I'm starting a new map and wanted to make it as detailed as possible... so I'm using DEMs (Digital Elevation Maps) for my terrain
I decided that with the right tools it is fairly easy to get your island into WrpEdit so I'll let you guys in on how to do it now that I figured it out ;D
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Tools: Wilbur:
http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~jslayton/wilbur.html WRPEdit:
http://www.ofpec.com/editors/browse.php?browsewhat=3&category=3_7 3DEM:
http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem/downloads.html ======================================================
Getting DEMs Of course you will need your DEM file.... now these are very easy to find for the US, finding international ones free of charge proves a little harder...
if anyone has a good free source for international DEMs it would be a great addition to this tutorial
For free US DEM's I suggest this site:
http://www.mapmart.com/dem.htm 108 x 70 miles 7.5-Minute SDTS are free
Click on the Begin Search for the Hi-detail 7.5 minute SDTS and you'll see a map of the US you can keep clicking on a portion to zoom in ... the green portions are the available DEMs currently
once you can see individual quadrants you can click on the "begin ordering" button to "order" your DEM files..
as long as you don't change any of the ordering selections.. these files are free... so enter your info and hit submit order... and you'll see a summary of your files and there will be a link to download on the right hand side...
Even though we don't have international DEMs on this site.. there is alot of varied terrain in the US so you may find a portion representative of another countrys look
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OK.. so we have our files now....
Open up 3DEM and we're going to want to go to file>load terrain model which will give us this screen
we're going to leave it on USGS DEM for the ones we got from the MapMart site.. but you'll notice it can open other formats as well that you may find online.
Once the DEM has been opened and shaded we'll see a nice overhead view of the area
now you're going to want to go to: ColorScale > Show Scale > meters so we can see how large the area we will be selecting to export is
next we're going to move the black box around until we have a good portion of the terrain selected... you can drag the corners of the box to enlarge/reduce it and the "scene width" on our color scale will be the size of our selection box.
we have to select a smaller portion of our map since it is 108 x 70 miles of terrain. 25km is a good size for us to have so then we're going to export this section as a terragen file (not the entire terrain)
OK done with 3DEM now.... one step down and we're really almost there believe it or not.. ;D
fire up Wilbur and we're just going to want to open our terragen file in Wilbur.. the default file to open is .bmp .. but if you look in the file types you should find .ter or terragen file
once its open you need to go to the Surface > Size menu and make sure we have a size of 256x257
now we can save as and select .txt (lon/lat text mesh) as our file type. Just make sure you hit the set to pixel button
Now we can fire up WrpEdit .. and start a new island
Import the .txt file and make sure you change the Num of coordinates and Elev. Index values to 3 as shown in the pic... and make the the value in the decimal value field has been changed from a comma to a decimal point/period.
You will get a message about extra data.. but disregard it and hit ok
now our map doesn't look like much still..... so hit ctrl + q to select all cells.. and ctrl + w to select all elevations
go to the landscapes tab and select scale .....
now.. i'm not so sure what the proper scale should be for getting our maps to be 100% accurate. scale... because I hate math mainly... so possibly someone could figure out an exact number here... but basically play around but remember that any scaling is cumulative... so if you scale by 10 and then select 2 you'll be doubling that initial value of 10.
somewhere in the range of 10-14 worked well for me based on the terrains I have imported and seen first hand such as my own city
you'll want to go to the flags/external flags/environmental sounds tabs and hit the default buttons on those screens with everything selected still.. now you should be able to hit F9 and preview your terrain.. (After throwing a quick texture on all cells at the Surfaces Tab)
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There are plenty of fine tutorials out there for using WrpEdit and all those other tools that have come out .. but you've got a good portion of the battle done already with your terrain modelled for you
:cheers:
Topic: DEM to WRP mini-tutorial (Read 1272 times)