I love Carrara, however, I find the landscape generator frustrating.  My main problem is with the tools for editing the terrain map.  They are primitive and clumsy.  Am I missing something?  It seems like the expectation is that I should do more with the filters and generators, but I always end up trying to edit the terrain map to get the shape I want, and then I'm playing with a little tiny gray and white box that responds either too slowly or too quickly to the tools provided.

I have Bryce, but have never really learned the interface - does it provide more sophisticated tools for manipulation of terrain?  If so, I may give it a whirl.

Am I missing something with Carrara?  Can anyone point me to a tutorial that might help me generate terrain?

Thanks in advance,

Klebnor

 Carrara's landscape generator and filter functions are designed to quickly modify a generic landscape. This is the same for Bryce and Vue. Customizing the landscape always involves hand painting. 

Bryce's landscape painting tools are a little nicer to use than Carrara, but Carrara's filters and especially it's Landscape Terrain is superior to Bryce's. For the most part, landscape customization is a close-is-good-enough endevour. 

There are other tools that you can use with Carrara for better landscapes. DCG's Ground Control does not improve Carrara's landscape painting but does allow you import real geological survey map data to create "real" landscapes - from all over the US and some info from other parts of the world. GeoControl is another toolset that seems to yield amazing results - I personally haven't used it because it's PC only at this time and I run a mac shop. 

Vue, only in version 8 - the most recent, has included actual landscape sculpting tools. So, creating the ideal landscape from within the 3D program is not as common as you might think it is. 

Here's the best solution: If you are comfortable working with Photoshop, Photopaint, Gimp or other pixel based paint programs, the painting tools sets are superior to Carrara's. You can simply paint your own gray scale elevation map and then import it into Carrara's landscape tool. If you need to make changes, you can simply edit the original file in the paint program and then update it in Carrara. 

Ahhhh, for the perfect 3D toolset. ;-)

As always, Mark Bremmer's VTC tutorials have lots of info.
When you select the tools in the terrain editor, you can change the size and strength of the effects. It is one of those things that gets faster with practice, but I agree it is clumsy when you have a specific terrain feature you want to emulate. I am going to experiment with the Digital Carver's Guild plug-in that uses real topo maps.
The Bryce interface used to be almost the same as the Carrara interface in the terrain editor. You might as well stick with carrara.

Thanks for the feedback.  I have experience with Paintshop Pro and Adobe Photoshop, but the concept of a grayscale elevation map is new to me.  Any advise on where to start?  I understand that white is high, black is low, but:

What size to start with?
Any limitations to observe between white and gray (min and max chroma values)?

Do you create a map just for the gross values (mountain, river, island, etc.) then import and use erosion and other filters to create realistic terrain?
 
Thanks again for the help.

Klebnor

 Because the eye is used to seeing complexity in landscape, it does take awhile to create something believable. I usually create the base map at around 2048 square within Carrara, apply the filters and rough painting I want and then convert it to a pixel image and export it. I can then refine in Photoshop and reimport to Carrara and apply additional filters like erosion. 

Be aware that you may need/want a 4096 map for up close landscapes but a 1024 map for items in the distance. Landscape scenes are usually made up of several terrain maps hidden by camera angles. ;-)

Thanks, Mark.  Still experimenting, will try your export/import method.

Klebnor

Brian:

Very cool.

I spent a few  hours just playing with the altitude on a few presets yesterday.  Terrain shaders are very impressive.

Klebnor

Things notable about Bryce:

1. You don't need to spend extra to use USGS DEM files. Bryce will import most of those ok.
2. You can export the Bryce heightmaps to .pgm (Thus you can convert the DEMs, if desired.)
3. The Bryce terrain editor is better in some aspects. Painting an elevation doesn't screw up the rest of the map like Carrara's editor does. (Or at least it does in 6.2 and older.) So if you wanted a road going through a mountain pass or a river bed, the process is really straight-forward in comparison.
4. Bryce also has some neat tiling features for its fractal terrains. But this involves a bit of more in-depth knowledge. I won't go into much detail here, but this info isn't too hard to find. It is possible make some uber-massive and consistent landscapes this way.

Although Carrara (at least 6.2 and older) doesn't seem to import .pgm directly, you can easily convert .pgm files in 2D software to other formats. (It's just a plain ol' grayscale heightmap.) PaintShopPro works for this, and I'd assume PhotoShop and Gimp can do the job as well. (Although PhotoShop may require a plugin.) Saving that as .bmp or .png means you can import it easily enough into Carrara's terrain editor. Note that you'll have to dial in some parameters in Carrara after importing so the heighmap levels are apparent.

Alternately you can save a Bryce terrain to .obj. Bryce will also generate maps with UV texture based upon Bryce materials, so that provides some other options as well. (Like editing in a modeler to add caves or cliff ledges, etc.)

Yes there are extra workflow steps when using Bryce to complement Carrara, but don't rule it out completely.

Follow up since it's too late to edit.

Gimp works fine, Photoshop doesn't (at least not w/o plugins) in regards to opening .pgm files. The version of PaintShopPro I used earlier was 6, but I'd presume the following versions still maintained the ability to open .pgm files.

And another thing you can do is use the heightmap as a reference to draw a black and white separator that can be used with a multi-channel mixer. Thus when making a road going through the mountains, you can make a separate b/w image with where the road is white and everything else black. (Or vice versa, doesn't matter as long as the contrast is there.) Then have one channel in the multi-channel mixer be a terrain terrain texture and the other the road texture and the b/w image of the road path as the blender.

And you can repeat using the heightmap as a reference as to painting where certain foilage or other objects appear, and then use the grayscales saved off of that as controls for the surface replicator.

I might have to test this out in a render, unless somebody beats me to it.

My version of Photoshop comes with .pgm file compatability as standard!??????

Also, anyone seriously wanting to be involved with Terrains--incluluding all the radar and usdm  satelite imagery--NEEDS the DCG Ground Control and Terrain Tools plugins.

Brilliant plugins.

Brian

Brian:

Very nice work.  Do you use the elevation, slope and terrain bump to create brush in the green areas and striations in the sand?

Would you be inclined to share the car file for your island so I could see what you did?

Klebnor

Fantastic landscapes, Brian.

Cheers!

Brian:

Great stuff.  Is there an easy way to keep trees at certain elevations?  I have duplicated the terrain and painted on where I wanted them, but if I could specify the elevations that would be simpler.

Klebnor

Great work Brian;)
Just another information for Klebnor, you can import terrain map from Terragen into Carrara.

Brian:

PM sent.  Thanks for all your input and help.

Holyforest - I'll take a look at Terragen.  I assume it has more refined tools for developing a terrain map.

Klebnor

GeoControl has a 30 day fully featured demo version.

The attached shows the file types which can be imported with The Ground Control plugin from DCG. There are" Mountains" (pun!) of FREE files about for all those formats
Brian.

Very nice work Brian!! Thanks for sharing!