iClone5 Heightmap Terrain Creation Process

Author	Message
RobertoColombo	RobertoColombo Posted 9 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 4 Years Ago Posts: 1.6K, Visits: 3.0K	Hi there, I resurface this old thread for 2 reasons: 1. I had missed nl2012 answer, so now it is time to sincerely thank him ( better late than never... :) ) 2. for my ever 1st CGA customer (hope not the last one...) I had to create a terrain and import it in iClone. During the process, I jotted down all the steps I did, with additional comments and the outcome is hereafter. Hope it will be useful for the community ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EarthSculptor to iClone Pipeline Prepared by Roberto Colombo GIMP 1. Prepare a heightmap with a photoeditor (e.,g. GIMP) 2. Save with one of the following formats(GIMP settings are listed below each format): a) TGA RLE compression =disabled Origin = Bottom left b) PNG Interlacing (Adam7) =disabled (EarthSculptor does not read the map is this setting is enabled) Save background color =enabled Save gamma = disabled Save layer offset =disabled Save resolution =enabled Save creation time =enabled Save color values fromtransparent pixels = enabled Compression level = 0 Earth Sculptur Terrain creation 1. Create a new terrain with thesesettings Map size = 513x513 (it seems that other values are not accepted whenimported in iClone) Colormap = can be adjusted to the desired level, recommended 4096x4096 Detailmap = can be adjusted tothe desired level, recommended 4096x4096 Lightmap = don’t care (not used by iClone) Texture Splitting = none Detail Texture = 4 (iClone handles only 4 textures) Color Lightmap = no 2. Set the Terrain window options asthe following LOD = disable Height = user choice! Wireframe = don’t care Grid = don’t care Color = don’t care (not used by iClone) Detail = enabled Lighting = don’t care (not used by iClone) Color Mode = add minus half Fog = disabled Underground = disabled 3. Menu Import -> Heightmap image Load the heightmap 4. Modify the map in EarthSculptor asneeded using the Terraform window tools Terrain painting 1. The terrain in iclone will have 4paint layers, each one containing three channels: a) The Diffuse texture, which isgenerated by the Detail maps of EarthSculptor b) The Detail channel, which can be anytexture c) The Bump channel, which can also beany bump texture EarthSculptor has 2 painting methods: a) The Detail window tools b) The Color window tools The Detail window tool is used to generate the 4 textures which will beassigned, in iClone, to the Diffuse channel maps of each terrain paint layers. These textures are used to paint the main parts of the terrain. The Color window tools can be used to generate the 4 additional textures thatcan be assigned to the 4 Detail channel maps in iClone. These textures can be used to draw details and variations. iClone will not automatically importwhat is painted with the Color window tools! Even though variations are painted in EarthSculptor, iClone imports only the 4textures assigned in the Detail window. Therefore, it is advisable to draw the variation first, export them as separatetextures with the menu option Export->Terrain Textures, and later importthem in iClone as Detail textures as Detail channel maps. The process is cumbersome and kind of reversed, but if the Detail windowtextures are assigned first in EarthSculptor, then the Color window textureswill be distorted by the color of the Detail window textures. Whereas we wantto leave them clean and add them as they are in iClone. 