Planet Map Generator

jcardana

Trainz Enthusiast
Haven't been here in a while. But I've been tinkering around with Trainz again.

I found this neat online tool.

http://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/maps.msp

I used a unigue# for my map
Projection: Mercator
I set the Height & width to max
Colour map: Greyscale
Water line -0.02
Check Coastlines
I used 7.2 for the grid.
I then made the map.

Using the same # & settings except for
I didn't use any countour lines and set grid to none
I made another map and used that to create my displacement
 
Before anyone gets too excited over what is an interesting and, I am sure for many Trainzers, a worthwhile tool - it produces maps of random worlds, not maps of parts of the Earth.

Still worth looking at.
 
I already made me a displacement using this tool, and I placed it on a Surveyor map.

However, before I used it in Surveyor, I used Photoshop to blur the image, but it seems to work nicely. The hills are nice and rounded.

Here's what I made:




.... And here's the result I got:





`
 
Here's the problem I'm having...

I created a map 952px x 308px. The reason I did that was to lay it over a layout 68bd wide by 22 high. That gave me 14 pixels per board. And of course, it turned out really blocky.

So, I have a question... Does a single pixel represent a single point?

Meaning, looking at a single 10m grid there are 9 points. with 72 grids that is 145points [(G * 2)+1] g=grid.

So would I need an image 145x145px to cover each and every point on a single 720m board?
 
Here's the problem I'm having...

I created a map 952px x 308px. The reason I did that was to lay it over a layout 68bd wide by 22 high. That gave me 14 pixels per board. And of course, it turned out really blocky.

So, I have a question... Does a single pixel represent a single point?

Meaning, looking at a single 10m grid there are 9 points. with 72 grids that is 145points [(G * 2)+1] g=grid.

So would I need an image 145x145px to cover each and every point on a single 720m board?

You need to resize the image to be an even integer in powers of two. A 256 x 256 image or a 512 x 512 will scale nicely. I've done this with other programs including old Bryce where I copied and pasted a screenshot of the grayscale displacement map. I then did some smoothing in Photoshop and produced a nice rolling landscape. The old Tranzurveyor does a similar thing, making some really nice displacement maps. These are already scaled to the right size.

John
 
You need to resize the image to be an even integer in powers of two. A 256 x 256 image or a 512 x 512 will scale nicely.
What's the largest image I can use?

I took my 308x308 image and increased it to 3169px². Then I did a Gaussian Blur with a radius of 8. That should provide a single pixel for all points on my 22x22board section. I broke my layout in three sections (22x22, 22x22 & 24x22 [w&h])

Using odd size images does "seem" to work. I used an 680x220 image. Again resulting in blocky landscapes because it's only 10px per board.
 
I also created a little Win32 application which will allow me to set the ground level and then raise up all valleys, so I have some flat space.

Before
Map_5673501-1000x324x.5x0x15x-0.02.bmp


After
Map_5673501-1000x324x.5x0x15x-0.02F.bmp
 
jcardana, I think you are spreading the image over too wide an area, but I am still playing with this and haven't got it too come out like Dave's example above yet either.

If you follow the link in post #1 and then the link "The Planet homepage" at the bottom, you can get a command line utility (download the zip file). Here's a Windows app that does the same and more: https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=9E7DB242359A93F0&id=9E7DB242359A93F0!30215

View attachment 519 (click to enlarge)

I tried a crater displacement over 4 baseboards that didn't turn out too bad:

Craterz01.jpg


Andrew
 
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Blah... I clicked on the link and was FORBIDDEN... Right-clicked, Save Link As and I get an HTML doc saying FORBIDDEN
 
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The zip file includes the .exe if you don't want to compile it yourself.

Here's an attempt at my planet generation. I think I'm doing the opposite of you, jcardana, and trying to compress an entire planet into 4 baseboards. Either that or I didn't blur the image enough:

View attachment 520 (click to enlarge)
 
That looks better than mine. My wife isn't home yet, so I've been tinkering. Your right... I've been playing with the planet.exe with
Code:
planet -s 0.0 -w 1024 -h 1024 -o test#.bmp -p m -E -C greyscale.col -i 0.02

Now I have to find the seed that matches #5673501
 
Sometimes using a Fractal generator such as this works too. Simply create the fractal then chop out what you want, resize, adjust color, smoothing, etc. and you can generate your terrain. I've done this for other programs in the past and they generate some really interesting landscapes.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/doublefractal/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/files/latest/download?source=directory

There are other programs up there as well that generate Fractals and even 3d height maps.

John
 
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