Automatic Grouping of Mountain/Terrain Type Features in to Chains

[unklStewy]

Good Afternoon,

I have been having a lot of fun working with OWM and I was curious if there was a plan to allow auto grouping of terrain elements such as mountains and hills.

Casey A.

[Kanchou]

Good Afternoon,

I have been having a lot of fun working with OWM and I was curious if there was a plan to allow auto grouping of terrain elements such as mountains and hills.

Casey A.

Casey,

We like the idea, the thing would be how to implement it.

Keep in mind that:
a. Right now you can select a group of items and select "group" to make them into a group, but that's done manually.
b. The Beta (maybe Alpha #2?) will have the option to create regions of features, that will auto-tile. Again, I know that's not quite what you have in mind.

Would it work by having a setting to auto group items under the same "category," or items have the same prefix for a name? The question is also how to move the individual mountains if you aren't happy with them.

We definitely welcome any ideas on this!

Thanks!

- Alejandro

[unklStewy]

Kanchou,

I've been playing with the moutain tools some more and I think I might have a possible suggestion..

If you allow the mountain tool to work as a pen type (similar to to rivers and roads), or stamp type as it is now via a selection box (Radio or Checkbox) you could then autogroup the generated pentype chains along a curve or line object. Once the line is in place a mountain density setting could determine how many points to add to the line object and each point could be the indicated base of a mountain object. Then if a user wanted to adjust the individual mountains they could use the point editing tool.

All mountain objects along the curve/spline/line are a Mountain Chain Layer. By spacing the points using the point tool individual mountains could be added for effect and scale.


Just my thoughts on the subject.

Casey

[unklStewy]

Additional Thoughts:

Similar to the way the randomness of the coast lines are fractal calculations you could apply a fractal algorithm to the size and scale of mountains along the path. If you allow for a sliding scale tool to set the frequency of the fractal additions the depicted mountains would probably appear more natural.
Just to spice things up a bit.

Casey

[Kanchou]

Additional Thoughts:

Similar to the way the randomness of the coast lines are fractal calculations you could apply a fractal algorithm to the size and scale of mountains along the path. If you allow for a sliding scale tool to set the frequency of the fractal additions the depicted mountains would probably appear more natural.
Just to spice things up a bit.

Casey

Casey,

We really like where your idea is going. We're going to try to add it at the same time we add the functionality to create regions of symbols.

Thanks!!!

- Alejandro