I believe the code has reached its final state. Elevation lines are now mapped
correctly starting at elevation=0.0. Included is an option for using smoothed
lines or not, and it's all wrapped up nicely into a macro that produces a
pigment_pattern.

Use it or don't; I always script for fun :)

http://news.povray.org/povray.text.scene-files/thread/%3Cweb.507c9bbc53181abf2165ae730%40news.povray.org%3E/

Sam

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"Samuel Benge" <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I believe the code has reached its final state.

Attached is an image rendered from the example scene, using eight elevation
lines. An acceptable result, IIDSSMS, although calculating the number of lines
needed for real-world data might prove to be somewhat of a challenge!

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Attachments:
Download 'elevationlines.png' (119 KB)

Preview of image 'elevationlines.png'

Needs a bit of fiddling (go right-hand rule!) and POV 3.7 to work, but...

...need to figure out proper scaling and offset, but I think that just 
might let me bypass another month of hand-drawing contour lines.

Thanks!

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.sjcook.com

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On 16-10-2012 1:36, Samuel Benge wrote:
> I believe the code has reached its final state. Elevation lines are now mapped
> correctly starting at elevation=0.0. Included is an option for using smoothed
> lines or not, and it's all wrapped up nicely into a macro that produces a
> pigment_pattern.
>
> Use it or don't; I always script for fun :)
>
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.text.scene-files/thread/%3Cweb.507c9bbc53181abf2165ae730%40news.povray.org%3E/
>

Incredible, Sam. This can be a very useful feature. I shall certainly 
use it. Thanks indeed.

Thomas

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A'ight, I think I'm doing something wrong here, because I'm not getting 
the fixed-width contour lines.

Here's relevant bit of SDL:

#declare East_Land4 = union {
   object { Land4_P00P00_to_P12P28 }
   object { Land4_P20P00_to_P28P28 }
   object { Land4_P00M04_to_P12M32 }
   object { Land4_P16M04_to_P32M32 }
   object { Land4_P32P00_to_P44_28 }
   object { Land4_P48P00_to_P60P28 }
   object { Land4_P32M04_to_P44M32 }
   object { Land4_P48M04_to_P60M32 }
   object { tamriel_4_12_60_ }
   object { tamriel_4_28_60_ }
   object { tamriel_4_44_60_ }
   object { tamriel_4_60_60_ }
   #declare InputPigment = pigment{
     gradient z
     rotate x*90
   }
   pigment{
     Pg_Elevation_Lines(
       InputPigment,
       8,
       3,
       8,
       0,
       on
     )
     pigment_map{ [ 0 InputPigment][ 1 rgb x] }
     rotate -90 * x
     scale 16384.0 * 3.2
     translate <0.0, 0.0, -13800.0>
   }
   finish{ ambient 1 diffuse 0 }
}

Halp?

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.sjcook.com

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Attachments:
Download 'tamrieleast.png' (217 KB)

Preview of image 'tamrieleast.png'

Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I do believe I just clicked on the 'reply' button instead of 'followup'...
>
> ...again.

Oh yes. I've not yet been to Dawnstar, Riften or Morthal so I couldn't comment!
Trying to keep the quest list down to a manageable size :)

> I'm of half a mind to take and scale the meshes so they match what I've
> been able to discern of 'real' distances for things; they're squished
> about 10x laterally and stretched 10x vertically, so when you correct
> for that, Skyrim's a lot flatter.  (It's about 250 lore-canon miles from
> Dawnstar to Windhelm, or something like that...?  Whereas in-game, if
> you use their 128 units = 6 feet, it's only about 25 miles.  And the
> Throat of the World is iirc 52 miles high--again with the 128 units to 6
> feet measure.)

I thought so, or it would take weeks to cross wilderness! It's quite a clever
effect though, the landscape hides the locations' proximities so on the ground
it feels like a real, large world.

