I see great terrains brought into Vue and great renders. I will create a terrain I like in GeoControl2, but can't ever bring it into Vue the way I like because no matter where I position it, I lose important parts. In top view it is always cutting off crucial parts of the landscape. It seems, I think, to be oriented in the proper direction. In Vue 7 Infinite, I am not rotating it. What camera angle and position do most of you use? I need a starting point. I bring it in as a procedural terrain according to Cajomi's directions. (Exported 16-bit tiff, function editor, etc.) But I am rarely satisfied because it seems I can only use a small part of the terrain while I have created a whole series of mountains, etc.

The one I am showing here has a lake in the lower right.  When I bring it in, I lose the lake.

Can someone do a screen capture of how they bring in a terrain as it appears in the 4 views in Vue? I think that is where I am going off. Also, what is the basic camera position and angle you use? I need a starting point?

I love GeocControl2. I have created distibution maps, etc. but am not satisfied with the initial positiong.

Thanks

Attached Link: http://www.virtual-lands-3d.com/geocontrol-2-vue1.html

This for me is the best tutorial i have found about GC2 and Vue.

I have seen the tutorial. As I stated I can export it correctly fromGeoControl2 and bring it into Vue using the Function Editor, etc. It is excellent but it doesn't answer my question. It doesn't show the screen captures I am discussing.

I appreciate all answers, but please if you caould answer the question I have asked I would appreciate it. How do I position the terrain in Vue so it makes use of most of the terrain created in GeoControl2? Distibution maps are the next step.

When you load the exported terrain map, do you also turn off zero edges in the terrain editor? You need to do this to get the full terrain (sorry if this is very obvious - it's the only thing I could think of!).

If I do zero edges, I seem to lose most of what I have done. This is the terrain as it appears in Geocontrol2. It's  only 1024 because for this I wanted it to render quickly in GeoControl2. This is basically an experiment.

One thing that would help is if you could go into more detail about what you mean by "lose the lake".
A likely cause is the ground plane intersecting the terrain object, but there are other possibilities such as GC exporting the lake surface rather than the underlaying terrain.

Also screenshot from GeoControl as a means of knowing what it should look like.

I don't have any preferred camera position or angle. Each case is a different case. In Vue, I don't try to show everything in a terrain, that's impossible anyway. I just focus on the best and forget the rest.

Anyway, it might help you if you rotate the terrain by 45º and put the camera near the lower corner. This way, the camera angle is the most favourable to capture the maximum area of the terrain.

With a 35 MM Camera setting you can set your camera to one of the 4 corners as your red X shows and it will utilize most of your terrain, if that is what you are asking about, but I always use a 50 MM camera as it doesn't distort the outer edges like the 35 MM. Also, it matters little if you use the function editor to import the map or use the picture importer on the near to the bottom left in the terrain window, that is when figuring in your mats they will create different details of their own.
 
You may also want to render smaller sections of your terrain to use as individual terrains and you can distribute them anywhere you want.
In World Machine2 there is an 'Ortho World" view and you pick the details where and when you want them to render and export as individual maps, then mix and match later. I prefer that method.

Thanks for all the answers.

I have always used parts of a terrain and combined different ones from GeoControl1 and now 2. Here I wanted to use one terrain with distribution maps.

Sorry I couldn't help......

Thelby -

You did help by sharing your camera settings. I was just commenting on how I used to use it.

Here's what I get (very quick lashup to demonstrate). First is the terrain rendered in GC2:

Now the Vue render from a procedural terrain using the 16-bit terrain height map exported from GC2:

As you can see, the terrains are almost identical apart from the artifacts in the top right corner in the Vue render (and the strange moire effects, don't know why they are there).

Edit: should have said that this is a 1024x1024 terrain, there would be better results with larger maps.

Spedler -
That is very impressive. Could you please do screen shots of the 4 views in Vue? I export the 16-bit height map, but cannot get the likeness that you are able to get. If you could provide more information, I'd appreciate it. What you have gotten is what I am now trying to do.

I have been trying to fill up the main viewport. It seems as if you aren't. Am I correct?

 I get those moiré effects in TG2...I think it's the resolution it comes in at. I take mine into old terragen and adjust the point size there as I haven't figured out if that's doable in TG2. Dunno if that can be done in Vue tho.. ...

It's true I didn't fill the main viewport in that image, because I wanted to show how the GC terrain maps to a Vue procedural terrain. But you could fill the viewport, though some of the terrain would no longer be visible in the camera.

I've done a screenshot of the Vue windows but it's a big image so you can download it from my site; there are shots of the terrain editor and function editor as well if you want them.

Thanks so very much Spedler -

The Function Editor and Terrain Editor were identical with mine. The download screen capture gave me the starting point I was looking for.

Many of the other answers helped, but that download was what I was looking for. While mine didn't fill the screen either, it answered my questions and gave me what I needed to go on.

Here are my tries :
Geocontrol vs Vue renders
4 viewports in Vue

Try to use bilinear interpolation if you use images in procedural terrains. This may solve the moire problem.

