More planetary surface mapping help requested

[SpaceBadger]

[o]Two[/o] Three new items for the wishlist:

1) I once had a nice free downloaded app that would either generate fractal terrain, or else let you rough it out yourself and then would "weather it down" to create natural terrain w rivers etc. If anyone recalls the name of that app and knows where to find it, I'd appreciate a tip.

2) With reference to the foregoing, it seems to me that it could also import real-world data in some particular format and use that alone or as a basis for further manipulation. If someone could tell me what format is required, and better yet point me at some appropriate files for the UK and Ireland, I'd also greatly appreciate that.

3) This one I could do by hand with great drudgery, or use a handy computer app if one exists to alleviate the drudgery. I had a system for mapping in hexes that each represented 30 miles, and I could either determine what was in each of those hexes or drill deeper to another page translating each of those hexes into one in which each hex represented one mile, then determine what was in each of those smaller hexes. I once created an algorithm for doing this by hand, but would be nice to have computer make all the rolls and provide a nice display, even if I had to hand-copy the relatively rare features onto paper maps and shade in the rest, the overall terrain types. Anybody know of an app to help w this?

 

[aramis]

There is a mapping program that does the drill down for you called "hex mapper" - I don't know if it's available for windows. It doesn't do the random.

 

[Kashirigi]

[o]Two[/o] Three new items for the wishlist:

1) I once had a nice free downloaded app that would either generate fractal terrain, or else let you rough it out yourself and then would "weather it down" to create natural terrain w rivers etc. If anyone recalls the name of that app and knows where to find it, I'd appreciate a tip.

I think what you may be looking for is Wilbur. Even if that's not the same application you recall, it does the same things and it's free.

It also imports raster data in a number of formats. Generally, you just use the File/Open function to import them. As for getting real world data, this may help:

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Public_Geodata_for_the_UK and
http://dublinked.com/datastore/datasets/dataset-210.php
and even:
http://diva-gis.org/Data

SRTM data has the entire earth at a 90m grid, which is relatively granular unless you're mapping a fairly large area.

What you're looking for is generally called a Digital Elevation Model (or DEM), and they come in many formats (many of which are supported by Wilbur). If you're looking for higher resolutions (like local areas) the best place to find that sort of data is from a county (or equivalent adminstrative area) website. More and more places are opening up data like this, so it's possible to get 1m DEMs (or even smaller) for some areas.

 

[robject]

I use Flaming Pear's LunarCell -- a $29 plug in that works with PhotoShop ($$$) but ALSO works fine with OLD versions of Paint Shop Pro (PSP5 and up, basically the versions which predate JASC being bought by Corel), which can be bought off the 'web for, oh, $5 or so.

While it's not free, it is excellent.

 

[simonh]

I think what you may be looking for is Wilbur. Even if that's not the same application you recall, it does the same things and it's free.

There's also a professional version of Wilbur by the same author called Fractal Terrains.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Kilgs]

Nbos also has a free version of fractal terrain mapping. It has the weathering and aging with erosion, raising/lowering sea levels etc. Not sure how much functionality you get with the free version. I got it with Astrosynthesis.

Nbos Software

 

[robject]

There's also a professional version of Wilbur by the same author called Fractal Terrains.

Simon Hibbs

Well that looks gorgeous, tho' $40 is beyond my price point. And of course those guys make Campaign Cartographer, don't they? So it's a good company to deal with.