Heightmap (greyscale) export - another option

Started by Falcon, August 14, 2009, 08:59:23 AM

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Henry Blewer

These were done by Walli. I have not viewed them in a while. I am 80% sure he covers how to export bitmap/tiff files for landscapes.

http://www.planetside.co.uk/content/view/58/27/
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Oshyan

To export a heightfield, right-click a Heightfield Generate node in the Node Network view and choose Save File As. Give it a name with a TER or EXR extension. TER is the Terragen heightfield format, supported by many heightfield editors, and convertible to TIFF with TerraConv: http://koti.mbnet.fi/pkl/tg/TerraConv.htm
EXR is a high accuracy image format supported by many advanced image editors, e.g. Photoshop.

- Oshyan

Pyronious

Thanks Oshyan.

Just tested this in 2.4.32.1 and the TER export works fine and can be converted to TIFF using the tool you linked to.

However, EXR export appears broken in this release. Using the EXR method creates a solid white image.

Matt

#18
The values in the exported EXR are heights in metres. This is so that there is an unambiguous mapping between elevation and pixel values, without any messy conversion settings. Some values might be negative; others might be greater than 1. However, many EXR image viewers will treat a pixel value of 1 as "white", which is reasonable enough, but that means you won't see most of the information that is in the file, even when it is there. You can make this information visible by adjusting the levels (if editing in 32-bit) or by importing into your image editor with a much lower exposure setting.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Pyronious

Thank you for the clarification. For future reference:

  • In Photoshop, select View Menu -> 32-bit Preview Options...
  • Adjust "Exposure" slider downwards. In my case a value of -10 worked.
Thanks again.

bobbystahr

That was very helpful...I've just created some dispersal maps with that technique...thanks very much Matt and Pyronious
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Wolfos

#21
Sorry for bump, but I just get this solid gray render. No contrast at all.
Every program that can import Terragen maps is Windows only and Terragen only exports to the useless .ter format (which can be converted by, YOU'VE GUESSED IT! A WINDOWS ONLY APPLICATION!).

Why can't Terragen just export like all other programs? It's basically useless now when you want to do anything except for a render in Terragen. For Mac, there's only a single 'alternative', and that's the ancient Bryce (which probably doesn't work in later versions of OS-X anyway).

cyphyr

#22
Right click on the Heightfield load or Heightfield generate and select "save file as", then choose .exr from the save as type dialogue. Exr files can be opened in Photoshop and converted to other formats easily. If the exr image you open up is all white or all black look at images>adjust>exposure (or levels) in photoshop.
Job done :)
Richard

Ah I should have read the previous replies,
You'll need to make sure the Heightfield generate is the last node in your terrain generation stack just before the compute terrain. You'll also need to position it over the area of interest.
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mavor

Ok I got everything working... except I want to clamp the heightfield generator to just generate what's on my planet instead of an infinite heightmap. How do I do this? At every size I tested, I always end up with half-made continents on the edges of my heightmap (because it just keeps generating and generating)...

Any ideas? I want to push what is on my planet to a map.. nothing more nothing less :)

Oshyan

You cannot generate export an entire planet into any format at this time.

- Oshyan

mavor

Then is there any way to somehow clamp the heightmap generation to the size of the planet without getting the half-formed continent edges?

Oshyan

I'm not really clear what you mean. Heightfield generation is planar, I suspect it's not going to work well past a certain (large) size. What are you intending to use the output for? Even if it did work, you're looking at a tremendously large data set for any reasonable level of detail.

- Oshyan

mavor

I will use a 1/100th accuracy (or lower accuracy if required) version of a planet created using the procedural planet generation kit for a 2d tiles-based game i'm setting up. ;) Exact accuracy is not very important to me.

Oshyan

And you need it to cover an entire planet? Quite honestly it sounds like your needs *might* be better served by a dedicated heightfield modeler, particularly one with tiled output, for example World Machine or L3DT. I don't know exactly what the limitations of heightfield export are in TG, but I think you'll have a tough time getting the data that you want, unfortunately.

- Oshyan

mavor

#29
Oshyan, it seems to me that terragen just has the better procedural generation tools.. L3DT and world machine are fine and dandy, but they don't have the believability of well-designed terragen continents/planets... :)

**Edit: Perhaps the ability to control how much height resolution for every given point there is would allow something like this to be more possible...