Your terrain, your way.
Vancouver, B.C., Canada — July 16, 2007 — Daylon Graphics® Ltd. today announced Daylon Leveller™ 2.6, a raster terrain modeler supporting georeferencing via integration of the popular third-party GDAL library. Numerous other changes and new features are also included to make program operation smoother, more accessible and more powerful.
“Leveller 2.6 is a key milestone.” said Ray Gardener, Daylon's administrator. “It started off very simple back in 1998, to model heightmaps. It soon became apparent, however, that most users deploy heightfields for terrain, and it wasn't a question of if georeferencing would be included, but when. Well, that time is now. It should significantly streamline the experience for those users. Even those who didn't need georeferencing may want to, as it increases one's options.
“Looking at the way GIS standards have evolved, and the expanding use of realworld terrain in rendering, games, movie production, etc. -- GIS and art increasingly overlap, and it's clear that what might have been traditionally an art tool benefits these users by including GIS concepts. At the same time, however, one can't just drop a traditional GIS system into a designer's lap and expect them to be instant experts -- these people work best with more art-centric tools like paint programs. Hopefully, Leveller 2.6 is close to the sweet spot between these two worlds.”
Textures can also be georeferenced, both for attaching to terrain and for image creation. If an ordinary image is placed on a georeferenced terrain, for example, it can be exported as a georeferenced image.
Thanks to GDAL, more texture and terrain formats are available, dovetailing with the Daylon philosophy of maximizing interoperability. “Computing is mainly about taking data in some form and place and getting it into another form and/or place.” Gardener adds. “Leveller supported quite a few formats before, but now it's even better. GDAL also benefits from the relationship, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the two evolve together.” The Leveller document format, incidentally, is available as a GDAL format driver, letting non-Leveller users easily read and write Leveller files. Some non-GDAL interop was done too, such as support for Second LifeTM terrain.
A revised focus on usability rounds out other changes. There are more viewing options which are better organized, some slow parts have been sped up, importing is friendlier, raytracing supports HDRI, macros make it easier to automate tasks, and the nomenclature is less technical while the documentation has been completely revamped with a how-to focus rather than feature description. Terrain reprojection is implicit when using copy/paste, and other applications supporting the Leveller clipboard format can interoperate similarly.
“Quality is always a main goal. It's been two years since the previous version (2.5), more than double the usual time between releases, to make sure things work right. The simpler 'world scale' scheme used in the past was replaced by a formal coordinate system approach, and that had a ripple effect on nearly every part. But this sets a much stronger foundation for future versions.”
Pricing and Availability
Despite all the improvements, Leveller 2.6 is a free upgrade for existing Leveller 2.x users, and the price for new users remains $149.95 USD. Volume discounts are available. To learn more about Leveller 2.6, please visit http://www.daylongraphics.com/
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