rampart, thank you for your comments. When you write something down it seems clear, but perhaps not to someone else.

Exporting from Earth Sculptor. What I mean is that I use the maps that Earth Sculptor saves when you save a project.

The following are the steps that I use to get from ES to iClone:

1. In Earth Sculptor, sculpt your terrain and paint the four materials on the surface as you see fit.
2. Save your project in ES. Let's call it "test", for these instructions.
3. In ES, click Utility and then click Explore Map Files. This will open an Explorer window with the following files: test.map, test.png, test_c.png, test_d.png, and test_l.png. Of these maps, test.png is the height map and test_d.png is the mask map.
4. In iClone, go to the Content Manager and load the Butte terrain from Template --> Terrain --> Height Map_Large.
5. On the right, in the Modify panel under Height Map Terrain, observe the icons for Height Map and Mask under Layout.
6. Double-click the Height Map icon and load test.png (replace with the height map you created).
7. Double-click the Mask icon and load test_d.png (replace with the mask map you created).
8. Adjust Height Scale, Height Offset, and Smoothing as desired. Initially, I found the map proportions too extreme with the iClone settings.
9. Also in the Modify panel, under Material, you will find a drop-down to select each of the four materials, which you can change to your liking.

This is basically it.

In my post, when I mention editor, I mean a graphics editor, such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc.

As to "it is not doable" in Earth Sculptor: what I meant is that I find it very hard to do. If you are able to do streets, etc. in ES that would of course be preferable.

The renders you see are from a terrain that was created in Earth Sculptor first and "transferred" to iClone using the process described above by using the Height Map and Mask from that terrain. In iClone I replaced the four materials with better ones. Finally, to get the detail I wanted I then edited the Height Map and the Mask using a graphics editor.

I hope this clarifies my process.

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Very good response... You really crossed the t's and dotted the i's.

It may seem abit elementary, but it is amazing how much readers can miss. Maybe we read ahead and are thinking too much.

You mentioned replacement of four materials for better ones. This is one of those places where words can confuse. Iclone calls their material pack and the files are *.matl. I have often wondered, if that was just because RL wanted a more proprietary textures and maps for iclone users.

I bought the big materials pack from iclone some time back, but haven't used it for the most part. I also bought the Genetica Pro version, prior to the B2M release. The Genetica GUI does not not look as modern as the B2M and it may not connect with iclone as fluid.

I think the Genetica is the better of the two programs, and as I recall the price was higher as well for Genetica Pro. GP also has the ability to create seamless textures.

The images you posted look very good. I suspect anyone would find that quality acceptable for their videos. The mountains, hills and some of the other textures and maps do get a bit more difficult closeup. I have been Looking at two ways, from large texture plats with high quality textures or using smaller texture plats and working with the tiling UVs. It does take more time editing the tiling in the uv for textures and bump maps, the results in some instances look very similar.

I have had some luck with roads and trails. Lowering or raising them above the terrain in close proximity does help define them better. I have been also been playing with some modern roads and streets (marked). I am basically creating a subgrade bed texture raised in all instances for asphalt or concrete roads, which is typical.

I use the leveler tool in earth sculptor or roads, path, subgrades. It takes getting accustomed to use it well enough, but it works pretty well after you get a feel for it. I even create ditches off to the sides of the roads for rural scenes. I just dig a ditch on both sides of the road with the push in tool. It is an acquired skill as you indicate for producing the time saving components of terrains.

A material file in iClone is a convenient way to combine Diffuse, Opacity, Bump, and the other texture channels that make up a material into a single package. But you can always access the individual textures by loading a material file. You can then save the textures and use them somewhere else.

A "material" for a terrain has fewer channels: only Diffuse, Detail, and Bump. I've used Detail to get some variation in the look of the Diffuse texture. I give Detail a tiling that is different from Diffuse and Bump. For example, Diffuse and Bump may be 60 and Detail would be 5 or less. I don't know if that is the way to use it but it works for me.

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Cricky,
What version of Photoshop Elements is that? I don't use any Adobe stuff as I always found a way around it but I wouldn't mind having PSE as it is less expensive that their other stuff and looks handy.
Thanks,
TS

I'm familiar with this and since I don't have Photoshop, I tried in Paint Shop Pro. Unfortunately it didn't work (I've reported about that in some other thread). If you open the mask file for viewing it looks like this:

Even in Photoshop Elements it looks as shown above. So that is why I had to go through a more complicated process. But for those with Photoshop things are easier.

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I don't have Photoshop either, but was able to do it in GIMP. So there is a free solution, at least.

I built several height map terrains over the weekend and I was prettry pleased overall. I seemed to have alot of smoothness and reflection when I imported the height maps. I was able to subdue that quite a bit, but the smoothness was pretty well locked in.

I'm not so sure I am taking the right approach to building the terrains as far as detail texutres. By that I mean, the first (left most) detail texture I have pretty well thought of to set the tone for the entire terrain, since it covers the entire terrain in ES. So, choosing this texture is probably the most important texture selection.

