Cumulative log - Wednesday 19 May 2010

10.00am – I’ve come to the office as usual.

I continue research what I’ve left yesterday. I try to find ways to load the DEM data onto 3Dsmax.
Around 11.00am – Ms Winny asks me about the my claim report. I then stated to her that I failed to kept the receipt for the toll and petrol usage on the shooting day before so I couldn’t issued a claim. She then tell me it is okay, all I need to do is state down the mileage and toll and pass it to her. I then asks my co-worker Khabi on how to write the claim report.

Around 12.00pm – I’ve found a website which explains the step by step on how to download DEM data and load it onto 3D modeling software. The website also provides a link to where we can download the DEM data, which is different from what I’ve found yesterday. It’s a website of US government agency that specializing in Digital Elevation Models in the United State. Although it only provides DEM in the US region, I believe it is already good enough as DEM that I was looking for is ‘Grand Canyon’, a place in the US itself.

Around 1.00pm – After I managed to download DEM data, I try to load the file again in 3Ds Max. It was a hit and miss. Sometimes it load but once I navigate thru, it crashes the program. Other tries it fails to load at all. It seems that either I missed a step again or I totally messed up the whole process. I turn my focus onto finishing my claim report instead.

1.30pm – I go out to lunch.

2.10pm – I’m back at the office.

Around 2.30pm - I submit the claim report that I’ve made earlier to Ms Winny. I then continue researching to solve the DEM loading problem.
Around 4.00pm – I found a plugins for 3DsMax called GroundWiz. It’s a plugin to create a texture for terrain using procedural method. Procedural method means that it uses mathematical calculation to create the texture based on slope, altitude and percentage instead of a bitmap images.

I found that GroundWiz has the capability to load DEM file too. I start downloading the free version of GroundWiz, called ‘GroundWiz’ Lite. There are however some limitation in the ‘Lite’ version, such as maximum resolution of 800x600 only when rendered using mental ray, although there is no limit when using standard scanline renderer that comes with 3ds Max.

I start by going thru the tutorial that comes with the ‘GroundWiz’ Lite. It was a breeze. I now know how to apply the procedural texture onto terrain. I also learn that we can use multiple layer of textures to simulate real life terrain, such as base color, soil, sand, grass and snow layer. We can determine exactly where we want to put such layer on its respective order. This is critical as for example; snow must be on the highest point of the terrain or mountain, while grass must not grow on top of the snow. We also want to make the snow thickness varies and at some point we can still see the soil or ground. This increase realism and make the terrain looks believable.

Around 7.00pm – Ms Winny hand to us our allowance by cheque slip. Mine is RM300 only.

Around 7.30pm – We dismiss