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Roadmaking

RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
edited December 1969 in Bryce Discussion

Hi all :)

I've been trying out ShapeMagic RoadMaker. Started using it in Carrara, but found it worked a lot better in Bryce, but the heightmap from Bryce only shows up as a blank alpha channel in RoadMaker, even after converting it to .bmp in Gimp - RoadMaker only uses .bmp.

What I did was use a heightmap from Carrara and this worked well.

What is really driving me crazy is that during all of this messing about, I exported a terrain procedural colour map from Carrara, overlayed the road markings map from RoadMaker onto that in Gimp and somehow managed to get this overlayed onto the terrain in Bryce and it was really good, but I can't repeat.

During all the clicking in Bryce it took me to a dialogue to load a picture - did this and viola! When trying to repeat with another terrain, I can only find two places where it gives me this option and they are both in the heightmap editor and of course they both only load greyscale pics which affect the terrain.

This option must surely be in the materials editor, but blowed if I can find it again!

Can someone please help?

Has anyone who knows RoadMaker found a method of getting a Bryce heightmap into it?

Comments

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    Hi all :)

    I've been trying out ShapeMagic RoadMaker. Started using it in Carrara, but found it worked a lot better in Bryce, but the heightmap from Bryce only shows up as a blank alpha channel in RoadMaker, even after converting it to .bmp in Gimp - RoadMaker only uses .bmp.

    What I did was use a heightmap from Carrara and this worked well.

    What is really driving me crazy is that during all of this messing about, I exported a terrain procedural colour map from Carrara, overlayed the road markings map from RoadMaker onto that in Gimp and somehow managed to get this overlayed onto the terrain in Bryce and it was really good, but I can't repeat.

    During all the clicking in Bryce it took me to a dialogue to load a picture - did this and viola! When trying to repeat with another terrain, I can only find two places where it gives me this option and they are both in the heightmap editor and of course they both only load greyscale pics which affect the terrain.

    This option must surely be in the materials editor, but blowed if I can find it again!

    Can someone please help?

    Has anyone who knows RoadMaker found a method of getting a Bryce heightmap into it?


    While I have not used it, if you send me (small) source images you are trying to get into Bryce and an image (if you can find one) of how you want your final output to look, roughly, just so I know what you are aiming for. I will happily investigate this for you. My email is mail@davidbrinnen.co.uk

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,643
    edited December 1969

    @Roygee - Bryce uses 16-bit greyscale images for height maps. You can load 24-bit BMP (which are 8-bit) but with the resolution of 256 steps from black to white the terrain won't look good. If you load a 16-bit greyscale TIFF (which has 65,536 steps from black to white) you'll get a nice terrain.

    If you have a terrain as 48-bit colour, Bryce won't load it. You've got to convert it to greyscale. If you miss a converter, you can try my free TIFF4816 converter. You find it on my website (see sig). Go to Bryce Documents > Programs > Terrain > TIFF4816. Though it can convert 24-bit TIFF to 16-bit greyscale, you won't gain any advantage because the resolution is missing. You can go with 24-bit BMP in this case.

  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433
    edited December 1969

    Sorry if I'm misunderstanding but I think Roygee simply wants to map his road marking picture onto a terrain.

    Create your terrain
    Select the terrain (so it turns red)
    Click the [M] button on it's floating mini menu to access the material lab.
    On the right hand pane you will see a block with three little preview pics and some buttons.
    Click the P button (the three little pictures should now turn into Leo the man)
    Click the round button on the top row that is directly above the P button to enter the picture library.
    Click the first available grey blank box from the grid (this will take you to a dialogue box where you can navigate to where you saved the picture you wish to import
    OK your picture and it will appear in the library and be applied to your terrain.

    Hope this helps.

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Thank you all for your responses - really appreciated :)
    David has offered to make a video explaining the process and I've sent him the files. Always love his videos and looking forward to this one.
    Horo has sorted out the heightmap issue and TheSavage64 has helped me find the lost menu to load the texture - all great help :

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    Thank you all for your responses - really appreciated :)
    David has offered to make a video explaining the process and I've sent him the files. Always love his videos and looking forward to this one.
    Horo has sorted out the heightmap issue and TheSavage64 has helped me find the lost menu to load the texture - all great help :

    Does this help?

    Bryce Landscaping - Roy's terrain challenge 1 - by David Brinnen

    Roys_terrain_challenge1.jpg
    1511 x 850 - 384K
  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Brilliant - thank you, David:)

    I took Horo's suggestion and converted the heightmap to .tif before setting up the textures and it worked out really well, except for the texture of the road, which is pretty poor anyway. Overpainting and adding some noise in Gimp makes it a reasonably good dirt road.

    Thanks again to all who helped - much appreciated :)

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    Brilliant - thank you, David:)

    I took Horo's suggestion and converted the heightmap to .tif before setting up the textures and it worked out really well, except for the texture of the road, which is pretty poor anyway. Overpainting and adding some noise in Gimp makes it a reasonably good dirt road.