It would be interesting to read how other terrain builders planned out their textures, and how they looked a textures to determine how they will look in the final renders. I say this, because so many of my choices seem so over the top. Yes, I continue to click on the texture choices and try different things. This is really a trial an error thing for sure. It takes alot of time, because you have to sweep view the terrain dozens of times, and mess with the tiling UV.

My opinion on this... The terrains are a very important part of video presentations, and it is really tough building outdoor scenes. The terrains offered in the content store and marketplace look great for scenic shots from distances, but they do not facilitate adding roads, paths, flat areas on the terrain. Sure you can lower the height with the new height map tools, but that doesn't put the flat places, paths, and roads where you want them nor does it facilitate them. It just makes the landscape lower or higher.

In other words I think Eerth Scultor, Bryce, etc. have to be the primary tools for starting our terrains.

IMO, it is important to pre-plan the terrain before starting it. Especially for roads and other pathways for the movement and placement of characters and props. So far, I pretty well conclude there is somewhat of an art to producing terrains, especially for video production. It is especially important to think in terms of your actual scenes when creating those terrains.

Regarding smoothness:

Make sure the smoothing setting in iClone is set really low or off. I would think it should be set to zero for Earth Sculptor maps, as they are already "smoothed".

If you need a finer mesh for some intricate terrain, you can scale everything else bigger. Be aware that the r-Click walks will not translate far enough to cover the longer stride of a larger avatar. This is because of the translate rate set in the persona. All animations will work fine, though.

on smoothness:

I was playing with the smoothness in ES to making transitions between two terrain textures flow together better. What I am beginning to realize is ES is not representative of what you will have quality wise when you export over to iclone, regardless of how it might appear in ES.

The light thing in ES should not be enabled, because the lighting doesn't appear to fit anything in iclone AFAIKT.

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I have been building maps 1024x1024, which appear to be just about right when you need to have some vehicles or moving props in outdoor scenes. 512x512 is really cutting it close.
Applying textures from ES I am beginning to think may not be a best way to go. If you click on the files you will find variations at 256x256, 512x512. I did not spend alot of time looking, but I seriously doubt there are any larger than that unless they are brought in from other sources.

So far, I'm not sure how much difference the texture dimensions make, that is when we have so much flexibility with the tiling in height map modifications.

I think it would be interesting to have a couple of texture folders with texture presets from other iclone/earth scultor users. The size of those texure files as applied our ES creations might reveal a best size for textures X best size terrain.

I recall a recent thread where there was some discussion about the texture size not be resource efficient when you use large textures, in lieu of smaller texture sizes and use the UV tiling tools. In other words, smaller sizes using tiling saved alot of memory resources.

IMO, there are fundamental considerations and configurations that are necessary for best quality terrains, built in ES and migrated into iclone. Those things are not really discussed in Earth Sculptor or Reallusion tutorials. Then again, it is probably understandable because ES is not a Reallusion application. The developers for ES don't appear to be that involved with their application, since there has been very little promotion or updates. I can think of several things aren't well done in the ES. If you want a smooth decending/ascending tool it doesn't exist. Yes, you can do the ramp thing which creates the up or down, but when you build roads and paths the ramp isn't flat smooth ascend and descend. You can play with the level tool, but it is very tedious to get it even passable as a flat ramp.

I am now open to suggestions about other terrain building tools. I know nothing about any others, but I am pretty well convinced ES is not the best tool for quality terrains. Yes, like eveyone else another application is something else to learn...and we all know that process very well don't we?

It would be best to go with a highly competent terrain building tool that is well supported and has alot of experienced users. This is certainly the route I will be reviewing carefully over the next couple of months. I always ignore "free" anything in software, GIMP, SCULPTRIS,etc. There are exceptions, but for the most part "free" infers to me..."frustration and delay".

We should have no issues with Reallusion and their Earth Sculptor deal. ES is a reasonably priced solution that works, and when you start out with iclone it can get very expensive very fast. So, I respect RL decision to encourage the sale of ES for economic reasons alone. Maybe ES was an up and coming application when RL started offering it. I wasn't here then. So, I'm not knocking the ES, because it is what it is.

I would strongly advise against buying any professional level terrain software, mostly because it will, most likely, do you no good.

At the most basic level, you can do all your iClone terrain building in a free paint program. This is because the files you need are to use with iClone's height map terrain are:

A square grayscale image to create the terrain elevation.
A square PNG file with basic colors representing areas that will show different textures.

VUE and Bryce are big names for commercial products if you do feel that is an appropriate route.

I think your best bet is something that automatically maps textures to different elevations/slopes. Then you just set the textures to the basic colors and you have your masking map.

Earth Sculptor creates exactly what you need, and replicating those functions elsewhere may be challenging. Remember the ES plugin was originally designed for an older version of iClone that did not have height map terrain with layer masking. You got lucky that it can output the files you need. The plugin isn't needed anymore, as you are only using the 2D maps at this point. Your not moving the 3D data anymore.

When I was playing with this, I discovered that colors between the main masking colors will give you blends. So purple will give you a blend of the textures that are masked by blue and red in your mask file.

Regarding which texture channel you use as base, it doesn't really matter, so developing your own preferred method is best. The reason it doesn't matter is because all 4 of them cover the entire terrain, and the color mask determines which one(s) are visible where.