2. Start the terrain painting process,using the Detail window tools Up to 4 textures can be used to paint the terrain 3. Menu File -> Save Save the work in EarthSculptor. By saving the file, EarthSculptor creates some .png files. The file named xxxx_d.png (xxx = name of the file just saved) is the one thatwill be used for iClone 4. Menu Export -> Obj Export Export into .obj format with the following settings: Center at origin = enabled Normals = disabled UVs = disabled Optimized Mesh = disabled Water = disabled iClone 1. Create a file, with .ini extension,with the following text _____________________________________________ [HeightMap] file = "Terrain.obj" cell_unit = 100 height_scale = 50.0 offset_x = -12800.0 offset_y = -12800.0 offset_z = 0 [MaskMap] file = "Terrain_d.png" [Material] count = 4 [Material0] diffuse_r = 1.0 diffuse_g = 1.0 diffuse_b = 1.0 specular_r = 0.0 specular_g = 0.0 specular_b = 0.0 ambient_r = 1.5 ambient_g = 1.5 ambient_b = 1.5 shininess = 0.5 shineStrength = 1.0 decal_uv_tile_x = 24.0 decal_uv_tile_y = 24.0 decal_uv_tile_z = 24.0 decal_uv_offset_x = 0.0 decal_uv_offset_y = 0.0 decal_uv_rotate = 0 detail_uv_tile_x =60.6842 detail_uv_tile_y =60.6842 detail_uv_offset_x = 0.0 detail_uv_offset_y = 0.0 detail_uv_rotate = 0 bump_uv_tile_x = 10.0 bump_uv_tile_y = 10.0 bump_uv_tile_z = 10.0 bump_uv_offset_x = 0.0 bump_uv_offset_y = 0.0 is_normal_bump = false bump_map_weight = 0.5 decal_map = "Texture0.png" bump_map="Bump0.jpg" detail_map="Detail0.png" [Material1] diffuse_r = 1.0 diffuse_g = 1.0 diffuse_b = 1.0 specular_r = 0.0 specular_g = 0.0 specular_b = 1.0 ;; you can see blue specular on brown sand ambient_r = 1.5 ambient_g = 1.5 ambient_b = 1.5 shininess = 0.5 shineStrength = 1.0 decal_uv_tile_x = 12.0 decal_uv_tile_y = 12.0 decal_uv_tile_z = 12.0 decal_uv_offset_x = 0.0 decal_uv_offset_y = 0.0 decal_uv_rotate = 0 detail_uv_tile_x =15.6842 detail_uv_tile_y =15.6842 detail_uv_offset_x = 0.0 detail_uv_offset_y = 0.0 detail_uv_rotate = 0 bump_uv_tile_x = 1.0 bump_uv_tile_y = 1.0 bump_uv_tile_z = 1.0 bump_uv_offset_x = 0.0 bump_uv_offset_y = 0.0 decal_map = "Texture1.png" bump_map="Bump1.jpg" detail_map="Detail1.png" [Material2] diffuse_r = 1.0 diffuse_g = 1.0 diffuse_b = 1.0 specular_r = 0.0 specular_g = 0.0 specular_b = 0.0 ambient_r = 1.5 ambient_g = 1.5 ambient_b = 1.5 shininess = 0.5 shineStrength = 1.0 decal_uv_tile_x = 12.0 decal_uv_tile_y = 12.0 decal_uv_tile_z = 24.0 decal_uv_offset_x = 0.0 decal_uv_offset_y = 0.0 decal_uv_rotate = 0 detail_uv_tile_x =15.6842 detail_uv_tile_y =15.6842 detail_uv_offset_x = 0.0 detail_uv_offset_y = 0.0 detail_uv_rotate = 0 bump_uv_tile_x = 3.0 bump_uv_tile_y = 3.0 bump_uv_tile_z = 3.0 bump_uv_offset_x = 0.0 bump_uv_offset_y = 0.0 decal_map = "Texture2.png" bump_map="Bump2.jpg" detail_map="Detail2.png" [Material3] diffuse_r = 1.0 diffuse_g = 1.0 diffuse_b = 1.0 specular_r = 0.0 specular_g = 0.0 specular_b = 0.0 ambient_r = 1.5 ambient_g = 1.5 ambient_b = 1.5 shininess = 0.5 shineStrength = 1.0 decal_uv_tile_x = 12.0 decal_uv_tile_y = 12.0 decal_uv_tile_z = 12.0 decal_uv_offset_x = 0.0 decal_uv_offset_y = 0.0 decal_uv_rotate = 0 detail_uv_tile_x =15.6842 detail_uv_tile_y =15.6842 detail_uv_offset_x = 0.0 detail_uv_offset_y = 0.0 detail_uv_rotate = 0 bump_uv_tile_x = 1.0 bump_uv_tile_y = 1.0 bump_uv_tile_z = 3.0 bump_uv_offset_x = 0.0 bump_uv_offset_y = 0.0 decal_map = "Texture3.png" bump_map="Bump3.jpg" detail_map="Detail3.png" _____________________________________________ 2. Note the .ini structure: a. [Heightmap] => a kind of header,where some global information are specified b. [Maskmap] => used to define whichfile define the mask map, which is used to assign the materials to differentpart of the terrain c. [Material] => used to specify howmany materials we have. I tried with 8 (as EarthSculptor allows to create up to 8 Detail textures) butiClone simply ignore them and defaults to 4 d. [Material#] => a set ofinformation to define a material, replicated 4 times 3. Note also the map naming convention a. Earth Sculptor Detail texture => Decal_mapin the .ini file => iClone Diffuse map b. Earth Sculptor Painting texture=> (can be optionally assigned to) Detail_map in the .ini file => iCloneDetail map c. Any Bump texture => (can beoptionally assigned to) Bump_map in the .ini file => iClone Bump map 4. In order to be able to import theterrain in iClone, few simple modifications shall be done to the .ini file 5. The text marked in BOLD RED shall be mandatorily changed. You need to specify: a. The exact file name of the .obj filecreated with EarthSculptor b. The exact name of the file xxx_d.pngcreated by EarthSculptor (this file is created when you save a project inEarthSculptor) c. The exact file names of the Texturesused in EarthSculptor in the Detail tool window. Respect the same order! 