Exporting a terrain as a bitmap
by Andy Hawkins · in Torque Game Engine · 11/19/2005 (8:46 pm) · 6 replies
Is it possible to export the terrain from the editor as a bitmap in greyscale form so I can use this later as a displacement map?
#2
11/19/2005 (9:49 pm)
Thankyou but that just takes a screen snap. I need the terrain to be output like this... 
#3
Select Window->Terrain Terraform Editor (F7).
Select File->Export Terraform Bitmap.
Notice that this will be predominately green as the green channel is the most significant byte of the RGB values used for terrain height.
11/19/2005 (9:57 pm)
Go into the game and enter the editor by pressing F11.Select Window->Terrain Terraform Editor (F7).
Select File->Export Terraform Bitmap.
Notice that this will be predominately green as the green channel is the most significant byte of the RGB values used for terrain height.
#4
11/20/2005 (3:30 am)
Excellent - I should have seen that before - but thanks for pointing it out - works great! 
#5
1.) Load level.
2.) Export terrain bitmap.
3.) Restart game.
4.) Load the same level we did before.
5.) Import the terrain bitmap and apply it.
The result is that everything is shorter than it originally was. All my mountains are about half their height... none of the objects match up to where they originally would. What would cause this?
(What I'm trying to do is take an old, ugly terrain, put it into Photoshop and clean it up, then import it back in. But strange results caused me to do the experiment above to make sure it wasn't me, and sure enough, importing the raw terrain bitmap itself is giving improper results!)
Any ideas?
12/11/2005 (8:43 pm)
Well here is a weird thing... when I do this, and export the terrain bitmap, and then import it back in, the imported version is different! Here are the steps I am taking:1.) Load level.
2.) Export terrain bitmap.
3.) Restart game.
4.) Load the same level we did before.
5.) Import the terrain bitmap and apply it.
The result is that everything is shorter than it originally was. All my mountains are about half their height... none of the objects match up to where they originally would. What would cause this?
(What I'm trying to do is take an old, ugly terrain, put it into Photoshop and clean it up, then import it back in. But strange results caused me to do the experiment above to make sure it wasn't me, and sure enough, importing the raw terrain bitmap itself is giving improper results!)
Any ideas?
#6
When you are importing the heightmap you need to set the heightrange in the terraform editor.. by default. I think its set to 5m.. this is the value is uses to scale the terrain to match the heightmap..
so the default value will scale it from 0 to 5 meters.. resulting in a pretty flat map, no matter what your heightmap looks like..
of course, I could be totally wrong.. but since no one else has replied.. how will we ever know..
03/07/2006 (9:11 am)
Hopefully you've figured this out, but if not..When you are importing the heightmap you need to set the heightrange in the terraform editor.. by default. I think its set to 5m.. this is the value is uses to scale the terrain to match the heightmap..
so the default value will scale it from 0 to 5 meters.. resulting in a pretty flat map, no matter what your heightmap looks like..
of course, I could be totally wrong.. but since no one else has replied.. how will we ever know..
Torque Owner Skye Gellmann