Hello, I’m just beginning with WM Standard 1.25 version. I’m having some difficulty figuring out formats to export for conversion then for importing to Cinema 4D. I’m getting banding which I understand is caused by 8 or lower bit heightmaps. My WM file is 1024x1024 and I am going out of WM with a 16 bit .pgm. I take this to PaintShop Pro v.10 where it is read as 16 bit. I convert to .tif which is read again as 16 bit. Now I can import the tif into Cinema 4D, but I get banding. This seems my only choice of formats out and in.
as long as no step in your pipeline reduces below 16bit, you should not be experiencing banding or quantization in your terrain.
The are really only three areas where you could be having problems are 1) PSP is not truly working in 16bit mode when importing the PGM, or 2) The TIFF that is saved is not a true 16bit greyscale TIFF, or 3) Cinema is not importing the TIFF properly.
Working from backwards to forwards, you can email me an example TIFF that shows the banding to support@world-machine.com. This can at least let me know if the TIFF file coming out of PSP is truely 16bit.
As an aside, I believe some folks have mentioned that they have been able to use the Raw-32FP format directly in Cinema4D. I’m not a C4D user so I can’t confirm this or offer advice on the steps, however.
I’ve verified that it is indeed in 16bit format, and does contain the full dynamic range – so the problem has to be in the Cinema4D import. Anyone else use C4D here who might be able to help?
Does C4D support import of any other high-bitdepth image formats?
Even if PSP produces a 16bit image, it might have reduced the terrain to 8bit while loading it.
You know, you can also use 32bit or 64 or whatever - if it was loaded with 8bit you will get banding anyway.
So I guess either PSP or C4D can read the 16bit file, but convert it on loading automatically. A look into the manuals might help here.
Take comfort, Maya does the same thing! If you import a 16-bit file and render with the software renderer or try to convert the hight mapped geometry to a poly object you’ll get banding. Apparently, 8-bit down conversion is just the way things are. It sounds like Cinema is doing the same thing.
However, at least in maya, if you render with Mentalray the 16-bit file will be treated as 16-bit, free from banding. Same with 32-bit files. In short, try rendering with Mentalray (if you’ve got it), and you should rid yourself of the banding.
The problem then becomes how do you work with your scene. Having a full hightmap terrain may be fine for snow-capped mountains in fly-over animations, but not so hot for anything else. You’ll eventually find yourself wanting to add rocks, grow trees, add water, and so on, all of which requires solid geometry. Generally speaking, the sooner you can convert a hight field to a poly-mesh the better. Of course being limited to 8-bits is a huge problem during the displacement to polymesh operation, something that needs to be addressed.
Anyway, I’m trying to work out a system that captures the essence of my terrain while retaining a solid mesh. I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer may be to create a low poly mesh (200k or so), and use bump mapping, detailed textures, and other tricks to add detail.
Thanks a lot, I’m hoping to hear from someone actually using Cinema 4D - I know that Walli (Wallace Eck) uses Cinema and World Machine. He posted here some time ago. Maybe I’ll send him an e-mail as he does have his address on his website. …but I don’t want to be intrusive.
Now that I have a little time again, I will look into all aspects of this a little furthur - I might not be sending it out of WM correctly either somehow.
I will let you know here what I can figure out if it has some value to anyone - anyone using Cinema 4D or other software for that matter.
There is a nice but somewhat expensive plugin for Cinema that has a landscape generator - DPIT Nature Spirit - which I’ve looked into the demo version. It is just not as “friendly” as WM and I can not seem to get good results with it as quickly or intuitively. It does operate inside C4D, which is a good thing.
If we cold only just get a 16 bit TIFF out of WM…on the list for maybe next time?
…mattg, I bet my last reply sounded a little clipped - I appreciate your info much. Yes, I will be wanting to add poly models as soon as I can - thats why I’m using Cinema instead of Terragen…until v.2 Terragen comes along , of course!
I do architectural renderings and the buildings as well as the countryside around here are highly organic - mud houses for example. I have waited a long time for a decent landscape generator to use with the mud houses I design and model. I have looked at Carrara5 because it has a capable terrain gen function, but getting anything assembled in Carrara is something of a chore and I’ve decided that it is not worth the trouble. I have schedules to meet as well. I also have tried Vue5 (not 5I) and found it to be too buggy for my use as well - it’s the schedule thing again. I simply cannot afford to get halfway into something and have it crash corrupted on me - which has happened more than once with Vue. I do really love the atmospheric scenes that the Vue masters can get out of it tho.
Cinema 4Dhas always been bullet proof for me. I know a lot of people use 3DS Max and Viz for architectural, but I tried Viz too. Cinema works better than any for me. Havent tried Maya…I only have so much time to test software and recently have run out of that (and$) too! Cinema has great displacement mapping function to use with a high bit depth polygon object terrain. Now if I can just get all those little terraces out of it…
It seems, that no 32 Bit-format exported from Worlsmachine can be read by Photoshop???
Is this true?
Why can’t i export to 32 Bit Tiff or another common format?
By 32bit format, assuming you’re to greyscale channel depth, 32bits is pretty much overkill for mostly everything you would want to do to a terrain in Photoshop. However with that said, If you need high bitdepth formats, you can export as a RAW from World Machine and choose “Open As” to open the file from Photoshop in the appropriate format.
I would think that going from WM to r16 and then converting that to a 3D format such as .stl or .obj would be the better way to go, assuming C4D can import either of those 3D formats.