6. Note the additional maps with thevalue marked in BOLD BLUE. These maps represents the iClone Bump map and Detail map. 7. If a Bump or Detail map is notneeded for a certain material, just remove in the .ini the text line referringto it. 8. As a summary, hereafter are thefiles needed by iClone. Note: in this example, the name of the EarthSculptor project is “Terrain”, andthat the detail textures are called Texture0, Texture1, Teture2, and Texture3.Obviously any other name will fit. a. Terrain.ini b. Terrain.obj c. Terrain_d.png d. Texture0.png, Texture1.png, Texture2.png,Texture3.png e. [Optional] Bump0.jpg, Bump1.jpg,Bump2.jpg, Bump3.jpg f. [Optional]Detail 0.jpg, Detail 1.jpg, Detail 2.jpg, Detail3.jpg My recommendation is to keep everything in thesame directory! 9. Open iClone and press CTRL+ALT+J 10. Load the “.ini” file 11. You should now see your terrain iniClone, which should have 4 materials. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cheers Roberto PS: Reading back this post and my "contribution", I can see tat I made some little steps forward... ;) I have to thank all the people who, in this Forum, spend the time to share their know-how for the other iClone useres (sw00000p, Rampa, Cricky, Animagic, PSD, Markt, Justviking, Urbanlamb, etc. etc. apologize with others not mentioned) My PC: OS: Windows 10 Pro English 64-bit / CPU: Intel i7-9700 3.6GHz / MB: ASUS ROG Strix Z390 RAM: 32GB DDR4 2.6GHz / HD: 2TB+3TB / SSD: 2x512GB Samsung 860 EVO + 1x2TB Samsung VB: Palit GTX2080 TI GamingPro 11GB / AB: embedded in the MB and VB (audio from the MOTU M4 I/F) / DirectX: 12
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nl2012	nl2012 Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 8 Years Ago Posts: 147, Visits: 1.5K	Just a small contribution hope it helps I tried various programs for terrains in iClone: 1) Bryce: works ok but if you look at the poly’s, it not really optimized. Specialy UV’s aren’t that great (good UV’s and Poly’s are key to a good terrain (btw. Rule for all objects). 2) CarraraPro: Does give some problems in the pipeline with 3DXechange and gives some weird results (shame because it has a superior terrain builder) 3) ZBrush: works great although takes some time with scaling and using the poly decimeter. 4) Earth Sculpture (ES): I my opinion the best and most simple terrain builder for iclone and is pretty care free Now some simple answers to your perfectly normal question. Question nr. 1 : I want to create a terrain. What is the cheaper, simpler, and more effective technique, considering that I am not working for Walt Disney, so I do not need to create the "best ever" scene of the last and future 300 years ? Get Earth Sculpture (ES) if possible. Not expensive and easy to learn Question nr. 2 : is it possible to have a simple set of instructions about how to create the terrain with the above-mentioned technique ? What file type (.obj, .fbx, etc.) shall we use in the pipeline, which programs (personally I have PaintShopPro X3, 3DXchange 5 Pro, iClone 5 Pro, DAZ, Bryce, Hexagon, Sketchup 8), etc. ? For starters any paint program will do fine as long as you it works with layers for the best results.PSPX3 does this perfectly. With ES its not mandatory but I always edit my texture maps to make them look more realistic and less blurry in iClone. Forget DAZ Hexagon. Great tool but no good for terrain (-; .Ok you have Bryce so lets use that…….first click the terrain icon in Bryce and you see the poly’s (a lot ((-:). Get rid of light, shadows and so on keep the document at a medium resolution. Before you do anything export it as an *.obj and import it to 3DXe. See if the resolution,size and position are right. If not to your liking go back and forth until you are satisfied. Now you can apply your texturing and modelling. (next “tip”I use in Earth S as well) For the end result export everything to 3DX and send it to iClone and load it (>>props>>import DON”’T “”add to terrain yet”). Now load the texture map in your paint program and lets make it look good. Duplicated