Searching: Heightmap tools

[Wannes]

when I see all these fine maps with beautifull mounatins and then I look at mine made with a photoshop brush on 10% op and 10%fill, using blur tool etc . I know I'm doign somethign wrong

I've found a topic here with a link to a page with some programs for this but they all quite suck

I tried terragen but its just the same old brush thing

so which programs and tools do you pro guys use?

anyone knows of a program where I can just sort of quickly draw a shape and pull the mountain up or down or something (in 2D or 3D) and then let it generate the heightmap of the thign I made


or some advanced 2D heightmap tools that make the things I draw with a brush really smooth so I don't get the very rocky terrains liek I ahve now



thx : )

[Weaver]

I have used L3DT, it can generate very nice heightmaps, which can be very realisitic but not necessarily very playable. Some of the best new maps have been made using the designmap tools, rather than a randomized map.

It can also be used to texture a heightmap, again it can be a bit too detailed, but once you know how to use it you can get a good compromise between looks and file size.

I haven't got far with terragen myself but some say it's better.

[aGorm]

Heightmaps should be hand draw for playability realy. However theer are tricks to making it look good. One thing is noise... no land is perfectly flat after all! Just run a black and white noise on a new layer of your height map and tehn gausation blur it abit and then use either multiply or scren or overlay to get variation (dont forget to adjust the alpha on teh layer to.) making prtty mountains is hard and takes alot of work... and theres no real quike way to draw them... but making teh terrain have some variation is easy if you do that. Terregen can actully do that for you if you want it to aswell...

aGorm

[Lindir The Green]

With L3DT, don't just gererate a random map. Instead, create a blank design map and then configure each little tile to be just the way you want. Then you end up with a realistic-looking yet playable map

[SecurE]

It is also possible to make the entire map in a image editor of your choice, however, it is probably more work than using one of the terrain generators so you should probably stick with them. Getting nice hills seems to be quite a bit easier to do in L3DT than with any image editing software (or perhaps I'm just not good enough).

[FireCrack]

I havent made any maps specificly for spring but...

World Machine

Use the erosion filter then blend it with your original terrain in a suitable amount

[Wannes]

Thx all for the reply

I tried the programs you spoke about here:

world machine isn't really a program for making maps for games liek spring I think it has a complicated erosion system etc so its very realistic . . . and thats not really what I need didn't find any toosl to manually edit the terrain too btw


L3DT howerver is lookign very nice
lets you define the size of the map in pixels auto generates a realistic texture map and heightmap (didn't look at the results of the heightmap yet but I think it will be usable

gonna see how I can manually make the terrain tomorrow
when I finally get to make a decent higthmap I'll write a nice tutorial about everything

cheers!

[SJ]

World machine(+terragen for texture) is what I used for the small divide map, worked kind of well i think. To bad one can only do 8x8 maps without the commersial version.

[dinamik]

I download "World Machine" and tryed edit, (something change)
in the small map for TA Spring - but is problem.
"World Machine" can not open files (.smf and .smt )

Please, maybe somebody can explane me:
What program can edit this files ?

[Torrasque]

I download "World Machine" and tryed edit, (something change)
in the small map for TA Spring - but is problem.
"World Machine" can not open files (.smf and .smt )

Please, maybe somebody can explane me:
What program can edit this files ?

Such programe don't exist.
The best you can do now with a compiled map is to modify his .smd.
If you want to change heigh/metal/texture..map, you need the source files.

[SinbadEV]

honestly it would be nice to be able to change smf or smt files in some way shape or form

[Weaver]

It would be nice not to have to recompress all the textures, if you only want to update one of the other maps. I think an smf editor might be possible.