Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone else has issues when importing / loading terrain files into their regions such that there are small 'rumples' in the surface almost like ripples on the surface.

I am assuming this is just because the steps I am using is creating a file that has these features built into the grayscale image. It looks perfectly smooth on my screen and I've trie using a blur tool or Gaussian Blur the whole image 100 times over, but if you zoom in 400% or so - you will begin to see the barely perceptible lines of separation in contrast values / gray values. I assume these lines are what are translating into ripples in the terrain perhaps?

Anyway, I am looking for any help in being able to create my terrain and importing it without having to use the smooth tool over any given region and disrupting the terrain I was going for.

(( EDIT: Methods are - using L3DT to generate heightmap, GIMP to touchup and resize accordingly. I've tried using files directly without any editing at all, using lots of blur of different types, and tried creating difference clouds filter in GIMP to generate a random 'terrain' all with the same similar end result. ))

Thank you,
- Hap

Hap,
Yeah, in fact I have 2 regions I imported as oar files from Linda Kellie and they have this rumpling you speak of, in fact even if I use the flatten tool the rumples wont go away, The only workaround I have found is to start the flatten tool in the neighboring sim and move over into the affected sim, this seems to bring the flat land across with it, but for all I'm worth. I cant get the wrinkles out unless I do that.

Ok thanks Cam that is good to know. I went ahead and wrote up a detailed mantis on it. I know I've had this issue for several revisions now and I didn't see anything specific to this in a search so hopefully it will help at some point.

Until then it looks like I have a lot of raising, lowering, and smoothing to do!

Thanks again,
- Hap

Haplo and Cam,

Best way to smooth out the rumples, is use the flood fill too in GIMP, (the paint bucket). In the little options area below where you select the tool, you can change the Threshold from 15.0 down to 1.0 or smaller, if you have very subtle differences in terrain. The flood fill tool will fill ALL colors within the threshold to the color selected, and it will be flat when your done, no more ripples.

Shad MOrdre

Hi Shad,

I'm not sure we're thinking the same thing. I realize that a uniform color will produce a uniform surface. The issue at hand here is that when loading in a terrain file 'terrain load <myterrain.png>' the entire surface especially hillsides and such have the afore mentioned wrinkles or rumples.

The problem with the fill tool or paint bucket is that on hills or slopes we're dealing with gradients. In opensim as a slope, in the terrain file as a color.

So I'm thinking that there must be a way to get a blur tool or filter to either be extremely fine, or opensimulator just doesn't import terrain files real well just yet. I don't remember this issue in the distant past though.

I wonder if changing format back to something like the RAW days might work better? Hrmmm... food for thought...

I've noticed a lot of jaggedness when I loaded oar files. A trick I was shown was to right-click on the land, select edit terrain, click on 'smooth' and then click on the 'apply' button a time or two, Repeat for each parcel on the sim if needed.

That works for me, but as w/ anything in opensim -YMMV.

Keep in mind the resolution is quite course to begin with. When you are looking at your terrain inworld, one square meter is only one pixel in the terrain heightmap. The texture you see is from the terrain textures loaded in the viewer. Am I understanding your issue correctly? Maybe a screenshot would help.

Sure thing - I uploaded the pictures to a server to ease the pain.

I left them full size hi-res so you can see the difference. First one is fresh loaded terrain with rumples. Second one is after a quick makeover with the terrain tools so you can see just what I'm talking about. Also notice how badly it makes your feet sink into the terrain between the two.

Rumpled Terrain

Smoothed Out

The main problem being of course - using the smoothing tool greatly shrinks hills or raises plains. Using the smooth tool over a selected region works reasonably well, but screws up the region boundaries between regions. Not by much, but if you are making something you really want to be awesome when finished... it is going to really stand out when walking along a path.

I'm seriously wondering about file formats. This was never a problem when I used to mess around with this when all we had was the .raw format. I'm wondering if there is something about pixel depth or bits or something that could be affecting things. I remember there was an issue with saving files at 16 instead of 8 bit would create massive spikes in the terrain at one point in time so this is making me think I have some similar issue here. I just don't know.

Does anyone else here use terrain files they have made without any of this 'rumpled' or wrinkled effect? If so, would you be willing to share the general steps used to create them? (i.e. Use blender to make file A -> do thing B in GIMP -> save it as file C -> import it into opensim... or what have you)

Thanks,
- Hap

Well after messing around with L3DT and Blender a bit... I guess one alternative is just uploading .dae meshes and using them as terrain! it's pretty smooth I haven't fallen through anywhere, and I imagine you can just texture it as well... Hmmmm....

well I'm stumped by your rumples
I can't recreate them.

Were you using 16 bit png's? Did you try 8 bit? That's what I used on this terrain:

http://keysworlds.info/images/pixel-meter_001.png

That shows a 1x1 meter prim which is the size of 1 pixel in the terrain heightmap, and your rumples appear to be smaller in resolution than that which tells me it's not the heightmap image itself causing the problem, assuming it is an 8-bit greyscale.