Middle Earth DEM Project

The southern leg of the Blue Mts is now in! Just the north range to do now.

www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/...nBlue_Rockies_01.png
www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/...nBlue_Rockies_02.png
www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/...nBlue_Rockies_03.png
www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/...nBlue_Rockies_04.png

monks

Those look really good monks. I take it you're using elevation data from real mountain ranges and then shaping it to fit the map here? So you get nice natural formations?

Yes, they're not quite up to the standard of Mordor, but they're certainly good enough- an improvement over previous procedurals.

I've used the US Rockies for the Blue Mts. These are the last of the major Tolkien mt ranges.

www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/NorthBlue_01.png
www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/NorthBlue_02.png

I'm going to get these into Global Mapper and see how they look.

monks

There's a combination two different terrains in the shots, hence the lines.

The terrain needs some processing still. I was learning on the job.

www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/3d_03.jpg
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By the time I did the Blue mts, I was using a combination of the texturer masks and WM layouts to
alter the height of the terrain. I was able to get much more control with just the addition of a single
device with a combiner. The layout mode in WM is the nearest you have to painting masks in 3D.

www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/3d_08.jpg
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www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/3d_01.jpg

I think Mordor is probably too high. It was always an option to drop the height in the future. The problem is, is that the White mountains should be higher than the Ephel Duath, but with Mordor set so high, and the White mts not covering a very large area, raising the Whites too high makes them look unatural. They rise too quickly.
Mordor will have to stay as it is for the time being.

monks

Obviously my project represents kind of a side-branching from the main ME-DEM project, but I'm also thinking Mordor might be a bit high. The highest peaks in the Ered Lithui are topping 7000 meters; well into Himalayan territory. Most of the peaks in the Ephel Duath are between 3000 and 5000 meters. The trick is finding the right height to make the best angles for the mountain faces; right now things are a bit steep. I'm thinking that a 75% height scaling might make sense. However, doing that loses some of the more awesome peaks that I really like the shape of.

So, what I think I'm going to do is a masked height adjustment; toning down some of the less desirable stuff while keeping the cool bits like the 1000 meter rock spires in the Ephel Duath.

Unfortunately I've only got the basic version of World Machine 2.2, so I can't use tiled datasets. This means I'm going to be doing most of my landscape editing in photoshop the old fashioned way, by hand. -_- If I can find a copy of 2.2 pro that runs on my 32 bit system, what I'd *like* to do is do the gross edits in photoshop, then bring the whole terrain into World Machine, run a bunch of effects on it to generate detailed masks, then downsample the new output heightmap and import that into Condor. Right now, though, the only way I can get data into WM seems to be importing the terragen files output by the Condor Scenery Editor. When I bring TIF data in I end up with mismatched and flattened elevation data, weird streaking effects, and so on.

Either way, World Machine is amazing. Can't wait to get good at using it.

I don't suppose you could give me some feedback on how to use the snow module in WM. I can't seem to get it to work, but I really want to generate some detailed "snow" maps to use as ash maps for the Ered Lithui.

Also, do you know how to get WM to upsample an input source? Like, the terragen tiles I've imported are 256x256; I'd love if WM could subdivide them to 1024x1024 or something similar before running filters and features on the terrain so that the masks I get have "virtual" detail. The 3d terrain in condor won't have the resolution, but the textures will be able to provide the illusion of higher resolution terrain.

Agreed on Mordor. Do whatever you want with it. I'd lower the heights and perhaps use a Sharpening macro on the ridges. Select the ridges via a convexity selector.

tif data problems..? I can convert it for you.I'd suggest Wilbur for conversions, but you might be out of luck regards tifs. Are there no other paths?

WM 2.2 pro will run on 32 bit. The install has options for both.

Snow device- it never really did anything for me that- wasn't intuitive so I ended up going with my old method of just creating white textures via height and slope selectors. The biggest advantage it has is you can export actual geometry because the snow has depth, but with Mordor can't see that being useful, no glaciers in there. Might be good for ash fall though

If you go into Layout or Explorer modes you do get sub pixel terrain but of course it's proc generated. What you need is actual input rescaling. I don't know of any modeller that can do that.

I'll let you have some tmds to illustrate.

monks