it and “multiply” the duplicated. After this it becomes dark so make it a bit lighter. Merge the layers and sharpen it (but don’t Distore it to much). Save the map as a new png image but don’t close PSP or PS yet. Now make it grayscale and adjust lighting and contrast (I use mainly positives for terrain) after that (important for terrain texturing) finish the Bump map your making with a Gausian Blur of around 3.5%. (For very pro terrain you can use the blur pensil for specific area’s for different value’s) Now go to Iclone>>textures and load your image and bumpmap (bump ~35-40%). This should give you a fine result!If it looks good right click and “add to terrain”. The Higher the Map rez..the better it looks….The higher the polycount the better it looks (but costs performance). Just find out what your PC or Mac can handle. Question nr. 3 : what shall we care most in this pipeline, so that we do not waste hours to understand why something went wrong ? Bottomline its the Textures in my opinion., because that what we see (apart from all the technical chit chat). Well formed terrain with bad textures doesn’t look good. For Earth Sculpture I use very high rez real photo’s (crop the part you want to a square texture in your paint program, I use 512x512 to 2048x2048 ) and save them as png in your texture dir of Earth S so u can use them in ES. I have a membership at www.cgtextures.com which is a huge and ordered database for (mainly used by game cg artist) high res pictures (free for lower rez pics). The manuals on Earth Sculpture are great as well ,but the real power lies in texturing . My settings and workflow in E S: Scale: What you need Map: 1024 Mes: 50-100K Texture: 4096 X 4096 1) sculpt a a small part of hill and riverbed and export it to iclone load an avatar and check if the scaling is of you liking.(better save then sorry) 2) Sculpt the map bit by bit (applying very soft and a bit transparent light gray colors on edges and darker gradients on lower parts ..no textures yet!) the whole map. Load it into iclone. I should give you the sence of depth (test it pressing ”/” and turn the light). 3) I start loading my complete pallet with textures I need keeping the first 2-3 slots for my main textures and the rest for inspiration (-; . Use the grey colors as reference to keep the depth in your map. 4) Large brush >> use more softness 5) scale , as close to 10 as looks real. 6) In a standard map I use about 50-80 different textures (it a blended world!) 7) Blending is key! 8) I export the tex map ranging from 1024 to 8096, test them all in iclone (as described above) for performance and detail 9) export the map to iclone in f.e. 10K 50K 100K and test them with the maps I made. 10) Small a but good tip. If you want to use it for animation ….keep the first terrain and add smaller maps (f.e. a mountain/ bumps or flat highroad) as extra prop in iclone and at both or more to terrain. Because of keeping the first texure as main texture slots it’s an easy and a simple method to create multiple terrain from one terrain (-; and blend them. 11) I switch alot between iclone and ES and save alot to different file(better save then sorry) Wow I almost wrote a book, i'm not a native speaker so sorry for spelling errors ….hope it helps a bit Have fun!! NL2012 ps: example attached MODO801 / MARI / ZBRUSH / SUBSTANCE HP Z820 Workstation, 2 X 8 Intel Xeon E5-2665 processor, 64GB DDR3-1333, nvidia geforce gtx 980, HP Z1 G2 workstation NVIDIA Quadro K3000 Attachments Map 1.bmp (267 views, 1.00 MB)
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Shaky	Shaky Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 2 Years Ago Posts: 490, Visits: 9.2K	Peter (RL) (10/2/2012) Shaky (10/1/2012) How do you get Earth Sculptor? I can't find it in the store. Earth Sculptor with the iClone plugin is available in one of the bundles shown in the link below. It isn't available as a standalone product from us I'm afraid. http://www.reallusion.com/purchase_ic_nb.asp That's too bad. Cause I already have the gardening and total plant packages.
