- and they would look INCREDIBLE! I think were going to see an explosion of new Terrain Models with Terrain Maps- once people begin experimenting and see the great potential this has...

Terrain Draping...Now that sounds interesting. Let me get this straight, the idea is to place objects ON TOP of existing terrains? I'll think about it. Of course, it could be done super easy inside Photoshop, but wow what a cool idea!

Attached Link: http://www.stm-usa.com/

Check out this website. These are REAL 3D models of Terrain Draped data- converted to a special process Solid Terrain Modeling has developed. Look for the STUNNING HUGE and HI-REZ model of the Virunga Mountains displayed in National Geographic museum (STM website). Terrain Draping is already widely used in the scientific-geographic communities- as well fairly widely supported in free programs like MicroDem, 3DEM, etc. (However- not at the quality of Vue, Bryce raytracing, etc.) You most often see Terrain Draped models in National Geographic magazine. I think there is a real potential market for Vue, Bryce, Terragen users for Pre-Set UP Terrain Draped models of the Grand Canyon, Mt. Saint Helens, etc. etc. The Ray-Traced results are VERY IMPRESSIVE. And of course in VUE- you can even add Eco-Terrains so that your Mt. St. Helens scene has a few Million Fir Trees. It LOOKS so REAL!!!- but most people don't want to figure out the steps involved- which require precise alignment in Photoshop to the DEM Terrain. (Geo Software uses UTM coordinates- but unfortunately VUE, BRYCE, Photoshop etc. don't recognize GeoTIFF files). BTW- I read your piece about working with Bryce developer Kai Krause. Because I was an early publisher of VistaPro Scenery on CD ROM back in ancient times- the MetaCreations (actually I think it was still HSC software then) asked me to supply the Bryce Canyon DEM they used for the cover of the manual. So that's my tiny little claim to fame!)

If these programs would just support a few of the major coordinate systems (Geographic, UTM, etc.) then any existing georeferenced data could be used easily, and no manual matching or 3rd party terrain/overlay combinations would be needed. You could download data directly from the source and as long as it was already georeferenced (as most GIS data is), it would align properly, at least to the limits of the georeferencing accuracy. Programs like 3DEM and Global Mapper already do this, of course. And while these are considered GIS features, with the increasing interest from users of programs like Vue and Terragen in realistically depicting natural places, and the widespread free public availability of this kind of GIS data, it seems only logical for these software programs to at least be able to read (if not edit) GIS formats and their embedded georeferencing. Allowing this would save everyone a lot of work. - Oshyan