In our case we continue using pre-rendering software E-on Vue.

Vue is an all in one package. It’s able to produce procedural materials, have volumetric clouds, plants, water, day/night cyclus, particles,… It’s possible to animate all these elements.

At first we create a square terrain and load in the saved heightmap (define the height scale, difference between the lowest and highest point in the heightmap).

Like in photoshop we create for every vegetation map another (sub)material  and define first its ground texture. By loading the corresponding black/white map or color map as the alpha channel of the material (black or selected color is opaque, white transparent), we step by step construct our complete landscape…

 

Vue creates procedural textures, so no resolution or tileability problems. Infinite result, the distance doesn’t matter.    

After the complete ground is covered with textures, it's time to populate vegetation plants (or whatever object you need to populate). This is done the same way.

U can define clustering plants via fractals, angle of the terrain, height, … every thinkable method is possible. In Vue plants can also react on dynamic wind.

 

When all vegetation is populated, the reconstruction of the terrain is finished. Import all your objects into Vue on the terrain, and done!

It's possible to render stills, but also animations, panorama's etc… and use these into interactive applications.

 

Created by Dries Nollet