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General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: cyphyr on February 21, 2010, 05:22:50 PM

Title: Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps
Post by: cyphyr on February 21, 2010, 05:22:50 PM
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?
Title: Re: Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps
Post by: Hetzen on February 21, 2010, 05:55:18 PM
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.
Title: Re: Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps
Post by: Kadri on February 21, 2010, 06:09:15 PM
Did anyone tried it with HDR images ?

Kadri.
Title: Re: Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps
Post by: Matt on February 21, 2010, 06:24:59 PM
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
Title: Re: Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps
Post by: Kadri on February 21, 2010, 06:27:13 PM
Thanks , Matt .

Kadri.
Title: Re: Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps
Post by: cyphyr on February 21, 2010, 06:33:22 PM
Excellent :)
Richard
Title: Re: Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps
Post by: cyphyr on February 21, 2010, 06:45:24 PM
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
Title: Re: Stepping in grey scale bitmaps used as height maps
Post by: Oshyan on February 25, 2010, 12:04:03 AM
How are you saving the 16 bit TIFFs? 1 channel? 2? With or without compression? What byte order?

- Oshyan