Elevation Bitmaps

[Tatzel]

I just started playing with the Terrain Editor, so I am not too familiar with it.  Right now I am practicing making mountains.

They way I'm doing it now is to select a block of terrain, then trim the block by deselecting to get an outline of the mountain.  Then I raise the selection, trim it a little more, raise it again, etc.  So the effect is sort of a terraced mountain.

Well, that's my theory anyway.  Usually I mess up by accidently left clicking without holding down either shift or cntrl, which ends up deselecting the entire carefully trimmed selection.  Or, the editor bugs out and won't select or deselect anymore, or won't raise the selection after the first time.  It's tedious to say the least.

So, I was reading in the help file that you can export the map as a bitmap, then use a Paint program to set the elevations, but it doesn't say how this is done.  I understand the exporting and importing process, but not how Paint is used to set elevations.

Can anyone tell me how this is done, or point me to some documentation?

Thanks.

[pokie]

When in a paint program  ( in Gray Scale )
Pure Black = 0, 0, 0   ( R "RED" = 0, G "GREEN" = 0, B "BLUE" = 0 )
Pure White = 255, 255, 255

Pure Black will give you the min alt which would be 0 feet Alt ( Water )
Pure White will give you the max alt ( in feet ) of what you set

All the other colors between Black and White will give you the Altitudes in between the min. and max.

So if you set max alt at 25,500 feet then
Pure Black will give you 0 ft
Pure White will give you 25,500 ft
So a Colour that has a RGB of 200,200,200 would give you a height of 20000 ft


A neat little program by AKWabbit has been very useful.
http://www.accesswave.ca/~tscott/AH-stuff/AH-Editor&Stuff/AKBmp2map/akbmp2map.exe

This is a help file that I had put together.
http://www.accesswave.ca/~tscott/AH-stuff/AH-Editor&Stuff/AKBmp2map/AKBmp2Map-Help2.zip


P.S  Have you try using the Setup Filter ( in the TE ) using either the Sin, Saw or Square Waves or combinations of them.

Sin Waves will give you rolling hills.

Pokie

[Tatzel]

Pokie, thanks for the information.  Seems pretty simple now that you've explained it.

Just for practice, I used the Export function in the TE to create the grayscale bmp, then edited it with Paint.  Then I reopened the TE, imported the altered grayscale bmp, and my changes were there.

I'm not quite sure where the bmp2bmp program fits into all of this.  I understand that it generates elv and typ files, but doesn't that automatically happen when you import the file with the TE?

I have used the Setup Filter to create hills, but I wanted the mountain I was working on to conform to the shoreline of an island I made, so it needed to be a specific shape.

Thanks again for the great info.

[BenDover]

hmm, has the BMP2MAP maker been incorpurated into the TE with some slight changes, or is this HTCs work?

[Tatzel]

Well, with the info from Pokie, and some fooling around with Paint Shop (the poorman's Photoshop), I've been making some decent and natural looking mountains this way:

First, create a basic shape of the mountain in the TE and raise it 100 feet.  This is just to make the shape lighter in color than the surrounding terrain, so it can be seen  in Paint Shop.

Then open the BMP in Paintshop and convert it to grayscale.  Next use the Freehand Selection tool (check the "Anti-Alias" box) and trace a selection around the mountain shape.  Then under the Selections menu, contract the selection 1 or 2 pixels, and flood fill it it with a color slightly lighter than the surrounding pixels.  (Contracting the selection keeps the shape of the selection, while making it smaller by the number of pixels you specify.)

Then, contract the selection again, flood fill again, and so on until you get to the peak.  The effect is a smooth transition from darker to lighter colors, from base to peak.  You can add irregularities, for a more natural look, just by making some freehand alterations to the selection, rather than just contracting it all the way up.

Well, it's at least marginally better than the way I was doing it.