Forum: Vue


Subject: Using Photoshop to make terrain. Problems

notefinger opened this issue on May 29, 2006 · 13 posts


notefinger posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 10:30 AM

I'm  useing  Photoshop to make a gray scale image of a terrain that I am then importing in the terrain editor to make a body of land. What I get is my land has a waffeled appearence.

I made a gray scale image in Photoshop, 500 x 500 pixels at 300 dpi. I then painted a subtle image and then gave it a gaussian blur of 30 to smooth it out and saved is as a jpeg. When I took it over to Vista Pro 4 it comes out looking waffely. Not what I was looking for. How can I fix it? I tried saving it as a bmp and a Tif with same results.


notefinger posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 10:31 AM

Here is the gray scale inage I used.

spedler posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 10:39 AM

Are you, in fact, asking in the correct forum? You mention Vista Pro in your first post.

I've tried your image in Vue, and it works fine.

Steve


notefinger posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 11:03 AM

I said Vista Pro, which was my first terrain creation program that I had for the Amiga in the early '90s, but what I meant was Vue 4. If it worked, what were your settings in the Terrain editor? How come the waffels?


jc posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 12:26 PM

Never seen a pattern like that in Terrain Editor.

  1. Did you check the "fractal" checkbox at the start? That would be incorrect, as you are using a heightmap to create a terrain mesh, not a procedural ('fractal") terrain.

  2. Best to use multiples of 16 (256 x 256, 512 x 512, 1024 x 1024).

  3. Usually you want a blend of 100%, so only the heightmap controls the terrain (unless you are mixing a heightmap + an existing terrain).

  4. Not sure about Vue 4. Above is for Vue 5 Infinite.

_jc  'Art Head Start' e-book: Learn digital art skills $19.95
'Art Head Start.com Free chapter, Vue tutorials, models, Web Tutorials Directory.


spedler posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 12:51 PM

I initially tried it in Vue 5I, but then I loaded up Vue 4 and tried it again, and it also worked fine. No special settings; a 256x256 terrain, picture loaded with 100% in blend mode.

I don't know why it would produce that result. If you want to make the scene file available, zipped of course, I'm happy to download and try it here. (Please remove any included 3rd-party content first though.)

Steve


notefinger posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 1:03 PM

I tried the suggestions but same waffel results. I used the same gray scale file in Carrara 4 and got perfect results. I found what I was looking for. I would do it in Carrara but I don't like the trees that program produces.

Next idea?


jc posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 7:09 PM

Maybe time for a support ticket at e-on's web site?

But first:
Does it  it happen with all your gray scale maps, or just this one? Even if this one works for us and in Carrera, i'd still try another to be sure.
What format was your map in? Tried .psd? (works in V5i). If .jpg, tried with/without 'progressive'?
Tried with no blur?

That pattern you get looks like what i got when i imported Photoshop Shapes into Terrain Editor, then 'baked to polys' for export. You're not baking by chance?

...Just grasping at straws here...

 


Vertecles posted Mon, 29 May 2006 at 9:06 PM

Looks like your image is being tiled ?

It's a shame stupidity isn't painful.


Cheers posted Tue, 30 May 2006 at 4:19 AM

Are you saving the image in a compressed format...try bmp just as a test. Even with tiff, if you save it compressed or choose a wrong byte order, that could be enough to screw it up.

Just a thought.

Cheers

 

 

Website: The 3D Scene - Returning Soon!

Twitter: Follow @the3dscene

YouTube Channel

--------------- A life?! Cool!! Where do I download one of those?---------------


thundering1 posted Tue, 30 May 2006 at 9:32 PM

Just made a quickie terrain with your above image - worked fine - set to 512x512.


thundering1 posted Tue, 30 May 2006 at 9:33 PM

Are you using this setting? If this is what you're doing, then yeah, you need to contact e-on, but if not, give it a try and see what happens. Good luck! -Lew ;-)


diolma posted Wed, 31 May 2006 at 3:10 PM

I don't have Vue 4 (I have V5I), and got a reasonable image from your height-map with no real problems.

BUT: I have a little tickle in my back-brain from a thread I read (probably here) that seemed to say something to the effect that the texture-mapping mode can affect the terrain-mapping (as wierd as that seems). Since what you've got seems to be a tiling effect, maybe that's worth checking out? After all, it does rather look like what might happen if the height-map was applied in world-mapping mode instead of object-mapping mode..
No idea if this is any help, but it's possibly a blind-alley to chase down:-))

Cheers,
Diolma