[lebbeus]

OK, what I was really asking was whether or not you can use this to make a model of a proposed site design, or if you have to use the arbitrary fractal generation method…seems like it's the latter

sorry I wasn't clear

[Maximus3D]

Not your fault, i misread your question. Sorry.

Let's try again

World Machine can import the following formats.
- .ter (Terragen)
- .bmp
- .tga
- .r32 (32bit RAW)
- .r16 (16bit RAW)
- .raw (8bit RAW)

And it can export the following formats.
- TGA (8bit)
- RAW (8bit)
- BMP (8bit)

16bit+ formats
- .ter (Terragen)
- Leveller
- Povray-TGA
- RAW16
- RAW-FP32
- BT (VTP format)
- PGM (ascii)

So.. if you can prepare your site design data in any of the formats it can import then yes you should be able to work further with that data in this program. That's my uneducated guess..

/ Max

[Leonardo]

Leo: Thanks and yeap it's a great lil software ..another test landscape for ya posted below.

MrCharles: Very cool, and what great looking landscapes you made so you're a betatester of the new Pro version. I'd love to try it out too. It's nice to see there are more fractal landscapers here keep posting more of your creations please.

Chris: You have to ask mrcharles about that, i haven't yet got a chance to try to export my landscapes yet, but soon..

Koufax: Yep sure does look good

Leo: You kinda can, but usually erosion and stuff like that don't look as good in any other app i've seen. Even in Terragen it don't look this natural and you have to twiddle your thumbs alot to get it even close. This tool just saves you a bundle of time and work.

Oz: Nice find! thanks man i have to look into that more, looks interesting and useful.

Here's another quick test i made today of a snowcovered mountain.



/ Max

CALL me crazy, but did you try to simulate a your finger in the lens on that image? (bron thing at the bottom?? looks good!!)

[Maximus3D]

Hehe Leo, you're crazy nahh that brown gradient is just what it is.. a gradient because the landscape fades down into another more brownish earthly like color. But i gotta agree that it does look good!

Here's a rather quick testrender i whipped together of that mountain using Terragen 2, the mountain is covered with a layer of snow as you can see and then there are low clouds in the valley infront of the mountain and high cirrius clouds about 11,000 meters up in the sky.



/ Max

[mrcharles]

One great advantage to using specialized programs such as TG2 for rendering is the benefit of procedural shaders to give the land much needed complexity. I don't know how one could use Maxwell materials, (especially with no displacement capability) to create similar effects.


A couple of images to post from World Machine sources... (in this case... WM output is .ter, open in TG2, export .lwo mesh, open in modo, optimize mesh, subdivide and freeze, export as .obj, open in Maxwell and put on a diffuse 80% roughness material, physical sky + sun.

It looks really ugly. I'll have to try a higher polygon mesh next time around.



here are a couple rendered in modo... no attempt at texturing... justing using diffuse materials... looking at the problems of low polygon count meshes... landscapes are damn complex. The modo renders use meshes that are subD... so they are smoother...

[Maximus3D]

mrcharles: You're absolutely correct, Terragen and similar programs can produce some stunning infinite details in their landscapes. Impressive workflow you have to work with your landscapes from World Machine to Maxwell wow! but your landscapes aren't too bad, i mean the 1st and 3rd one is nice, i like them.

After seeing your test i had to run one too here's mine! it only looks ok from a distance as closeup shots require MPD which we haven't got in Maxwell. ..this landscape is 1024x1024 pixels in size in World Machine which is about 15.000 m/pixel. Btw, i forgot to say the total polycount is just about 2 million for this. Ouch!

*WARNING - LARGE IMAGE*

*WARNING - LARGE IMAGE*

/ Max

[Tim Ellis]

Max, great TG2 image mate.

Any Mojoworld users out here too? http://www.pandromeda.com


Does World machine export the textures too, or did you have to create them yourself for use in Maxwell?

Cheers,

Tim.

[mrcharles]

Tim... the new version of World Machine (currently in beta) will be able to produce textures (color maps) and normal maps of the terrain...

[Tim Ellis]

Tim... the new version of World Machine (currently in beta) will be able to produce textures (color maps) and normal maps of the terrain...

Fantastic. Is UV assignment automatic as well?

Cheers,

Tim.

[Maximus3D]

A new version 2.0 of World Machine will be released tomorrow. Find out more on the website link below. This new version really kicks some serious procedural landscape butt with all it's new features, functions and improvements.

http://world-machine.com/index2.html

/ Max

[tom]

closeup shots require MPD which we haven't got in Maxwell.

Maxwell's detail in displacement is far beyond something which you can render using MPD. If you like, let's try with your example

[Maximus3D]

Okie dokie Tom, let's try this with Maxwell again as it now has displacement. Something it did not have when i wrote my comment which you quoted in your post.

/ Max

[JCAddy]

Does this program import topography lines?

(sorry if this has already been covered)

[jurX]

Tom is right,...with maxwell you can do something like this for sure!I am a WM user to....so this progi is the perfect tool to create landscape-displacement-maps for maxwell!

[Maximus3D]

JC: I don't know about that, but i doubt it.

[Edit] : Adding one of my WM2 test landscapes generated in Terragen 2 Techpreview demo. 12 minutes only rendering



2 hours rendering of this one.


/ Max