i could really use a good rock generator for work that can create a variety of rocks. one that can make smooth, river rocks/pebbles to long, granite slabs to huge, volcanic boulders. does anyone know of one? i was wondering if this would be a good addition to the feature set of WM. with all of its devices, i’m sure it would be able to create all sorts of rocks.
cheers,
Rock shapes don’t really lend themselves well to heightfields for 2 reasons.
Heightfields cannot have overhangs, so all “rocks” would have to be contiguous with the landscape, no edges at a greater than 90 degree angle. So you either have verticle edges or ones sloped outward, but nothing sloped inward or under the rock. This is pretty limiting when describing rock shapes.
Finite, homogenous heightfield resolution makes it very difficult to depict small features like rocks or even boulders. Let’s consider the example of a default terrain size 7.68km built at a reasonabl 2048x2048 resolution. At that resolution and terrain size each pixel represents 3.75 meters. That means that even if you are depicting boulders of about 4 meters, you can only use a single pixel to show them! This would effectively either put a smooth lump, spike, or even a block into your landscape, and it would look nothing like a boulder. Even if you bump the resolution up to the current maximum of 8192 it’s just under 1 meter per pixel, still too little resolution to show much detail at all.
Since WM works exclusively on heightfields it’s really not practical to include a true rock/boulder generator. Some fakes have been created that look decent, but it’s probably not worth creating as a dedicated feature.
I found a great 3D rock generator quite a while ago but it appears the website has been taken down. 
I’ve just e-mailed the author in the hopes that it is still available. I’ll let you know.
I got a very nice and quick reply from the author about the rock generator. Apparently development ended in 2003, which is unfortunate, but I still think it’s a fairly useful and impressive app even in its early state:
http://www.inf.tu-dresden.de/index.php?node_id=992
thanks Oshyan for the info! much appreciated. i just saw the video of the stone generator you mentioned and it is impressive. is the author ‘Annett Mitschick’? i’d like to send him an email and see if i can use his/her app.
on the rock and heightfield issue - what i’m thinking (and the geofrac app is doing the same thing) is have a rock mesh (probably a sphere with UVs) and give WM devices the ability to act on the mesh as a displacement. is that possible?
i have to say though, the ‘stone generator’ you mentioned has all of the features i want for a rock generator. it even has localized subdivision. so you can quickly create a high-poly rock, extract a normal map and apply it to a low-poly version.
cheers,
Yes, Annett Mitschick (a woman, I believe) is the developer. The tool is still available for download at the address I provided and I’m sure it is OK if you want to use it. But it would be good to contact her to encourage further development.
Using WM’s output as a displacement on a sphere wouldn’t take much support on WM’s side I don’t think. You’d just create your terrain as normal, visualizing what it would look like when wrapped onto your sphere as displacement. You would need some sort of support for polar projection I suppose, but otherwise it should be fine.
I tried downloading it but the file does not exist.
Damn. I could have sworn it worked when I tried it yesterday. Ah, but it seems it’s just a spelling error though:
Perhaps she’d be interested in getting at least the old version hosted in a more publice place. I’d be glad to keep it on Ashundar. Feel free to contact her to express your interest. 
If you still want to use heightfields for this, I’d suggest to experiment with voronoi noise. 
I use voronoi noise for stones and pebbles all the time when i am using Genetica 2.5 but in that software it’s called Puff Cells, Craters and 3D Noise but it ends up being the same thing basically.
This software would come in handy for TG2. Import these stones and instance them all over the terrain by slope, fractal noise or image mask placement. It would be another alternative from using the stone shader but both approaches could be mixed into the terrains as well.
Yes… TG2 will propably cause some turbulences…
Freeware tools like this one are going to get quite popular.
This Anette would be surprised when all of a sudden dozens of people are downloading her program :mrgreen:
Maybie that might persuade her to continue development? ‘:mrgreen:’
Dang, this program has alot of goodies with it.
Displacement by Bitmap, 2D and 3D Procedurals like Perlin, Lichen and Marble.
Cleft that digs cracks into the boulders.
Paint Color, Bitmap and Procedural Textures.
Spherical Mapping
A Variation wizard
Just one problem - I can not run the program. When i click on the EXE a window comes up saying .NET Framework Initialization Error telling me that mscorwks.dll could not be loaded. I have the .net framework installed sense i need it to run Genetica 2.5. 
hmm, maybe the .net framework needs to be the earlier 1.0 version 
I’ve also ran into trouble with some other app that was made for 1.0, and when I installed the 1.1 version, it stopped loading XML files… Don’t we all love “backward compatibility” issues ?
try looking over here to see if the problem is the same…
The question also appeared in an MSDN forum, but had 0 replies (Very usefull!)…
These were my thoughts as well. The wrong .NET version. I think i have version 1.1 on my WinXP Home Edition Disc. Have to get it out and look at it.
I looked over at those blogs and they are the same problems but the fix reads like stereo instructions but i’ll try to make sense of it. I might reinstall my .NET and see what happens.
Frackin Windows XP. :x
I wonder when public beta testing for windows xp is over and the bugfree verison will be released 
btw: I don’t believe you can contact her using the mail address from the website, because it’s an address provided by the university. And since that programm is part of her degree dissertation she maybe doesn’t use this address anymore.
I have Microsoft Framework .NET v1.1.4322. If worse comes to worse i’ll just keep the program for now on a temp disc and wait untill something comes along to allow me to fix all this.
Well i went back to .NET v1.0 and the exact same message comes up so it looks like i won’t be using this software.
Does anyone else have the same problem here?
Nope, works good for me here. WinXP Pro SP2 with .NET framework 1.1 (plus hotfix). I hate these seemingly random problems. sigh
I went to the Microsoft site and i am downloading the Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package.
OK! Success!
I uninstalled .NET, went into the windows folder, deleted all of the leftover .NET program files and did a fresh install of the Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package and the Stone Generator software works.
Excellent! I wonder if this really was a version-related thing or if your .NET was somehow corrupted.
Anyway let me know how you get along or if you need any help.
More then likely i tend to think it was corrupted. It is still the same version of Microsoft .NET Framework v1.1.4322 just like before.
The software runs great. Easy to understand and navigate in the 3D window. Has alot of potential but for what it has it does enough i think. Could use .OBJ importing, it only has .3DS but no worries. I want to test some higher poly objects sometime soon as well. It is definitely a keeper.