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Peter (RL)	Peter (RL) Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Administrators Last Active: Last Year Posts: 23.1K, Visits: 36.6K	Shaky (10/1/2012) How do you get Earth Sculptor? I can't find it in the store. Earth Sculptor with the iClone plugin is available in one of the bundles shown in the link below. It isn't available as a standalone product from us I'm afraid. http://www.reallusion.com/purchase_ic_nb.asp Peter Forum Administrator www.reallusion.com
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Shaky	Shaky Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 2 Years Ago Posts: 490, Visits: 9.2K	Peter (RL) (10/1/2012) Hi Rampart, Have you looked through the tutorial videos for Earth Sculptor below. These should help answer most questions you may have. There is also a lot of documentation that is worth a read. http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/icnb_tutorial.asp How do you get Earth Sculptor? I can't find it in the store.
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Peter (RL)	Peter (RL) Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Administrators Last Active: Last Year Posts: 23.1K, Visits: 36.6K	Hi Rampart, Have you looked through the tutorial videos for Earth Sculptor below. These should help answer most questions you may have. There is also a lot of documentation that is worth a read. http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/icnb_tutorial.asp Peter Forum Administrator www.reallusion.com
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rampart	rampart Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 7 Years Ago Posts: 1.4K, Visits: 5.1K	Sure would be ALOT of help, if someone who really understands and can explain how to apply textures to the EarthSculptor terrain maps. I have created several dozen ES maps and they look good close up in ES, and look all washed out and half done in iClone. I don't know how to clean them up or otherwise make them worthwhile for use in iCLone projects after I get them into iclone. I think the ES is not the problem. I became frustrated and gave it up for the past couple months. I did acquire a adobe photoshop so I know I have the tools from all I read. I even created a thread for earth sculptor sharing information I had found, hoping some persons really good at texturing the ES terrains would join in and prepare some competent instructions we could follow. Maybe, if someone reading this posting really understands the best way to build quality textures onto our ES maps maybe they can point us to a video or good step by step directions. Applying textures to other maps from other applications might have a competent explanation as well. I'm not against reading more or trying harder. Like most of the iclone users... I just don't have time to drop everything and spend days trying to figure out what to do. I have spent a couple of Sundays (day off), but still I am missing the mark. Yes, I did learn ES well enough to make the kind of terrains I wanted to produce. The problem for me is the texturing I did in ES didn't carry over into iclone, and I don't know how to fix it from iclone either. It just became frustrating to keep getting junk looking terrains out of ES into iCLone. Yes, I can buy terrains..but to be very honest I have some things I would like to do in building the terrains for my projects. I think this is a very special area and has enormous number of ways things can be created in Terrain maps. I have read every posting when you search on ES, and still the information about texturing and layering is elusive to me. I even tried layering inside the ES and that went nowhere. The mess I got in iclone convinced me I should only make one texturing pass over a ES map area inside ES. That is pretty difficult process to follow as it seems there is allows some crossover between textures. So, yes a simple walk through step by step would be a great start, articles or videos as well. It doesn't matter, if the information doesn't directly relate to iclone... if we can just learn how to do the what is necessary to take those skills into iclone. I would really like to produce some nice textured terrains.
