Grome, Leveller and Avenza ...

[werner.poetzelberger]

Hello,

 

has someone worked with this tool.

 

Terrain Tools:

 

Grome

 

http://www.quadsoftware.com/index.php?m=section&sec=product&subsec=editor&target=Editor/features_video

 

or this one

 

Leveller : This one seems quite old and unsopprted, but looks llik it does the job(?)

 

http://www.daylongraphics.com/

 

As well I must ask, if the avenza tools are worth buying if working with DEMs.

Editing 16 bit DEMs is not really very nice in PS especially in high res. Probably these tools dont help, as the method itself is not valid (imo it needs 3d editing).

 

http://www.avenza.com/geographic-imager

 

 

 

?

[Guest slice3d]

Hi!

 

Earlier I've tried Avenza Geographic Imager trial and it does the job. Not without some voodoo magic, but it works. Though, I've never edited 16bit DEM data 'by hand'.

We always use Global Mapper to convert source geospatial data into the required format and World Machine to process converted maps by our custom procedural alhorithms. 

Only this pipeline allows us to create huge good-looking landscapes based on real geospatial data in a reasonable time.

[Cristianwolf712]

I've recently worked with Grome 3. They have a really good procedural generation for different types of szenarios, like Mountains, Hills, Valleys e.g. I liked it really much, because it is a simple and powerful tool for any level designer. The exporter is quite simple and the developers can customize the exporter if needed. Terrain materials are a little bit difficult to understand and currently I haven't found any useful export option for it. For every material you will get a greyscale image for density of your texture. But nevertheless it's an amazing tool for an easy way to create wide and beautiful landscapes.

[Ugly1-1]

A bit late, but to echo Cristianwolf's comments, Grome 3.1 is great for procedural generation and an impressive array of 'practical' tools for shaping landscapes, it's fair to describe it as the Photoshop for terrain. I wrote a book for anyone looking to get started with Grome (it's a bit short on arty examples as I'm a programmer, not an artist) and it's written with the export pipeline in mind.

 

 

Richard Hawley

Author: GROME Terrain Modeling for Unity, UDK, Ogre3D from PackT

(also available form Amazon etc)

[steve.brodie]

Great book, ive had a quick peruse through it on google.  It would be good to see what your thoughts are on using Grome to real world terrain to Unigine.  Most people on Unigine seem to favour Worldmachine, im not quite sure why though, as Grome seems like a much more intuitive program.

[demostenes]

  Most people on Unigine seem to favour Worldmachine, im not quite sure why though, as Grome seems like a much more intuitive program.

 

Agree with intuitivness, but thats all. WM has by far best erosion filtres, there is no other tool on market with such good results. Other advantage is generation of diffuse map (I havent seen flow maps in other tools...), you can achieve much better results for some clima types.

Other big advantage of WM is no dependency on features. You can generate any kind of map/mask exactly as you want without being dependent on particular feature in given editor.

 

BTW, one tool is usually not solution for everything, we are preparing maps/masks in several tools and merging in Photoshop.

[werner.poetzelberger]

After some time working and testing I found WM as well as a very good tool.

Especially for the refinement of our height data, WM proofed to be very good.

[Ugly1-1]

Shockingly I've yet to try WorldMachine 2 Pro, but it is on my to-do list. Having read the responses I felt I should at least respond and the best I could do was have the manual in front of me.

 

After looking at the documented features there's a clear distinction between GROME and World Machine 2 Pro. GROME is a tool-set for creation of different aspects of terrain which includes SOME procedural generation. World Machine is dedicated to procedural creation, after looking at some tutorials and galleries I prefer the results.

 

I've not felt Grome 3.1 to be lacking in filters, although I only used the pro version before they merged it all into a single release with everything thrown in. Grome throws in editing tools, civilization layer object distribution, vegetation and splines (roads) into the mix. While those are everything you need in a single editor for creating scenes in the GRAPHITE engine, some of those features are redundant with Unigine.

 

I do find the hand modelling tools and zone paging in GROME to be quite good, We'd do a once only import and edit of road-networks as 3D objects, then whenever we created a new version of the terrain we would apply these object modifiers to the terrain in a single operation (things like leveling terrain to the road surface with bevels/banks, fitting around buildings). On the whole, apart from some of the painting tools World Machine Pro looks like it's on a par with Grome as far as practical feature sets go. I'm keen to try a side-by-side test with our Afghan data-set and post my results.

 

 

 

 

Author: GROME Terrain Modeling for Unity, UDK, Ogre3D from PackT