Getting further into TerraWorld
Hi, I love the tool and have only really been scratching the surface of the power of it up until now...
However, I have a couple of questions, if I may?
Firstly the biomes will only work if you are using OpenStreetMap as the source, right? This is because I believe that you are taking tag information from the XML to identify what different types of areas are.
Secondly, is there a way to use both OpenStreetMap image for the filters and ESRI image as a texture/image layer in the same graph? I haven't seen a way to do that at the moment but due to the OSM being used as the filter then this could be a really useful feature. Personally, at the moment I am using TerraWorld to help create simple textured maps of areas of interest.
Developing on from that, I believe from the sourcecode that I can extend the biome types? I am working with some areas that include both residential and commercial tagged areas that I would like to use to generate some textures for me automatically. I believe that I need to modify the scripts, particularly around the BiomeTypes and TLandKey enums and then in OSMParser I would need to add some new extract methods. Am I on the right track with my understanding of the tooling?
Very many thanks for this incredibly powerful toolkit.
All best,
Matt
Hi, I love the tool and have only really been scratching the surface of the power of it up until now...
However, I have a couple of questions, if I may?
Hi Matt, thanks, glad you liked it so far. Please let us know of your questions and findings.
Firstly the biomes will only work if you are using OpenStreetMap as the source, right? This is because I believe that you are taking tag information from the XML to identify what different types of areas are.
Yes, landcover data is obtained from OSM XML data.
Secondly, is there a way to use both OpenStreetMap image for the filters and ESRI image as a texture/image layer in the same graph? I haven't seen a way to do that at the moment but due to the OSM being used as the filter then this could be a really useful feature. Personally, at the moment I am using TerraWorld to help create simple textured maps of areas of interest.
This is exactly how it is designed. If you look at the Realistic templates, you see that landcover masks are coming from Biome Type Filter nodes in BIOMES graph and Satellite Image node in COLORS graph is used to produce ESRI sat image as colormap for TerraFormer shader or as a global terrain layer in Standard terrain shader.
Developing on from that, I believe from the sourcecode that I can extend the biome types? I am working with some areas that include both residential and commercial tagged areas that I would like to use to generate some textures for me automatically. I believe that I need to modify the scripts, particularly around the BiomeTypes and TLandKey enums and then in OSMParser I would need to add some new extract methods. Am I on the right track with my understanding of the tooling?
Yes, that's exactly where the codes are. We also have this in our pipeline to extend biome and landcover types including residential and urban areas but still far away from that, so it's a good idea if you want to jump in for yourself. Please let us know if you need help in developing it further and we try our best to help.
thanks for the reply and it's what I hoped on all the questions, thanks! However, to check and for clarity, please, do you always get the OSM map data regardless of what the colourmap is?
And does this mean that the colour filter references the OSM colours or the colour map colours? I ask as I am struggling to get the colour filter working the way that I expect it to.
Many thanks again, and all the best,
Matt
No problem 🙂
Yes, getting OSM landcover data is regardless of what colormap and its extractions are. So we use color filtering on colormap which is based on satellite image of the area but you can also change it to OSM renders to extract colors from it but since we have "Biome Type Filter" nodes in BIOMES tab which does exactly the same to extract landcover areas we reserved it for satellite image extractions to enhance area detection (e.g. in most of the Realistic templates we extract a range of green pixels to add to landcover data for vegetation placement).
However, as you already know, the biome nodes generate area masks based on XML data which is independent from resolution but color filtering on COLORS tab uses image processing on raster data which is resolution-dependent.
Please let me know if you need help in setting up the color filtering in graph.
This is a good steer, thanks! Knowing that the colour is from the raster image helps with working out how to set them up. If I get stuck after that clue then I may reach out again! I have had some limited success, mostly through trial and error but knowing to use the colour from the satellite image makes it easier to experiment 😀
I hope to try adding some extra terrain filters locally as part of my experimentations over the next few days, I'll let you know how it goes...
No problem, would love to see your progress and please let us know of it 🙂