PlaneShift
Development => Development Deliberation => Topic started by: DarkCore on June 27, 2006, 04:00:25 am
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Hello,
Does anyone know a free Terrain Generator/Editor that can export to any of the file types Blender supports?
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One available terrain generator is "Terragen", which is able to build up heightfields (like for ojaroad01) and export them as raw files, which can be converted to greyscale images easily with most image editors, or to several other 3D mesh formats (like LightWave Object).
I don't know which formats Blender can read or import...
The unregistered version is somewhat limited, but still quite useable.
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Here are two good landscape tools for Blender: A.N.T. Landscape creator (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=34955), A.N.T. Image_Relief (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=62196). You will find other useful Python scripts and informations on Blender Artists Forums (http://blenderartists.org/forum) (former Elysiun), for example "Teragen2 Blender" (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68317), just do a search for "landscape".
P.S. Is it a good topic for "Development deliberation" ?
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(Not sure if this is on topic or not...)
I've been fiddling with blender recently, and I discovered that in the current version, you can make your own fractal height maps. Here is how it is done:
1. Create a grid, with a lot fewer divisions than the final map will need.
2. Optional: Add mountains, etc. with the proportional edit tool.
3. Use fractal subdivision to fractal it up and double the number of grid squares.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as much as needed, probably 2 or 3 times.
Further tips:
A. You can build nice canyons, river valleys, etc, and touch them up at each step along the way.
B. If you are happy with some parts of the grid, you can deselect those edges, to reduce the polygon count.
C. This is also a neat way to make rocks (start with a sphere), crumpled up paper, etc.
Fractal subdivide is SPACE-Edit-Edges-Subdivide Fractal; the number is the magnitude - I would start with 30-50.
Wikibooks has a great blender tutorial (half done of course, but the first half is great...)
Sw.
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CrystalSpace already provides a heightfield renderer with Level-of-Detail - including interpolation to a grid level finer than the provided heightfield map. This way it is probably both easier and more flexible than pre-calculating a whole mesh (which might not support LoD reduction).