Terrain meshes

[Rick]

Does anyone know of any software that can make a large terrain and then split it up and export each section as a model?

[Rastar]

World Machine does, but only in the Professional edition (for the tiled build). It can export meshes in the obj format, and you can optionally run a mesh simplification before exporting them.

[Rick]

Thanks Rastar! I'm torn on spending $99 for an experiment, but it's nice to know it has this functionality.

[Rastar]

I'm afraid you would have to spend $249 for that experiment. I you like I can generate the meshes for you (you could define your terrain in the basic edition and send it over). You wouldn't be allowed to use them commercially, of course. Just PM me if that's an option.

[Rick]

Oh bummer on the price. I tried exporting an 8-bit RAW file from World Machine (free version). When I try to import that into LE it says failed to load raw file. What other considerations are there when exporting/importing raw files from World Machine?

[Rastar]

Try importing the 16bit format (r16), that should work. Can't remember right now if LE supports the r16 extensions, if not just rename it to "raw".

 

It depends on your vertical terrain scale if 8bit is enough, but in many cases the 256 values are a little too few - for a 1000m terrain this means a resolution of 4m. I use 16bit formats most of the time.

 

EDIT: One thing that comes to my mind: If I remember correctly, the Basic Edition of World Machine by default generates a terrain of 513x513. So you'd have to remove that checkbox under Project Parameters to make it 512x512. Also, you have to create a 512x512 terrain in Leadwerks instead of the default 1024x1024.

[gamecreator]

You can also load and save it in Photoshop and probably other programs.

[Mordred]

Hey Rick, i did import several .r32 files from Worldmachine without problem. So that def. works