If you get Sam's contours working, it'd be fun to see a tourist hiking map :)

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Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> A'ight, I think I'm doing something wrong here, because I'm not getting
> the fixed-width contour lines.
>
> Here's relevant bit of SDL:
>
> #declare East_Land4 = union {
>    object { Land4_P00P00_to_P12P28 }
>    object { Land4_P20P00_to_P28P28 }
>    object { Land4_P00M04_to_P12M32 }
>    object { Land4_P16M04_to_P32M32 }
>    object { Land4_P32P00_to_P44_28 }
>    object { Land4_P48P00_to_P60P28 }
>    object { Land4_P32M04_to_P44M32 }
>    object { Land4_P48M04_to_P60M32 }
>    object { tamriel_4_12_60_ }
>    object { tamriel_4_28_60_ }
>    object { tamriel_4_44_60_ }
>    object { tamriel_4_60_60_ }
>    #declare InputPigment = pigment{
>      gradient z
>      rotate x*90
>    }
>    pigment{
>      Pg_Elevation_Lines(
>        InputPigment,
>        8,
>        3,
>        8,
>        0,
>        on
>      )
>      pigment_map{ [ 0 InputPigment][ 1 rgb x] }
>      rotate -90 * x
>      scale 16384.0 * 3.2
>      translate <0.0, 0.0, -13800.0>
>    }
>    finish{ ambient 1 diffuse 0 }
> }
>
> Halp?

A simple "gradient z" will not work because it doesn't contain any topographical
information describing your landscape. The macro requires a height map, so
you'll need to produce one from East_Land4 and then pass it to the macro. (You
might even be able to use it for a height_field object instead of that union of
objects you have now, but I'm not sure, since I don't know how your scene is set
up.)

Once you have your height_map, you'll be going forward again. If not, just give
me a holler :)

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On 2012-10-16 14:19, Samuel Benge wrote:
> A simple "gradient z" will not work because it doesn't contain any topographical
> information describing your landscape. The macro requires a height map, so
> you'll need to produce one from East_Land4 and then pass it to the macro. (You
> might even be able to use it for a height_field object instead of that union of
> objects you have now, but I'm not sure, since I don't know how your scene is set
> up.)
>
> Once you have your height_map, you'll be going forward again. If not, just give
> me a holler :)

Well, a little bit of progress, but something's obviously not right...

Here's what I've got now, with tamrielheightsmall.png being a straight 
height-gradient render.

box{
   <-7200,-4800,-0.1>,< 7200, 4800, 0.1>

   #declare InputPigment = pigment{
     image_pattern{ png "c:\downloads\tamrielheightsmall.png" }
     rotate z*180
     translate <-0.5, -0.5, 0.0>
     scale <1,0.8,1>
   }

   pigment{
     Pg_Elevation_Lines( InputPigment, 8, 2, 32, 0, off )
     pigment_map{ [ 0 InputPigment][ 1 rgb x] }
   }
   finish{ ambient 1 diffuse 0 }
}

...and this is what it comes out as.  (there's some weird noise at the 
top and bottom that's there even with just using InputPigment as the 
pigment, and the contour lines are all noisy)

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Attachments:
Download 'tamriel flat.png' (485 KB)

Preview of image 'tamriel flat.png'

Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Well, a little bit of progress, but something's obviously not right...
>
> Here's what I've got now, with tamrielheightsmall.png being a straight
> height-gradient render.
>
<snip>
> ...and this is what it comes out as.  (there's some weird noise at the
> top and bottom that's there even with just using InputPigment as the
> pigment, and the contour lines are all noisy)

Alright, after scratching my head for a while I've determined that the problem
is with your height data. I zoomed up on an unlined portion of your image and
saw a lot of noise; rendered it with Pg_Elevation_Lines, and got similar results
as yours.

So to get rid of the noise, try one of these options:

1) Open the height map in Gimp, and apply the Despeckle filter using its default
settings. Unfortunately, Gimp does not (yet!) support 16-bit grayscale.

-or-

2) Render your height map in POV-Ray using these command line options: +fng +f
+a0.01 +am2 +r3 This seems to be more accurate than Gimp's Depseckle filter,
although POV-Ray still cannot match the gamma of the original image, so
calculating the proper line spacing and offset with Pg_Elevation_Lines might
prove difficult.

Other program options include PhotoShop, Terragen, Wilbur, or any other program
that can manipulate 16-bit height maps.

Since I was unable to render your entire height map, I cannot say for certain if
the noise reduction techniques I tried would completely get rid of all the
artifacts, so you may need to tweak some settings here and there (interpolating
the image in POV-Ray comes to mind).

Sam

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On 2012-10-17 16:06, Samuel Benge wrote:
> Alright, after scratching my head for a while I've determined that the problem
> is with your height data. I zoomed up on an unlined portion of your image and
> saw a lot of noise; rendered it with Pg_Elevation_Lines, and got similar results
> as yours.

Hmm...I ran the height image through despeckle and a few blurs just now, 
and it's not changing the amount of noise artifacts with the contour 
lines...?  Hmm.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.sjcook.com

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