Landscape Studio

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• (July 08, 2007, 05:55:28 pm)

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[Magnesium]

Landscape Studio - the product of a CS dissertation, now available for free to anyone and everyone. It offers highly customisable terrain generation (Ala Terragen) and provides several unique, useful features.
Generated terrain can also be exported into RAW format, allowing it to be loaded into Terragen for rendering.

Landscape Studio is a terrain generator, not a renderer, so it is best used in conjunction with Terragen.

Features:

terrain generation - for games, films, etc

tabbed workspace - Ala Firefox, allowing you to work on multiple projects at once

extendable - program your own addons

terrain application mapping - unique feature giving excellent control over generation

It is currently in beta, and I have yet to decide whether to continue development. Currently I just require a bit of user feedback, so give it a go and get in contact if you have any suggestions (Or wish to contribute to the project).


Download it for free from www.localblooddrive.co.uk

[Mohawk20]

Downloading now, I'll give it a try, see what it does!

[Magnesium]

Cheers mate, any feedback is good feedback

[Cyber-Angel]

Hi Magnesium,

I just downloaded Landscape Studio, and I can not get the thing to load.

When I try loading it, I get some thing that looks like a Command Line Interface for a few seconds on my screen (I am running window xp) then that disappears, then nothing.

Any help would be appreciated, looks like good software if only I could use it. I have Java, but am not Shaw how to proceed.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

[JavaJones]

Hi there, welcome to the site! Looks like a cool project. I'll try to take a look soon but my schedule's pretty crazy. Hopefully others will be able to play around a bit and give some feedback though.

- Oshyan

[Magnesium]

Hi Cyber-Angel,

Like I mentioned it is still a little shaky, and to be honest I haven't yet been able to test it on any system other than my own and my project supervisors.

The CLI is a batch file I quickly put together to invoke the main program. Since it is made in Java it's fairly difficult to make it into an 'executable' format.

Try manually loading it from the command prompt -


Goto Start -> Run

Type in "cmd" and press enter

Type in "cd c:\program files\landscape studio" (Or replace if it is installed elsewhere)

Type in "java TerrainGenerator"


After a few seconds it should run. If it doesn't, copy and paste any errors into this thread.
Out of curiousity, do you happen to know what version of the Java JRE you have installed?

This site has a JRE tester which tells you which version you have and if it is working correctly.
http://java.com/en/download/help/testvm.xml


Oh and hi JavaJones, cheers for the praise! I must say, it's nice to finally be part of a community where l33t speak knows no home - I don't need to spend five minutes decoding every reply

[Mohawk20]

I just doubleclicked the .bat file, and it ran instantly.

I have tried a few maps, but I find the controls a bit unclear, what slider does what?

The procedural fBm fractal doesn really creat realistic terrains. There are WAY to many spikes... or put differently, there are spikes! And the terrins have too large hiegt differences for the terrainsize. This could be caused by my settings, but I don't know which one to change.
I think Terragen has some problems with the raw file too. the preview in terragen shows something completely different than Landscape Studio. The 3D prview in terragen shows something different than the actual render, mountains are not in the same location!

This is an example render. http://www.ashundar.com/CPG/displayimage.php?pos=-2833
It seems Terragen has trouble texturing correctly!

I guess that is all caused by the fact that is a 0.1 version. But as it is, I won't be compelled to use it at all.

Doesn't sound very positive, but you have to know this in order to correct it.

[Magnesium]

Cheers Mowhawk - like I said, any feedback is good feedback. You are correct, it is labelled version 0.1 for a very good reason!

The terrain generation algorithms were actually created by Chris Burke (although were somewhat adapted), and due to the time constraints of my dissertation I would have been unable to both create the extremely complex algorithms as well as the software to make use of them.
For this reason the algorithm controls may be quite confusing, here is a brief rundown (Will eventually add this to the userguide):

H-value, offset and gain are essentially redundant, but were left in for testing purposes (You will notice they do affect the outcome of some algorithms).

Lacunarity and octaves essentially alter the amount of detail in the terrain (From smooth, rolling hills to harsh, rough mountains). Lower is smoother and higher is rougher.