That said, I kind of understand your problem is Paula. Geocontrol generates very nice terrains, but they generally cover large areas. Once imported in Vue, you may want to place the camera at eye level and thus have two issues:

• you only see a small part of the superb terrain you have designed in GC2
• you are so close to the terrain that you see artifacts as the area you visualize lacks resolution

I think GC2 generates terrains at a scale that is often too large for us, even when keeping the parameter: "Amount of details" to 0.

Excellent point about bilinear interp, I'd forgotten about that. By the way, I really enjoyed your GC to Vue tutorials - for the first time, selections in GC made sense to me!

Paula - glad it helped!

Offrench wrote: *That said, I kind of understand your problem is Paula. Geocontrol generates very nice terrains, but they generally cover large areas. **Once imported in Vue, you may want to place the camera at eye level and thus have two issues:

• you only see a small part of the superb terrain you have designed in GC2**

*That has been the problem. Normally I used portions of terrains created in GC2. But I wanted to play with a whole terrain and displacement maps having it look the same in Vue as in GC2. I was doing this as sort of an exercise for myself.  As I stated I felt it was my camera placement or focal length. I now know it was not the focal length.

Now I can start with the whole terrain and experiment with different perspectives, etc.

Thanks again to all who have helped.

Offrench - Thanks for your excellent tutorials.

Maybe use a displacement material for added detail up close? not sure on what that would do to the file size/render speed though...?? maybe go nuts?

First of all, I think that the capability of Vue of creating more than one terrain is underused. I think that this stems from the fact the the most important application of terrain generators is for game development and inside game engine terrains are subdivided into sections and not creatively assembled the way we can with, e.g., Vue.

A terrain creation program like GeoControl has to do everthing in one shot while with several Vue terrains we can have different resolutions for near and far terrains, we can mix standard and procedural ones and we can mix terrain features so, as a first idea, it is advisable to split the overall terrain into components. E.g. nothing prevents us to mix a smoothly rolling plain with  alpine peaks in the background. Creating such a terrain with any program is not easy (and quite likely amounts to create two different terrains and mix them appropriately).

Also, something I learned from GeekAtPlay tutorials: the different terrains can not only be translated and scaled appropriately. but can also be rotated and sheared. No existing terrain generation program can create overhangs: with Vue nothing prevents to to create a "mountain", scale and rotate it into a thin peak and then shear it to  a side, covering another part of the terrain.

As I showed in past threads, Vue terrain are not as sharp as GeoControl or WorldMachine show, especially the standard terrains. This is somewhat a non problem because, as soon as you add a texture to the terrain, 1-2 pixels wide details are completely drawn by texturing. Terragen2 terrains look spectacular because they are the result of a first fractal detailing at terrain level (always present UNLESS you deliberately turn it off from terrain nodes), plus materials which provide true displacement to the surface; the Vue equivalent is to take a terrain, use it as a base for a procedural terrain, and then texture it with a displacement material, adding as last component days of experimentation because TG2 renders are never the result of 20 minutes doodles!

The border artifacts shown above are not actually artifacts... do you notice that for every right peak there is a corresponding real peak on the left (and if the data were different, there would be visible upper peaks for each lower one)? well it is a bug (which I read manifests also on image based materials). The work around is very simple: in the Projected Texture map node there is a pair of fields tagged Scale: just a set them to 1.01 (i.e. a bit more than 1) to enlarge the terrain slightly and push the artfacts outside the show area.

W.r.t. interpolation I prefer bicubic because, tought  it is smoother then the other alternatives, does not introduce artifacts (Vue should introduce Lanczos interpolation).

The moire-like artifacts are almost surely due to an 8 bit heightfield bitmap. Check carefully the bit depth of the bitmap, best with a completely indipendent application (bugs happens...). TGA export is usable in Vue only for standard terrains while .TIFF can be used both for standard and for procedurals. B.T.W., if you are looking at terrain details, the 256 level stepping can be used deliberately as a kind of level curves.

Bye!!!

P.S.: before even trying displacement materials on terrains, save your work. I have just recently been able to use them, with 64 bit Vue on a 8GB vista box; before, in the 32 bit era on 1GB computer it was a sure recipy for a crash.

Thanks for these points alex, some good ones here. Particularly about the border artifacts - I keep forgetting about the 1.01 scale solution to this. In the render I posted, this truly was a 16 bit TIF heightfield. not 8 bit or TGA, but the moire problem resolved completely on switching to bilinear interpolation. I'll try bicubic as well.

You can, of course, also import several different terrains from GC2 and use them as you would multiple native Vue terrains. By turning on zero edges you just get the central part of the GC2 terrain; I sometimes do this because IMO the GC2 mountains can be better than Vue mountains, but it's really a matter of preference.

I did not use 1.01 in Vue 7 when I used a number of displacement maps from CG2. Has anyone noticed a difference between Vue 6 I and Vue 7 I as far as the scaling goes?

I haven't noticed much.  I still have to use the 1.01 in Vue 7 to avoid artifacts.  Come to think of it, i don't think i used 1.01 in Vue 6.