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Re: gray scale image to RB3d mesh?

To: REALbasic NUG <realbasic-nug at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: Re: gray scale image to RB3d mesh?
From: "Joseph J. Strout" <joe at realsoftware dot com>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 08:52:02 -0600
Delivered-to: realbasic-nug at lists dot realsoftware dot com
References: <FCF75D6F-8903-11D9-9ED8-000A95A06DBE at divergentmedia dot com>
At 4:10 PM -0500 2/27/05, Mike Woodworth wrote:

i know this is a probably a topic for the games list, but i'm loath to get even more rb email every day just to get this one question answered :)

Yes, you probably would get better discussion of this on the games list -- which, BTW, has very low volume compared to the NUG list. But anyway...

There are lots of ways to skin the "elevation map" cat. The simplest approach would be to have a model already set up with a grid, and simply set the Y position of each grid point according to the elevation (grayscale value) on your map. You could use the code from the "Mesh Deformation" article in RB Developer almost verbatim for this.

What real games generally do is more complicated: there are algorithms to figure out where you need to have more or fewer points in the mesh in order to best represent the terrain with the fewest number of triangles. So in places where the terrain is relatively flat, you use fewer, and where it's changing a lot you use more. I've never done that, though I have skimmed some articles about it.

But an Rb3DSpace is actually quite fast for a single object; the number of triangles doesn't matter all that much. So you could take the simpler approach with a pretty high-resolution starting mesh, and it might work just fine for you.

Best,
- Joe

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