Im currently working with some pre-production work and Im currently working with a terrain generator for Maya.
So far I've implemented some procedural terrain generation algorithms and it works fine. Now, I want to take on step further and I need some reallife terrain data. From where is it possible to download/buy real data from terrain, I've heard something about USGS??? Does anyone have any experiences??? All replies are welcome!
The best thing would be you could get x,y coordinates and height values from a data file or similar.
Hmmm....I got an info packet from the USGS a while ago on florida, and the maps that they sent me weren't any where near the detail you would need for height maps, they only give a height every 50 feet or so. This was a good 5 or 6 years ago though, and maybe now you can get digital data on elevation, but I haven't looked into it for a while. Also, florida is pretty darn flat, So maybe a map of colorado or montana would be more informative.
Sounds interesting, I dont need real and accurate data just some nice displacement is what Im looking for...I meen say that you use a map over colorado or similar, its not a problem cause you can use it in "minitature" scale...guess you see what I meen...
Anyway, how do I get the data, I tried to visit their webpage USGS.gov but I couldnt find any data that was available for download, what do you think??? Any suggestions???