Importing Geographic Terrains into Second Life

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Importing physical terrain data into Second Life is one of our goals as it allows 'table top' models of the earths physical geography to be viewed and discussed within a collaborative environment. It turns out the process is relatively easy with our first tests of a real terrain in Thailand and a made up terrain out of Terragen working well.


The image above (click for a larger version) is a 512x512 metre section reduced down for easy viewing, close up views can be obtained using the 'zoom' tool.

It is still work in progress but if anyone is interested we can put up a work flow once its refined.

Visualising Landscapes - Terragen 2

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Although the blog is in general about digital representations of urban areas when you work overlooking a carpark in London town it is sometime nice to look beyond the city and towards landscape visualisation software.

One of the best packages out there is Terragen and its recently released Terragen Technology Preview (Version 2). The above image is the result of following the making your first scene pdf , which we thoroughly recommend as we were left a little lost at first by the new interface and layout. After reading through guide however it all comes together and reveals the potential of the package.

There is also a movie of Terragen 2.0's output:

For shear eye candy alone Terragen is well worth spending an hour of your time with to the produce some stunning scenes. Render times require patience as the scenes and new lighting are complex, the above image took 1 hour 20 minutes on a 3.2Ghz Processor with 2Gb Ram.