GROME Terrains (wip)

[Flexman]

I've been using something called GROME (GROund Modeling Environment) for a while now, it's a tool for creating realistic landscapes through a mix of procedurally generated techniques and hand editing. Imagine a system blending 3D MAX modifiers for geometry with Photoshop layering for textures and effects. You can export the result as geometry and textures for a variety of engines.

 

I was talking about the problems of rendering large scale terrains recently and the topic of using "tiles" came up again. This is what I've been using GROME for (on a non Leadwerks project). It works on huge terrain sets, paging in as required and splits them up into separate zones. Each zone can have different resolutions and materials as needed. If you're working on large worlds this is pretty much the business for doing it. Each zone is exported as a discrete mesh. Not only that, you can create multiple LODs for each tile. Simplify individual meshes as required or export the native height-map for that one area.

 

 

 

While working on art pipelines I wanted to include a Leadwerks one but I'm reasonably pleased with results. Here's a screen-shot showing a single Leadwerks mesh, it has multiple LODs and only a base texture has been applied. Specular and normal is available but not created for this test.

Ambient occlusion and light mapping was baked in. A material shader for blending detail textures would be a great addition and should be a simple task.

 

Original "Canyon" scene...

 

Little fog and lighting adjustment...

 

Currently the closest output format GROME supports is Collada DAE but the Leadwerks conversion tool dae2fbx doesn't like the input. Need to work on that before I can automate terrain export for Leadwerks. Not a priority since I'm still working on Unity3D scripts for GROME.

 

 

Large sections of detailed height-maps can be turned into multiple LOD irregular triangle meshes. Easily moved, positioned, swapped in and out for use in a treadmill terrain system.

 

Once the system has been fully scripted for automated export of an entire terrain there are many other small problems to resolve. The native Leadwerks vegetation would need to be handle paging in data for different zones. Lakes and rivers which work like the Leadwerks water plane except it has a plane for each terrain "tile" and has a mask so it doesn't flood an entire height level. Roads are spline based objects, only the level is baked into an exported terrain mesh. A road object mesh for each zone would need to be constructed, possibly with at least 2 lods.

[DigitalHax]

Wow! Looks really great!

[Benton]

But Grome = $$$$$$$$$$ right?

[Naughty Alien]

..this lil proggy does it all, and its cheap and very easy to use..

 

http://www.earthsculptor.com/index.htm

[shadmar]

Hi Flexman, thanks for the information, I've been looking at GROME some times over the last year.

[Flexman]

Here's a rather extreme example.

 

A desert scene I generated using the "Desert" procedural modifier on a dense flat grid. The quality of the the dune ridges is filly dependent on the resolution of the base terrain grid.

 

Once you're happy with construction after adding lighting and shadow maps you can create the mesh layer with little loss of visual quality. You can see the difference in wireframe...

 

And here's the same scene lit normally...

 

If I want to keep a really high resolution mesh in the middle because my action scene requires an oasis then I simply retain the high-res terrain tile or generate a higher resolution mesh for that centre tile. You can mix and match resolutions to your hearts desire, one caveat, watch out for gaps between different resolution tiles. Any gaps require you hand edit individual vertices to fix it.

 

Normally these mesh layers are used on plaftorms that don't support heightmaps (e.g. iPhone Unity pre 3.5) but have application for scene construction elsewhere. Both formats are exported, you can still use the regular heightmap and the lower detail mesh (however many LODs you choose to make).