TBGL Bitmap To M15 [ UPDATED to v1.4 ]

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi all,

here you can download the latest "TBGL Bitmap To Terrain" tool.

It takes as input bitmap with heightfield, optionally also texture and produces M15 file.
You can see how much complex will the model be and set up level of detail before the process starts.

! Big thanks to Mr. Kent Sarikaya for testing and suggestions !

I have attached two simple source data bitmaps so you can try how it works :)


Bye,
Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Cool Petr and Kent,

I'll check it out!

[kryton9]

Thank you Petr, he did all the work believe me. I just had fun playing with it. It is addicting. Just draw away and you have a nice terrain, it works great. Petr is good, I tell you!!

One thing that Petr mentioned is the level of detail. You want to use like 1/8 or 1/16 probably, so make sure you do set that option. It makes a big difference in the polycount and yet the model still looks great. And the program is really fast in doing the computations, really neat stuff!!

[kryton9]

Oops, Petr, even though I specify where the texture is located it, it still tried to look in a texture folder and says it can't find the texture.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Kent,

if you want to get it viewed using old thinEdge_Viewer.exe, then M15 must be in Models folder and texture in Textures



[Models]
- Terrain_Heightmap.m15
[Textures]
- Terrain_Heightmap_Texture.bmp


In script, you can specify it as you want.

... ok, beacause it is you I have updated viewer so it will work even with texture in same dir as model, please download here : Latest downloads (http://community.thinbasic.com/index.php?topic=593.msg3116#msg3116) :)


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Thanks Petr, I forgot about the viewer wanting things in the texture folder. Thanks for the fix to the viewer!!

[kryton9]

Petr, when you have some free time...

The Divide Height by selection box does not serve any purpose with heightmaps. It would be much nicer if that box was changed to height scale.
This way the user can adjust it up or down.

The level of detail box is fine the way it is.

As you can tell I have been doing lots of tests with it and found it very stable, fast and very useful tool!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Thanks Kent,

please download version 1.1 which features multiply factor ;)


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

What about including your M15 file viewer in zip file.
This way very easy to get an idea of you nice work!

[Petr Schreiber]

Good idea Eros,

I added check box to show model when conversion was finished.


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Thanks Petr, I appreciate it a lot. This will add really to an already great tool!!!

[kryton9]

Petr it works perfectly. So perfectly that it popped another set of useful feature to add when you have time. Since this is for terrain development using heightmaps mostly, another great feature would be:

An option box, use water map or not. The other would be an edit box with the height scale to place the water level plane. Since you know the lowest to the highest point, then this edit box would be in the range of 0 - 1. If you can make a nice translucent blue plane that spans the size of the terrain at the height scale specified, it would really add to tweaking and working on terrain designs. If you want the texture map for water could be browsed for and a transparency edit box to set by the user.

And if this wasn't enough, I know in other languages for handling terrain, you also specify a detail map. This is tiled a lot to allow a nice small texture underneath the terrain texture. If you can put in something like this it would be great. So another browse button for the detail map to use, this would be tiled by filling in tile x and tile z numbers by the user in edit boxes to get the sizing correct. Usually this texture is greyscale and blended with the main texture file. I am sure you have seen this in your ventures in 3d programming. Then an edit box for transparency for this map too would be awesome.

Sorry you offer me candy and I ask to grab the whole box :)

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

I have updated this program to version 1.3 - it is mostly service release.

Speed of file generation is up to 3x better, this is noticable especially for bigger models.

Generated file is also smaller. More vertices, bigger the space saving is. If you process the sample bitmaps at 1/1 detail, you will see about 30% saving in file size.

New feature is that model can be centered at X=0, Z=0.

Kent, regarding your ideas I did not implemented them yet. Water plane was very good idea, but you have seen in our "shoot a balloon" demo that we ended with dynamic water surface created on the fly.
Detail map will need some more changes, so please be patient :)


Thanks,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Petr, you seems under heavy working load !
;D

[Petr Schreiber]

Just relaxing ;D

[kryton9]

Thanks Petr for this update.

I agree about the water level map... it is really not needed.

But a detail map will be very nice when you get to it after exams and of course other school projects.

The new x z centering is a big plus!! Thanks!

[Petr Schreiber]

Not sure how it is possible,

but the proggie, originally attached in the first post of this thread, disappeared, so I reuploaded new v1.4.


Petr