Heightfield creation with terragen

(nUllSkillZ) #1

Just a quick note.

Terragen is a free available terrain generating software:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/

In a little test I used the preview window of the terrain as heightfield input for Easygen.
I printed the screen, saved the screen as bmp.
Then I copied only the preview (128 * 128).
I rescaled to 32 * 32 and saved as bmp.
Then you can import this picture as heightfield in Easygen.

Not sure how many details are lost.
Only a quick test.

Also not sure if this has been described already.

(ChiemseeMan) #2

Yes, Terragen is a nice Freeware, make very nice pictures.

Take a look at the Image Gallery, cool what you can do with this Program. :banana:

(EB) #3

Speaking about terrain & map creation…You can see earth as if from a satellite with “Google’s Earth”.
-It is a good tool for map layouts. Not to mention that you can spend hours just wandering the globe. :wink:

(Loffy) #4

If I understand it right, this tool Terragen exports nice looking images that are seamless-ly connceted, and you can use them in your skybox? Must try sometime.
Would it be possible to import images, such as these: http://www.tinyvices.com/storms.html , into Terragen, and then force Terragen to make them seamless (so I can use them in a skybox)?
I have a question for Gerbil, when he pauses from making those big and cool LOTR maps, and wanders into this thread: Did you use this too Terragen when you did the backgrounds for your LOTR maps? They look just great.

Google Earth is amazing. Locations are stored in so called .kmz-file format.

  1. Install and have Google Earth running
  2. Open this file http://a.domaindlx.com/loffy/savar_sweden_location.kmz
  3. If you look closely, the house on the left, into the window, over my shoulder, you can see me mapping on my latest project.

//L.

(leifhv) #5

Yeah, Terragen is a great tool for creating Skyboxes…I used it for the skybox in my map ‘Decoder’ (screenshots: http://www.clan-nightwatch.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=563 Scroll down for some brighter pictures.)

I found a script for Terragen that automates the process…you just start it and it saves out 6 bmp files; one for each direction. I don’t have it here at work but you can probably find it if you google for ‘terragen skybox script’ or something like that.

I doubt that you can process existing pictures with Terragen; cool storm pictures though!

Life

(DAbell) #6

Loffy

With Terragen you basically create a landscape complete with sky and you can take 6 seperate snapshots that the quake engine can stitch together to form a nice skybox. You wouldn’t be able to import images like that into Terragen, but you could try and recreate the effect because you can alter the clouds, water and landscape. I think it would be very difficult to produce a sky that looked like that but it might be worth a play.

There was a tutorial i found that was step by step on how to do it but its gone now links dead.

(seems i was beaten to this thread slightly)

<DJ>

edit ( here is page with that script as mentioned above http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_a_2D_skybox_with_Terragen it is aimed at source engine editing so ignore last part but rest is all stil valid.)

edit edit ( also the size of 1024 x 1024 maybe a bit large I allways go with 512 x 512 )

edit edit idiot ( this is a link to a thread where Mr Lego has poted a test map with terragen skybox it may help you figure out how it all works and where everything should go, right i promise no more edits now http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&t=7714&highlight=skybox )

(Shaderman) #7

There was a tutorial i found that was step by step on how to do it but its gone now links dead.

http://fps.brainerd.net/terragen.htm

This one seems to be good but I think there’s something wrong with the naming of the pictures. Something like left and right picture are swapped. Don’t remember wich ones were wrong :slight_smile:

Btw there’s a new version out since 2/Sep/05:

The most important new feature in Terragen v0.9.41 is the 3D Preview, which allows you to move around the terrain in realtime, making it much easier to find interesting views. The 3D Preview is very configurable and can run well even on older machines without 3D cards. The 3D Preview was previously only available in Terragen for Macintosh.

Using this 3D view, I always bump over the ground but it looks nice and useful :stuck_out_tongue:

(nUllSkillZ) #8

I’ve found some plugins here:
http://www.terrasource.net/

One lets you save the terrain as bmp greyscale image directly.