Terrain creation tools for T:V

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IrritAnt

Veteran X
A lot of people are asking questions about and having difficulty with importing terrains into TVEd.

We used World Machine www.world-machine.com to procedurally generate the terrains in the game. Once we had generated a macro for a particular style of terrain (e.g. wastelands or meadows), we could randomly generate terrains with the same basic properties and tweak it as needed. World Machine was also very useful in automatically generating alpha masks for the layers and decolayers. We could select a height or a slope and it would do the rest.

We also used a program called Leveller www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller to convert the heightfield outputs from World Machine into 16-bit greyscale BMPs for TVEd. Note that you can use 8-bit greyscale BMPs for terrain, but they end up being rough and craggy with a "stepped" effect.

I'd also recommend having a look at Terragen www.planetside.co.uk/terragen for creating basic terrains, but I think the output would againm have to be passed through Leveller to transform it into the correct 16-bit greyscale BMP format.
 
I've tried them but for some reason I dont get smooth enough maps(stepped effect), and the editor crashes if you use the smooth tool on edges, I think if you are patient, hand sculpting can go far, which is what I've turned to.
 
Yeah, don't use the smoothing tool near the edges of terrains. It does strange things, even if it doesn't crash the editor...

Hand-sculpting terrain is fine for small terrains. But it's a lot quicker to generate it somewhere else and then import it. You'll have more natural-looking terrains, too.
 
I've always made my terrains by "hand" in the editor (for T1 and T2 maps). Who cares if it looks natural, it just has to play well. ;) These programs are cool, but I always start out with a terrain idea first and don't have much trouble making it in the editor myself.
 
lowandhigh.JPG

I made these from my height map by tweeking the contrast then imported them and set alpha from them it worked nicely.
I was also dreading the painting and it was looking too "hand done". I think you know what I mean. Hope This helps sure helped me.
HeightTextures.JPG

The GreaTTribalwar MOD will have its way with you.
 
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command.JPG
This also shows the work it would involve my map is 896x896x768 and although I did and was doing it by hand and can get good results this is the way to start a paintjob for sure.
 
To make alpha masks for your terrain you could either do what goose did, or put a 'slope selector' in your world machine terrain system thingie, selecting the right slopes, convert it to 16 bit through leveller and import. Theres also a 'height selector', if you need it.

Just wondering, is anyone else having problems getting 16 bit grayscale heightmaps out of leveller? I'm using the demo version, and it just won't work. bleh.

Irritant: Do you think it will be possible to release (some of) the World Machine macro's you guys made? it will be a huge help for making those themed maps.
 
I think my problem with worldmachine is that its terrain is too random, thus I suppose for the maps I'm making is that the terrain serves a purpose, which must be hand made.
 
Oh that reminds me. That is not daylon or world that is just a heightfeild I had from the T2 days. (I know you didnt say it was. but....) Modifying those little files is much easier than by hand trust me.
 
would it be possible to use a sattelite picture of real terrain converted to a 16-bit greyscale BMP format in photoshop?? with a judicious use of filters, you can get the demarcation between shades to be alot more simplistic... but does the file need some other kind of data???
 
It sounds possible. But if you dont make it Plain Grey and black, it will look really weird.

Heightmaps go from Black (Lowest Level of the terrain) to White (The tallest point)
 
space captain said:
would it be possible to use a sattelite picture of real terrain converted to a 16-bit greyscale BMP format in photoshop?? with a judicious use of filters, you can get the demarcation between shades to be alot more simplistic... but does the file need some other kind of data???
Click to expand...

I don't think there's a way to make a 16-bit greyscale BMP in Photoshop. It'll only output 16-bit greyscale images as TIFFs or PSDs.

I'm looking into releasing the terrain-making macros for World Machine. There's another program I've had pointed out to me called Geoscape3d which you might also want to have a look at.

EDIT: Fixed the URL.
 
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Ant, you've got the url wrong, its .net

Hey, noob question here but how do I import the 16-bit greyscale bmp into TV:ED?

EDIT:nm I figured that out. New question...demonstration version of leveller...whats the max size I can create? Every time I try to import from wb it crashes and tells me its too big.
 
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