Celestia Forums

I've searched the forum and haven't found an answer to my question. Do the nmtools ONLY work for binary height maps or will they work with say, Bump Maps, or Embossed images? I know they do not work for RGB images but so far I have only been able to use them with the SRTM .bin files for Earth.

Ozark wrote:I've searched the forum and haven't found an answer to my question. Do the nmtools ONLY work for binary height maps or will they work with say, Bump Maps, or Embossed images? I know they do not work for RGB images but so far I have only been able to use them with the SRTM .bin files for Earth.

The home of my nmtools package is our CelestialMatters site (click on the CM icon below). There you also find my detailed step-by-step tutorial. The nmtools are made for people to obtain huge scientific grade normalmaps with normal home computers. Hence the input is for 16 bit binary elevation maps. Scientific elevation maps are ALWAYS published this way, somtimes, signed, sometimes unsigned.

Bye Fridger

Hi Fridger

The home of my nmtools package is our CelestialMatters site (click on the CM icon below). There you also find my detailed step-by-step tutorial. The nmtools are made for people to obtain huge scientific grade normalmaps with normal home computers. Hence the input is for 16 bit binary elevation maps. Scientific elevation maps are ALWAYS published this way, somtimes, signed, sometimes unsigned.

Yes I am aware of this, and i have great normal map of earth on my computer. BTW thanks for those tools, they worked great for me. However i have searched all over the net, specifically for elevation data for Mars, but keep coming up with maps like this:

http://jmars.asu.edu/data/mola_color/

I have also found these files:

http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/geodat ... 0x/meg128/

But not sure what i will do with them, because the map is in tiles. Are there any other elevation data maps for anything besides Earth?

I am also looking forward to the release of your txtools. I know I could dnlwd the color map from from Jestr, but i wished to make my own set of RGB tiles.


Ozark

Ozark,

But not sure what i will do with them, because the map is in tiles. Are there any other elevation data maps for anything besides Earth?

As far as I know, NMtools does not work on tiles. The code that deals with spherical corrections treat each tile as a sphere instead of a part of the whole. I may be wrong about that. There may be a way of doing it correctly. Fridger would have to answer that one.
The old way of doing normalmaps was to use nm16. If you use the search engine I think there should be a Windows version around somewhere.
The meg128 files are a bit tricky to work with too. There is NO data from 88n to 90n and 88s to 90s. You'll have to use part of meg64 files to patch the missing areas.
cartrite

cartrite wrote:Ozark,

But not sure what i will do with them, because the map is in tiles. Are there any other elevation data maps for anything besides Earth?

As far as I know, NMtools does not work on tiles. The code that deals with spherical corrections treat each tile as a sphere instead of a part of the whole. I may be wrong about that. There may be a way of doing it correctly. Fridger would have to answer that one.
The old way of doing normalmaps was to use nm16. If you use the search engine I think there should be a Windows version around somewhere.
The meg128 files are a bit tricky to work with too. There is NO data from 88n to 90n and 88s to 90s. You'll have to use part of meg64 files to patch the missing areas.
cartrite

The nmtools simply assume as input ONE 16 bit binary elevation map.

If you want to produce ONE coherent normalmap from that input you use my nms tool, the corrected version of nm16 (which did not account for spherical geometry). If you want to generate VTs you use 'nmtiles'. The rest is to be read in my tutorial.

There is a host of software tools that serve to assemble a set of binary elevation tiles into one binary input file. So I left the choice to everyone according to their gusto and operating system. It's really a trivial job.

Bye Fridger

Hey Fridger,
That is exactly what I did with Mars. Assemble the megr128 tiles into one file. The nmtools did a good job too. To assemble the tiles, I used ISIS3 which does not run on Windows yet. That's why I didn't suggest that since Ozark uses Windows. I'm not aware of any others although I'm sure they are out there.
cartrite