Middle Earth DEM Project

Just chipping in to say these pics look awesome. Nice work. Yes, I have been well busy on many fronts so I have had to drop a number of things temporarily inc MeDem. But I will be back later on in the year for sure.

Thanks. I appreciate the compliment.

Quick questions regarding the genesis of the map:

Did you guys use much in the way of that tilted strata effect I saw posts about on the world machine forum? Also did you do much terracing in the Ephel Duath or Ered Lithui? Just thinking about how to fine-tune the erosion.

Also I'm having a bit of trouble with the Morgul Vale and the Cirith Ungil road; the pass that's marked on the big geographic map (the one with the nice labeling) doesn't seem to be the best way down the valley; but the valley turns south pretty steeply, coming out pretty close to the southern end of Perth Ulmyn. Was thinking of altering that area a bit more.

Also I've pulled off some fun work, built a handy little macro to show me the changes I'm applying and build up a composite bitmap overlay. Makes placing ash a *hell* of a lot easier because it updates in real time. Refined ash plume:



Red is erosion specific to Orodruin, blue is general erosion, green is ash, cyan (almost impossible to see) is a light erosion pass over just the ash deposits.

I'm getting the ash mask with a combination of a lightmap generator an angle selector and a layout mask. A lightmap is generated; it lays down a basic mask based on the shape of the terrain. You can use it to make just about any base mask, using different levels of lighting to highlight certain areas. It's like a way-more-advanced angle selector. Then it goes through a noise generator to random it up a bit, then into the snow device as an intensity mask. The snow is then masked with an angle selector which is in turn masked by the layout generator. It's like having a spraygun for ash.

I'm going to be building a bunch of texturing macros over the next few days. That preview-changes overlay is basically the mechanism I'm going to use to generate masks and layer them together. I'll basically be able to airbrush my textures onto the mountains.

So my project above got corrupted somehow. No idea why, but it now crashes World Machine every time I try to open it, and I wasn't saving backups. No real loss though as this is all learning and playing around not actually making things.

Still working on the ash machine; since I'm starting with the Ered Lithui, I figured I'd mess around a bit with that part of the map. I turned Carl's ridge-sharpening tool into a macro that can take masks, and put a voronoi generator into it to mix up the strength of the device so it's not quite as uniform looking.

Also did some terracing; putting some subtle basaltic erosion into the more vertical surfaces. I really wish I could make angled strata though so I could realistically erode big chunks of tilted basalt.

Then I did some major ash-laying.

photos.napalm.net/clubsi/EredLithui1.jpg

Some real-world imagery to go along with that.

farm3.staticflickr.com/2775/5790577001_f764ac10c8_b.jpg

That's looking really sweet Patrick. Coming along nicely!

The strata...another thing I wanted to put in ...and it's something I intend to put in more in all of the terrains, but I see that as the next stage, placing them in via a mask globally, rather than putting it into indivudual terrains before I've got some kind of top down strategy.
Angled strata can be done. I've sent you a tmd. Feel free to improve on it too- it was hacked as a bit of an afterthought.

On the loss of the project...bummer...I always save like a nut. A pet hate of having to repeat things- you'll never find me on a console for that reason

monks

I found a way to make that northern part of the Ephel Duath look... well... like one imagines the Ephel Duath ought look. Just the right combination of terracing and geologic-scale erosion makes those rock spires look terrifying rather than jarringly improbable.

photos.napalm.net/clubsi/EphelDuath0%60.jpg

Don't mind the textures; just a colorizer with some color overlays for erosion to get a feel for things.

photos.napalm.net/clubsi/EphelDuathStrata.png

Tilted strata anyone?