I'm using a different terrain editor to generate a height map for a terrain. I was wondering if you could import a height map into Esenthel and use it as terrain?

Also, can you use more than one terrain? Like as tiles for example?


Thanks,

Tobbo

yes, Esenthel supports heightmaps. World Editor -> Heightmap -> Import Heightmap

You can add more tiles by pressing the insert key while having selected a texture. You can change the texture that a tile has by painting over it with the brush tool

Thanks for the quick reply Dandruff.

Let me try and clarify a little bit more. Is it possible to have more than one terrain at a time?

For example, say you have a very large terrain and you divide that terrain up into different height maps and then import them into the World Editor. You then piece the terrain height maps against each other to form a unified terrain.

I know I referenced it to tiles, that was the wrong word to use. I think of it as tiles. Please forgive me.

Thanks again,

Tobbo

I see, you want to import more then one heightmap for your world, that's easy i think. Heightmaps are merely grayscale images, so in theory if you have other heightmaps and you wish to mash them into one, you can open up paint or your favourite image editing program and just cut and paste them together.

Then you can use the brushes in the World Editor to smooth and touch up the edges of the different heightmaps to make them look as one. I'm not entirely sure if the maps need to be of a specific resolution etc 1024x1024, but i guess you can scale them down after if you do.

This picture shows you how you can import multiple heightmaps. Just drag-n-drop a new heightmap onto the Image slot whenever you adjust the positioning.

Neat-o, never knew you could do that

That helps a lot, thanks guys. Is there a way to go back and resize or change the properties on different height maps?

Say I import 2 height maps, I can only edit the properties of the latest one that I import.

Perhaps it would be better to keep track of the positions and re-import the height map again altogether? If that's the case is there a way to remove height maps?

I'm pretty new to Esenthel. I think I'm really going to love it. Do you guys have any recommendations on tutorials or documentation to get me started?

That doesn't works for me.

Every time I try to add a heightmap, the current Heightmap gets split in half, and I have half of the old one and half of the new one.

What am I doing wrong? It seems the area size is fixed, and I can't increase it by adding a new height map.

Sorry for Threadomancy, I'll start a new Thread if that would be better

Thats what I get when I try to import multiple terrain tiles the way it was mentioned above: see attachement.

Seems like the Terrain Area is not enlarged. I also can't find any function anywhere to enlarge the terrain area.
I would like to import 9x9 Tiles of 1024x1024 Height Fields.... how could I do that. Do I really need to compose one big picture of these Heightfields?

Use Size, not Radius.

Doesn't works.... if I pick size, it works for the first Tile, starting from the second nothing happens.

I really don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm using the Editor DX10+, could that be the problem? Should I use the 64bit version?

I'm not on the right computer right now so I can't walk you through it. But there should be an option to enlarge the area. Also make sure that all of your settings on the height map are exactly the same except for the location. I actually ran into this problem a few times as I was experimenting.

Just try and re import everything from scratch. Use size only. Don't swap between size, radius, and target.

Also, I don't know what you are trying to do, but 2000 MaxY is too much for what it is. If you look at your actual height map the different values are nearly the same. (There's not a lot of contrast) If you bring out the values it should work better for you without you having to make it 2000 MaxY to see any height or depth.

Are you using a program to make your height map or are you just painting it?

Since you chose x:16 and z:16 for the size of your terrain, there will be 256 areas (16x16) for each heightmap imported. The bottom left corner of the terrain will be at x:-16 and z:0, since that's what you specified.

Because the size of your terrain is 16x16, you need to offset by 16 every time you import a new heightmap. For instance, since you used x:-16 and z:0 for the first heightmap, the next one will be x:0 and z:0, then x:16 z:0, x:32 z:0, and so forth, until you are ready to move on to the next row. Then the first one of that row would be x:-16 and z:16, then x:0 z:16, x:16 z:16, x:32 z:16, and so forth.

Just need to multiply the size of your terrain by the row/column of where the new heightmap needs to go.

I'll have to try it again tomorrow, but I was under the impression that the height was in meters instead of "tile-size", and as I exported the heightmap with a heigt of 2000 Meters, this made sense to me. Also, when using "tile-size" (which would be 32, twice the tile width), the terrain was awfully flat, which also led me to believe that height was in meters.... please correct me if I'm wrong.

I construct my terrain with world machine, so the "shade" of the heightmap is bound to what I use as max height in there (with the tiles I used here it was 2000, next time I would reduce it somewhat, as this seems a little bit to high in hindsight )

I tried it, didn't work. If I use more than one tile, they somehow get mixed together, but not set next to each other like it should be.

Then I started to use the Gimp to combine the tiles to one single image.... well, now I get this:    

What the...? I mean, are the values for the width set to high? Is it the height? Its certainly not the radius instead of size, I get the same problem with size.

---

Ah, forgot:

The image is 8192x8192
The Area size is default (64)

---

Okay, I did some more testing. I tried the same with a 4096x4096 Heightmap, same result.

I tried lowering the x and y values for size.... now I got an interesting result: the size of the Tile doesn't change (its 5x5 Area size all the time), but the terrain features seem to move around randomly

5x5:    

10x10:    

Position isn't doing anything in this case.....

Am I understanding the thing wrong? Is size something different than the size of the loaded terrain heightmap?
Do I need to update my Esenthel Tools (altough they have been updated a week ago)?