[SOLVED] Help any World Machine to unigine experts?

[Guest shane.ploenges]

Hi, i have been using WM to build Unigine terrain tiles for several weeks trying to figure out a few problems we are having - and i dont think they are WM or Unigine problems as such.. but more probably a misunderstanding of the values for height in both.

 

the problem we have is that our WM generated heights do not look like they do in WM when bought in to Unigine as Terrains.

 

I have also placed a similar question on the WM forums, as i realise this is not a Unigine problem - just hoping someone from the community may have some suggestions.

 

Problem is that our terrain tiles created in WM have a height minimum and maximum, however in WM the Height can be negative, but in unigine terrain heights start at 0.

 

to calculate our Unigine Height value per tile we do the following:

 

(WM height Min : eg -125) + (WM Height max: eg 300) = a height range of 425 metres for our terrain in WM.

 

So we set the Height for our Unigine terrain tile to 425 and translate the tile DOWN in Z coordinates by the negative amount we (In this example -125) so that the 0 point corresponds to what it was in WM.

 

Is this a reasonable way to calculate the Unigine Terrain height and Z location coordinate? Is the Unigine terrain Height Unit in Metres?

 

Thanks

 

Shane

[ulf.schroeter]

which WM export format do you use for your heights ? Maybe WM is remapping your tile height range to some different value range. always a good idea to post some sample data for problem analysis.

[Guest shane.ploenges]

We are using 16 bit PNG of 4097 x 4097 The detail scale in Wm is 1m and in unigine we use a step size of 1 also.

 

Unfortunately the file sizes are too large for posting.

[Rob]

We are also using WM for a height range from 0 (lowest point in WM) to our highest height in our case 950 we have to use a height value of 1950 in Unigine iirc

I just eyeball it untill WM and Unigine look almost the same, were also using 16 bit input files

[manguste]

the problem we have is that our WM generated heights do not look like they do in WM when bought in to Unigine as Terrains.

Could you specify in detail what is wrong exactly, because it's completely unclear. To get help, please attach the screenshots in WM (with export settings) and in Unigine, where these terrains are different.

 

Nevertheless, your calculations look perfectly Ok.

 

Is the Unigine terrain Height Unit in Metres?

Take a look here. These are conventional units, that depend purely on your choice and scale of the exported models. If you use 1 unit = 1 meter throughout the world, then yes, terrain Height will be in meters.

[manguste]

Actually, our tech artist is a bit at a loss: where and how do you set negative height?

 

The detail scale in Wm is 1m and in unigine we use a step size of 1 also.

That's absolutely correct if you want the terrain size to be in meters.

[Guest shane.ploenges]

I should explain that we use a custom version of Wm that we paid for - this allows us to have negative height values so that we can use real world coordinates and DEM data. (These features we had added are being rolled in to the pro release eventually)

 

However, my questions have been answered in that my calculation method seems correct, as well as the detail/step size we are using to achieve a 1m height scaling.

 

this points to an error in the WM Heights being exported - i will follow this up further with Stephen from WM team.

 

Thanks for the help.