Adding detail to imported heightfield

Bug Reports
#1

Hi, first off, I’m brand new here and fairly new to WM. But I’m excited about what it can do.

I’m having a little trouble understanding the right approach for my planned workflow. I’d like to import regions of geography as heightfields obtained from SRTM data sampled at 30m resolution, then add detail at a much higher resolution and export the new heightfield for rendering in Vray with Cinema 4D.

So far the import’s going fine. Where I’m struggling is how best to add detail such as erosion, rocks and just basic surface roughness and how to combine this with the imported heightfield.

I haven’t yet seen an example file or tutorial that does this.

Can you steer me in the right direction?

In the meantime, here’s the kind of work I do and I want to expand with WM: http://vimeo.com/19713691

Cheers!

Will M

#2

Hi there Will,

This is definitely a common task, so hopefully you can get a few workflows and opinions from folks here.

In general, though depending on how much resolution you need on your output you will likely be using a collection of detail-enhancing devices.

One of my favorite tricks is to pipe the input from your file into the first input of the Advanced Perlin device (Shaping Guide). Set the shapeguide lead-in to a high value – this will make the noise only add fine variations to your input terrain.

From there you can pipe the result to erosion or other filters. In simple cases, that’s all you need. If your input terrain has distinct regions, it may be worthwhile to define several advanced perlin -> erosion paths that have different noise and/or erosion types on them. Then create a Choose and a Layout Generator, and use the Layout to draw shapes defining the regions you want and then choose between them using the Layout Generator on the chooser input and the two paths on the A/B inputs. Somewhat similar to what’s shown in this thread.

#3

That’s Stephen. That’s exactly what I wanted to know.

I can’t seem to make that link work. But I think I can get with what you’ve told me.

Cheers!

W

#4

No problem, hope it helped! The forum software munged the link I posted earlier, should be fixed now.

#5

Thanks so much for the help, Stephen. Here’s what I’ve been able to do so far:

These are of my old home town Boulder Co. Based on SRTM data. Rendered in C4D with Vray.

Cheers!

W

#6

jefferytv16@tamotsu33.gotorrents.top

#7