I realise Terragen presents far more basic controls (Canyonism, realism, etc), but for the purpose of my dissertation the software required more a more complex algorithm interface. It is only with the feedback of individuals such as yourself that I may adapt the software to be more 'user friendly'.


In terms of the amount of spikes, these can be reduced by decreasing the number of octaves/the lacunarity, or by applying a 'Blur' filter.

Terragen does have problems with the RAW file by default, but this is due to the fact that Terragen imports files of size 257x257 (Anyone know why?) and flips them...For some reason.
To fix this, first load the RAW file into Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. Then resize the file to 257x257. Resave the file and import into Terragen, with the exception of being flipped, it should look ok. (The flip can be sorted by mirroring the image in Photoshop/PSP).

I really do appreciate you taking the time to provide this feedback Mohawk - those 150 or so words have provided me with half a dozen additional software requirements that I likely wouldn't have discovered through testing alone.
Thanks again.

[Mohawk20]

Ohwkay... I'll try some more.

I was wondering, how complicated is it to create .ter output? (the converting in PS will get a bit irritating after a while...)

[Magnesium]

During development I investigated the possibility of exporting to *.ter, unfortunately the information available on the format is fairly sparse.
I agree that the size conversion can be quite irritating, however the algorithm for resizing an image is fairly complex (This was an original requirement, but I got fed up with trying to figure it out a week before the deadline).

Today or tomorrow I'll make a quick fix - the text box next to the size slider will be editable. Set it to 257 if you wish to import it into Terragen, hopefully this should save a little time!


EDIT: I've made the changes, it should now be far easier to import files into Terragen (So long as you use the default 257x257 size).

[JavaJones]

I presume you've seen the developer info on the .ter format and maybe it's lacking, but I think a fair amount of people have implemented import/export for the format based on this info:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/dev/tgterrain.html

Another possibility is to support output to 16 bit .tif. The Terraconv utility would then allow easy conversion to .ter with no flipping or data loss.

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

- Oshyan

[Magnesium]

Cheers for those JavaJones, I wish I had known of them back in May!
After a quick peruse of the Ter format specification it seems it may be easier than previously thought to create an exporter (Next on my 'Todo' list).

[JavaJones]

Great to hear it. From what I understand the format is fairly simple and straightforward for initial implementation but there are a few subtleties that can cause problems in special cases. I wouldn't worry about those at first.

- Oshyan

[Mohawk20]

Erm... a quick question:

You say the RAW gets flipped. What gets flipped, the entire image, or all the rows?
I ask this because of the next image.
[thumb=datas/thumbs/2428-landscape studio offset.jpg]2428-landscape studio offset.jpg[/thumb]
There's still a big difference in Terragen en Landscape Studio, while I exported at 257.



I did get some better results in terrain realism (less spikes), when I used less extreme H value and Lacunarity settings.

One tip for everone using it, before you do anything else, after importing the terrain in Terragen, hit 'Modify' and decrease the hight range from '-3000 - 3000' to about something like '0 - 2000', or whatever you like, but the initial hight range is wáy to far apart!

[Magnesium]

When a RAW file is imported into Terragen it appears to be flipped vertically (I will fix this when I make the TER exporter).

The image you provided appears to be a 256x256 terrain imported into Terragen, the skewing is due to the diffence in the width of the imported file (A 256 width file imported into a 257 width terrain).

It's true that the terrain does appear different after importing into Terragen (Even when using correct sizes), but this seems to be due to the 2D display used by Terragen (It may look different, but it will render the same). I will work to improve the 2D view, but top of the agenda at the moment is the TER exporter (Now that I realise it is relatively straightforward).

Also, thanks for those tips Mohawk - the height range of exported terrains is a little bit messed up to be honest and more than a little rushed, but these will be improved ASAP.
I will try to provide somewhat of a visual guide for the algorithm settings in the user guide (i.e. renders of heightmap with low/high lacunarity, low/high octaves, etc), and eventually completely revamp the algorithms to provide a far simpler, user-friendly interface.

Thanks again everyone!