    Thanks again to all who helped - much appreciated :)

    Excellent! OK let us see how it turned out then!

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    This one with the road texture overpainted to be a dirt road - excuse the bad texture, I only have the default terrain textures that came with Bryce and am still very much feeling my way around the DTE and haven't yet built up a library :)

    Still, it shows I caught onto the principles!

    Cheers

    road.jpg
    640 x 480 - 18K
  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    This one with the road texture overpainted to be a dirt road - excuse the bad texture, I only have the default terrain textures that came with Bryce and am still very much feeling my way around the DTE and haven't yet built up a library :)

    Still, it shows I caught onto the principles!

    Cheers

    Aye, well done! You have found the Pro materials I supplied? If not Horo's PDF will offer a guide, and I can provide instruction on how to strip out the textures from the materials.

    Horo's useful PDF http://horo.ch/docs/mine/pdf/BryceContent_v4.pdf

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Thanks, David:)

    No, I've not come across any Pro materials. Just done some poking around in the contents folders and seen stacks of stuff that I haven't seen from inside the programme. I'll have to do a lot more exploration - Horo's guide will be very helpful there.

    Anything you can do to help find a greater variety of materials to examine and learn from greatly appreciated:)

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    Thanks, David:)

    No, I've not come across any Pro materials. Just done some poking around in the contents folders and seen stacks of stuff that I haven't seen from inside the programme. I'll have to do a lot more exploration - Horo's guide will be very helpful there.

    Anything you can do to help find a greater variety of materials to examine and learn from greatly appreciated:)

    Help Bryce Basics - remixing Pro materials - by David Brinnen

    Pro_mats.jpg
    710 x 552 - 126K
  • GussNemoGussNemo Posts: 1,855
    edited December 1969

    @Roygee: Looking real good.

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited March 2014

    Thanks, David - that is very interesting and informative:) I'll be building up my library very quickly.

    Thanks, GussNemo - Bryce really gets interesting the more I delve: I'll be spending a lot more time in it!

    Post edited by Roygee on
  • GussNemoGussNemo Posts: 1,855
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    Thanks, David - that is very interesting and informative:) I'll be building up my library very quickly.

    Thanks, GussNemo - Bryce really gets interesting the more I delve: I'll be spending a lot more time in it!

    Contrary to some people's belief, don't forget to eat and sleep in your spare time. :cheese: Look forward to more of your work.

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Yes, it does become obsessive :)

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,643
    edited December 1969

    On the other hand, it helps to keep your weight in check. :coolsmile:

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    After all the help you guys gave me on this subject, thought I'd share a spin-off. There was some discussion in the Carrara forum regarding making a railroad through a terrain - as an example, I made the terrain in Bryce (using Roadmaker to make the cuttings), exported as .obj to Carrara, with a default Carrara texture and made the railroad in Hexagon.

    Here's the video - much deprecated by YouTube !

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7GlIoJMZ1Q

    railway3002.png
    640 x 480 - 223K
  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    After all the help you guys gave me on this subject, thought I'd share a spin-off. There was some discussion in the Carrara forum regarding making a railroad through a terrain - as an example, I made the terrain in Bryce (using Roadmaker to make the cuttings), exported as .obj to Carrara, with a default Carrara texture and made the railroad in Hexagon.

    Here's the video - much deprecated by YouTube !

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7GlIoJMZ1Q

    Thanks for sharing with us Roy, I've given it my thumbs up!

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,643
    edited December 1969

    @Roygee - hey, that's pretty cool and the animation looks great. Certainly much better than what I could come up with.

  • JamahoneyJamahoney Posts: 1,791
    edited December 1969

    Yeah, nice short animation...love the smoke effects, which I'll presume were done in Carrera as Bryce simply couldn't achieve such results.

    Jay

  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 5,490
    edited December 1969

    Roygee - cool animation

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Thanks everyone - just an example of how we can use two Daz apps to best advantage:)

    Now I need to really get down and learn to make decent terrains in Bryce!

  • GussNemoGussNemo Posts: 1,855
    edited December 1969

    @Roygee: That's one fine piece of animation. Even the dissipating smoke was great.

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Thank you :)

    I haven't done any animating for ages, so that was fun to try!

  • GeroblueJimGeroblueJim Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    @Roygee, I've added a like to your video on youtube.

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    thank you - but, seriously, that was just to demonstrate something - not at all a serious effort.

    Anyone know how to reply to comments on YouTube ? I feel so ungrateful when folk leave a comment and I can't say thanks:red:

  • GeroblueJimGeroblueJim Posts: 0
    edited April 2014

    Its kinda hidden under their comment. On my computer screen its a light gray. Reply, thumb up, thumb down. I'm looking at one i commented on a year ago, and the 'reply, thumb up, and thumb down' buttons are gone. Evidently they added a time limit for replies.

    Post edited by GeroblueJim on
  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Thanks.. I'll take a better look next time I'm there:)

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