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martok2112	martok2112 Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Last Year Posts: 1.6K, Visits: 2.4K	I couldn't agree more, Roberto. Solid answers are what's being asked for. I personally despise the "I don't have any time for noobs" attitude. Sometimes, though, it's a matter of the right pair of eyes finding the question. Responses, as I'm sure we've all found out, don't always come instantaneously. Patience....vigilance.... Or...perhaps post a new question in a new thread. Sometimes follow up questions can get lost in threads with a lot of posts. :) And if we think about it, iClone is kinda supposed to be one big "easy button" anyway. :) What I mean by that is that it is a quick tool that allows even amateur animators (such as myself) to bring their visions to life relatively quickly. The more and more iClone develops, the more easy buttons seem to get put in...and there's certainly nothing wrong with that....look at music and video development tools....they scream "easy button". :) P.S....not knockin at ya, sw000p....we're cool. :) "Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing." -Martok2112
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RobertoColombo	RobertoColombo Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 4 Years Ago Posts: 1.6K, Visits: 3.0K	I concur with wizaerd. The questions were simple and clear, the answers not at all. I understand that some of the people around here might be reluctant, but what we need here are simple instructions, rather than a set of generic comments about the beautiness of this or that technique. It is like if somebody asks me how to play guitar from scratch and my answer is "Listen to Allan Holdsworth and try to catch the way he does".... Question nr. 1 : I want to create a terrain. What is the cheaper, simpler, and more effective technique, considering that I am not working for Walt Disney, so I do not need to create the "best ever" scene of the last and future 300 years ? Question nr. 2 : is it possible to have a simple set of instructions about how to create the terrain with the above-mentioned technique ? What file type (.obj, .fbx, etc.) shall we use in the pipeline, which programs (personally I have PaintShopPro X3, 3DXchange 5 Pro, iClone 5 Pro, DAZ, Bryce, Hexagon, Sketchup 8), etc. ? Question nr. 3 : what shall we care most in this pipeline, so that we do not waste hours to understand why something went wrong ? If anybody is willing to dedicate his time and give some clear and useful answers, then, in addition to our sincere appreciation, will surely get the same from other people, as this post will have become a reference for future users. Other people who just want to give cryptic and colored answers, please, restrain from doing it. They really do not help more than what could be my answer in the example above about guitar. Thanks in advance for any positive and useful contributions Cheers Roberto My PC: OS: Windows 10 Pro English 64-bit / CPU: Intel i7-9700 3.6GHz / MB: ASUS ROG Strix Z390 RAM: 32GB DDR4 2.6GHz / HD: 2TB+3TB / SSD: 2x512GB Samsung 860 EVO + 1x2TB Samsung VB: Palit GTX2080 TI GamingPro 11GB / AB: embedded in the MB and VB (audio from the MOTU M4 I/F) / DirectX: 12
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AverageJoe	AverageJoe Posted 13 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 10 Months Ago Posts: 2.4K, Visits: 10.1K	I'd really like to get back to the actual topic. How do we make use of these high detailed terrains? From what I read, it requires using EarthSculptor (a program I hate using) just as we always have, then manually modifying some hidden INI file, which hasn't really been explained at all. Why are we manually editing an INI file to get highly detailed terrains in iClone? Oh, and we're limited to using EarthScultors default painting mode for terrain height as opposed to painting our own terrain. So what I want to know, without digressing down the "learn how to texture" path, how do we make and use high detailed heightmaps and or terrains in iClone. Simple and to the point.
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iClone5 Heightmap Terrain Creation Process

iClone5 Heightmap Terrain Creation Process

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