Using UltraScenery2 landscapes with existing landscape props.

crashworship

I have numerous landscapes where I would like to replace the base terrain with UltraScenery2 terrain combined with Code 66 mask builder to make space for structures et al that are part of the original scene. 

I hope I can explain adequately what I'm trying to achieve. Lemme say first of all that Howey Fawlkes' UltraScenery and Martin Frost's foliage products are some of the most impressive and useful items I've ever purchased. They make possible some of the most realistic landscapes possible in Studio. Well done, both of you. 

What I'd like to do is take the base terrain from many of the landscape scenes I've got in my library and convert it to a height map to use in the Ultrascenery2 plug-in so I can just add the structures and scene props on the UltraScenery terrain and the mask with Code 66 mask builder to remove foliage etc where those structures and props will go.

Any ideas and suggestions on how to take the base terrain and convert it to a height map would be really wonderful.

Richard Haseltine

In principle if you use a depth canvas to render the bare landscape from a perspective-free top-down view you should get a height map (as long as there are no undercut sections).

crashworship

Richard Haseltine said:

In principle if you use a depth canvas to render the bare landscape from a perspective-free top-down view you should get a height map (as long as there are no undercut sections).

Depth canvas... Okay. Something available in the render settings, I'm guessing? I'll dig around in Studio and see if I can find that. Thanks.

Richard Haseltine

Yes, canvasses are in the Advanced tab of Render Settings.

crashworship

Richard Haseltine said:

Yes, canvasses are in the Advanced tab of Render Settings.

Yes, found it. Thanks. Rendering the terrain (with the foliage and road removed) shown in the attachment renders almost completely white. Although the original prop his relatively flat, there is some variation in height which doesn't seem to be registering on the depth canvas render. There must be some way to accentuate those height variations to make them more visible in the render.

crashworship

Alright, making some progress. Using the Depth option only gives me an all white image and opening the exr file in Photoshop changes nothing. So, I've rendered the terrain prop using the beauty option which gives me terrain detail. In Photoshop, convert to 8-bit, grayscale, play with the levels settings to increase contrast, invert, save as png and then load into the appropriate UltraScenery prop, XT or 2, and viola. Seems to be working. I'm sure there's a great deal I'm missing but this is progress. It gives me something to play around and expiriment with.

Awesome.

Richard Haseltine

You could also use a modeller to remap the mesh with a side-projection, then assign a black to white gradient to the texture and do a flat render (probably easiest in 3Delight or even OpenGL).

crashworship

Richard Haseltine said:

You could also use a modeller to remap the mesh with a side-projection, then assign a black to white gradient to the texture and do a flat render (probably easiest in 3Delight or even OpenGL).

I'm getting it to work with the Beauty render. Getting close. The only problem is getting the terrain to match the ground level of the concrete slab using Mask Builder but that's just a feature of the landscape and the building prop. I might have to export to blender and then tweak the mesh to match the concrete slab. But this is a promising start.