WorldComposer is tool to extract heightmap data and satellite images from the real World. It can run as a standalone or as an extension for TerrainComposer.
Its powerfull features let you create high resolution AAA quality real world terrain with a few clicks.
WorldComposer includes a shadow removal tool, that makes it unique compared to other software. There are always shadows on satellite images and if used in a game or simulation it forces a fixed sun position to match with the shadows. Also shadows in satellite images are almost completely black which doesn’t make them look good. WorldComposer solves this by removing shadows with it’s shadow removal algorithm, which will not only make the satellite images look way better, but also allows you to have fully day and night cycles!
I’ve fooled with this! (Dont ask) It’s brill! Really is top notch stuff. I hope to buy it sometime, you might worry that using real world textures might make your game look a bit too… familiar? Not true, there are a bunch of places on earth, huge places, that are beautiful, no cities or ugliness, that would make for some beautiful terrain, at the very least you can grab the heights or tiles of them, grab a colourmap from the photography, have a huge range of accurate tiles with colourmaps, take to terraincomposer and render all the control maps you want, let rtp do its magic and bam, youve got a world to explore/populate. Even if you dont bother with a colourmap (you dont actually need a colormap with rtp ive discovered) you can use this kind of thing for areas of land that look like actual areas of land and just eroded perlin noise
If you dont mind, could you post more videos? Like of flying around valleys and stuff, perhaps in different geological conditions… like tibet/nepal style areas, swiss alps, australian plains, deep desert in africa and so on. and iceland!
Ok that was maybe asking a lot, but this stuff is exciting, and an incredibly compelling possible purchase
Thanks, I saw your terrain video on the RTP thread…It looks amazing!
Yes it works as you descripe…
Great idea, I’m going to make build(s) with different areas in the next comming days. I’m also working on a build demo of 900km terrain for UnityFS, RTPv3, etc.
Look at the elevation data resolution, thats your terrain data accuracy. There are several places you can get elevation data, at various accuracies (I found nasa had some nice data one but i cant remember where i found it in their labyrinthine site)
As ive just read it, world composer is giving you 10 meters per pixel, the asset you linked is 90m per pixel?
IIRC google maps is around 20m per pixel… not super sure, either way, this world composer seems to be using some of the most accurate elevation data ive seen publically available
Plus, main draw is, its massively integrated into terrain composer which i do not own but really should because by all accounts its the dogs danglies and to sweeten the deal, eagle555 and RTP guy Tom have a good communication and RTP is really where you want to go if youre texturing your terrains, its really quite something
Eagle555, thankyou for the compliment! Thats really only the canvas for the main work im intending to do there, im just formulating how its going to work out, as it relies on a lot of things i cant resolve atm (partly because of help needed for some aspects of code, partly because i technicaly need to ask a few asset developers to ‘lend me’ their stuff on that one off project with the security merely of knowing they now know if im using their stuff outside of the agreement), but the goal is to make something that looks bloody amazing and stops mindless children saying mindless things about what unity can and cant do. and make it as much as possible a one man show. Thanks again though and wish me luck
Its on you to judge but i am very confident that it will stand any comparison easily, check the features list in the top post and feel free to ask if something is unclear ;).
Yes it is to some extend. But these companies don’t seem to be interested in replying as I tried to contact some and requested how the rules are, etc. I also talked to an expert from the GIS world and he told me that everyone is using it without permission…
Unofficially spoken, it would be very hard to verify if you use photoshop, shadow content removal, RTP as rendering and TC for mixing it with splat texturing. They would need to analyse it back, which would be very hard, and almost impossible to prove and they proberly don’t put time into this, as then they would respond to the mails developers send for requested imagery…
Huh, that’s interesting. I suppose it’s true. The only simple and legal option I’ve found is to get a commercial account with Google Maps for $400 – but even with that, then you have to have control over which maps are being served up. (Exclude Bing and Nokia.)
No a google map account is not valid for it, as it is for loading imagery from the Google server. I thought it was that way first too, but the GIS expert explained it are the suppliers from Google that hold the copyright, not Google…The detailed images are made from airplanes by the way…
He actually worked on aerial photography projects himself, for example the aerial photographing of the damage of the tsunami in Indonesia.
This is a picture of the camera they used. They bring with them many TB harddisks to be able to hold all the imagery data of 1 flight. And then a seperate company is stitching all the imagery together. He was talking about that the whole camera system costs about $1.000.000…
As eagle says once you’ve game-i-fied the photography to where you could feel satisfied with it and rtp’s got it covered, its a completely pointless battle trying to pursuee a copyright case given the enormity of the data and the amount of people using the imagery for god knows what. Probs easiest way to mash in a ‘ground’ sorta image is open google earth and just copypasta a patch that looks mostly even, and something that elemental could be used for countless purposes countless times. I think basically just go crazy
That said though I dont even thing the photography is the star of the show, its more the actual realistig geology, absolutely shittons of realistic geology, dont use the photography at all, make your coverage maps for rtp (im always assuming rtp) in terrain composer (seems natural tool for the job) then you have some completely believable land shapes that noone could pinpoint lookin all shiny and purty in shader lovin
Just want to chime in and say I’ve been using WorldComposer for a while and it’s really great. In the past I’ve always had the hardest time searching for DEM data, editing useable heightmaps in photoshop, dealing with raw files, overlaying ground imagery, it’s all just such a pain. World Composer makes this process so simple and easy it’s a must-have to anyone who needs real-world based terrain… hell it’s a no brainer even if you only need a fantasy terrain, as you can easily find interesting and random land forms of any type anywhere in the world.
Combined with TerrainComposer it’s unstoppable. One of the best tools on the asset store no question.
