Does anyone know where I could get height maps for like the grand canyon or the Arches national park. Or any height maps for the Himalayas? Would like to see how it translates in Unreal
There might be height maps available on the web site for this application:
If nothing else, it explains some basic Qgis stuff that you will eventually need.
As far as Datum for anything like the grand canyon:
It’s a cliff.
Cliffs usually overhang. Ergo, you won’t be able to have a heightmap of any accuracy that describes the canyon itself.
I’m not aware of any on site lidar readings / point clouds, but that would be what to look for in order to get realistic data for those. And obviously, you wouldn’t use the terrain tool to sculpt the cliff (you can btw, by turning the landscape actor and having more than 1 landscape actor on the same level, but meshes far outperform the unreal landscape system).
The other areas you mention are easier.
first of, you are looking g for any 1m lidar maps.
maps.
A Google search for that will already give you some results on common sites.
In some cases, you can pay for the maps, since in the last 10 years individual jurisdictions have paid to create said readings of their lands for a variety of reasons (water affluence studies for instance).
the free resources to use are
https://www.usgs.gov/
https://terrain.party/
Theres one more for Europe, but i don’t remember what its called, and, they basically on have 30m and 20m like everyone else.
You can stretch a 20m lidar to 1m with some accuracy, but any and all cliffs will inevitably get distorted.
After stretching it, you have to radial gaussian blur it in order to get rid of the steps you would otherwise get every 20m.
20m.in some cases (hill terrains) this can work fine.
in others (cliffs, peaks etc) this can drastically alter the base topology.
all in all, remember that converting data with 1:1 accuracy is its own job that should be done by scientists, not game developers…
[USER=“”][/USER] can you give me an example on what you mean by having 2 Landscape actors to mimic a cliff?