Begining from an image file

[BigTom]

How do I get my image file into TG? what file format, what dpi resolution works best, etc.

Sorry, but the user guide has not been as helpful as I had hoped, I continue to search for answers in the forums but this is proving to be more time consuming than I'd planned for.

I've attached a greatly reduced jpg file of the plan view for my project...

[Oshyan]

Load the image with an Image Map Shader, and then you can either apply displacement there by adjusting the displacement multiplier, or feed it into a Displacement Shader for more control. TG2 can load JPG, TGA, TIFF, PNG, BMP, EXR, and SGI/RGB. The best format is probably TIFF, uncompressed, for highest quality. DPI is irrelevant unless you're printing.

Once loaded in the Image Map Shader you will need to adjust scale (measured in meters). You will also likely want it in "PlanY" projection.

That should give you a start. Here are some other threads talking about the same kind of project:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8688.0
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8234.msg87760#msg87760
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8919.msg95595#msg95595

- Oshyan

[TheBlackHole]

@Oshyan
Uhh, read the title of the section this post is in. Terragen Classic Discussion. Not Terragen 2 Discussion.
@BigTom
Select the middle section (or whatever part matters the most) of it; make sure it's square. Then crop everything else off the image, and resize it so it's still square but a power of two plus one on the sides. 2049 to 4097 should work. Put it in your terrain folder (I simply use Terragen's main folder) as <insert terrain name here>.tga. Make sure it's 24-bit RGB, uncompressed. Resize the default terrain to the same size as your terrain image and import your image. Then play with the height range (Scale Vertical or whatever it is, it's the one with "Stretch", "Squash", and "Invert") until it looks right.

[Oshyan]

Agh, that always catches me out. Sorry about that, irrelevant advice for you then. Although I would say that doing this in TG2 will give you better results. But nevertheless, some advice on the TG Classic approach.

First, what TheBlackHole said is a good start. It's not absolutely necessary that it be totally square and a "Power of Two Plus One", but it makes it easier to work with as these are TG Classic's standard terrain sizes. If you have trouble with the formats, you could try saving your image as a 16 bit TIFF and using TerraConv to convert directly to .TER. Once you have successfully imported your image, you may want to make it look a bit more like real terrain (rather than the very smooth terrain shapes you will likely get after first import). For this you can use Generate Terrain then select "Generate Features on Existing Terrain" and use relatively small "Size of Features". This should rough up your terrain a bit while maintaining the basic shapes. Unfortunately TG Classic has no Erosion functions, which would help add some realism.

With that in mind you may have better luck either working in TG2, or using a dedicated heightfield editor like Wilbur, World Machine, etc. and then saving as TER and importing into TG Classic.

- Oshyan