Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps

[cyphyr]

I'm using some grey scale images as height maps but the have a "stepping" quality to them. After all there are only 256 levels of grey scale colour so some "stepping" is to be expected.

Is the a "function" way to "smooth" these steps off?

Cheers
Richard

ps As far as I can tell Terragen will only accept .bmp, .tif, and .jpg images, have I missed out another format that would be better?

[Hetzen]

I've only found heightfield smooth works. You do have to soften quite a bit to get the pixelation out, which does destroy details, but you could export out a .ter and add erosion in another app, and then bring that back in.

Sometimes you get better results with an image map displacement though.

[Kadri]

Did anyone tried it with HDR images ?

Kadri.

[Matt]

16-bit greyscale EXR, 16-bit greyscale TIFF and 16-bit greyscale SGI images should work. They can be read into the Image Map Shader or the Heightfield Load node.

Matt

[Kadri]

Thanks , Matt .

Kadri.

[cyphyr]

Excellent
Richard

[cyphyr]

Hmm, cant seem to save 16bit, .exr's and the 16bit tiffs I'm loading are not working either.
Back to the drawing board
Richard

[Oshyan]

How are you saving the 16 bit TIFFs? 1 channel? 2? With or without compression? What byte order?

- Oshyan