*waits for Yann to show us a realtime version of these scenes*
Oh wait, it would probably be better, with his realtime grass and clouds and all...



YEAH, WELL, ITS EASIER ON A GF4! I HAVE A VANTA!

Hey,

Thanks all for the comments. As for the quality of the images - I''m not aiming for some incredible output, just fairly - really good. This project wasn''t meant to supercede TerraGen, Vue de Espirit, or even Vistapro (*gasp*!) It was my attempt at creating a fair quality software renderer.

I was actually looking more for comments to the effect of the lighting, color choice, water rendering, background drawing method, edge anti-aliasing - even gamma correction (if need be.)

---non technical---
I enjoy it when people tell me they like the output (that''s cool) but I''d like to know, even then, how to improve it. I don''t really like it when people tell me it ''should be better'' because it fits into a specific graphics catagory, w/o helping me out with what they *don''t* like. Atleast a target, ya know.

I know by putting my stuff up for viewing I''m choosing to accept both positive and negative comments, let''s not start a flame war because I request (not require) a different posting style than most are used to.

---end non technical---


Anyway, I''m re-uploading the images with a little less compression on the jpeg output. I''m also lowering the gamma back to what it originally was, the monitor I''m uploading from is alot darker than most (so far as I''ve seen.) Yell at me if they''re too dark, k?

-Michael

ps. Btw, yeah, I probably could write this thing in realtime using OpenGL or Direct3d, and maybe I will, like I said, I find software rendering more of a challenge right now. And I learn alot on the way through the process... Oh yeah, and the reason I ask about the ''artistic'' nature of the images - all the texture mixing + lighting is done within a seperate program of mine.

Update - I''m currently working on a program to aid in creation+loading for this program, of large(r) scale terrains.

Again, Thankyou everyone for taking the time to check out the images
-Later!

I have to say I''m a little annoyed with you. I just fired up Outlook to ask you to send me the engine so I could work with it Looks very nice indeed.

I''m still crying into my tea that it isn''t real-time ))

Ok, here''s the deal. I have the source (obviously) and it''s pretty nasty. But if all people want to do is try different landscapes in it I might be able to arrange getting the source to you. Again, the source is really nasty right now. I''ll work at making it better for in the future. Also, I''m having some issues with the water edges fading values so they''re kinda static right now (the amount the water darkens the landscape it''s touching and that around it.)

Please check the page again and refresh it as I''ve just coded in a simple little hack for a bump map for the water environment.

I think you guys may like it.

-Michael

----
tech notes, the program loads (currently) .raw files for the heightmap (anything that''s x*x res, 8 bit, equal width and height.) For the textures for everything it loads only 24bit bmps right now (and it still struggles with some of them depending upon the width and the program''s bmp output settings.)

Maps it loads:
1. Heightmap
2. Base texturemap, this includes lighting since I already wrote a program to calculate it. If you want my program I might be able to dig it up.
3. Detail map (optional) usually a grayscale or almost grayscale (still 24 bit bmp in this case though) map. Base map is multiplied by this map (kinda, with extra settings.)
4. Water texture (optional) texture for water, also used for bump map (on water.) Options for output amount of the water texture, and for bump map multiplier (seperate.)
5. Background image - wrapped around viewport.
---
Each of these has texture filter options (nearest, bilinear, or sine wave (bilinear I''ve found to be best/smoothest.)
The Camera stores x,y,z and rotation (in radians, along the y-axis)
There are also fogging color (rgb) options, antialiasing (terrain/terrain, terrain/sky, water/terrain, not terrain/water though, ie, just over hilltop is water.) And, of course, output resolution and quality stepping settings as well as lerp from one to next ray cast, along the screen''s y.

By the way, in case no-one understood from before. The terrain is what some people refer to as a "voxel" renderer. It''s not really a full voxel engine because it only works with heightmaps, and doesn''t quite fit into that catagory.

I wanted to note that, if anyone would like, I could upload a simple loop (camera circle) animation of flying over the terrain, or an animation of the water flooding/going back down. I don''t know if I have anything to convert them to an avi or mov or anything, but I can atleast upload a zip w/.jpg files and an exe to load and display the animation.

Tell me if anyone is interested... maybe point me to a good program that can load bmps and output a video file too (free)?

Thanks,
-Michael