Best Heightmap Generator/Editor for T3D?

#1 Personally i use L3DT, but i pretty much stop the process at the heightmap stage.

Although to be fair i only ever make terrains that roughly form my needs, and then hand adjust from then on. Ive never used the advanced features of any apps as far as that goes.

#2 @Bloodknight -- If you stop at the heightmap, how do you create your opacity maps?

#3 I dont, until very recently ive not used large terrains and ive painted by hand, once i started using T3D and larger terrains i was only working on small areas until our lord konrad presented us with the rule based layer distribution, ive messed around a little with opacity maps but with less success (tho that may just be my inabilities) ive gotten very good and interesting results with Konrads resource.

http://bloodknightstudios.co.uk/displayimage.php?ID=t3d_terrain01

the results you can see here
green grass on a 0-30 degree angle below 200m
yellow grass on a 0-30 degree angle above 200m (also provides a treeline edge for groundcover)
snow on a 0-45 degree angle above 400m
two types of rock one for angles 75-90 and another from 45-75.
the dark stripes for the strata are 5 or 10m bands applied at all angles at a set height

#4 The terrain looks pretty good. Can you link the resource that helps you do it? On a side note, I'm glad to see Astonia is still going. I once had an account there, but at that time, there never seemed to be hardly anyone on during my play hours.

#5 Thanks, Bloodnight. That does look like a cool resource for me to use with the terrain I have in mind.

Would like to hear about anyone's favorite tool(s) for terrain — not necessarily just the ones I mentioned in my original post ...

#6 @Bloodknight: I'd love to see a video of ScatterSky with the sun rising and the sky colors tweaked to fit the terrain theme. Nice work.

@Robert: I'm currently investigating what's best for me as well. I've tried L3DT, and after good words from another user around here about Geo Control 2, I've tried that.

L3DT appears to give me the most control while Geo Control appears to have better terrain generation quality. My big gripe about Geo Control 2 is that I can't find any way to hand modify the results like I would in L3DT.

If anyone has suggestions beyond those two, I'd love to hear them. One thing I'm looking at doing is how to create a larger design map that when chunked out will create smaller terrains that will match up with each other on the edges if I implement a background loading system for "seamless" terrains. I haven't tested the idea with L3DT yet, but given I got the idea from it's use of design maps, that's going to end up being my terrain generator/editor of choice unless someone has a better suggestion.

#7 We do landscape for renders and games as our day to day job and we use the following Geocontrol 2 for terrain generation, including roads and rivers etc,we than go into Grome to texture and correct any areas like building sites etc.
Geocontrol is the best terrain generater by far, and we have tried and purchased all of them over the years
Grome we found only a year ago but WOW try it out for yourself
Its a little hard to learn at first but it is Very powerfull and it allows you to even set up your level as a test using Collada models
So you can place buildings and correct the terrain around the building paint paths etc so when in Torque everything fits
We bought Worldmachine 2 recently due to its tiling ability , but found we still rather prefered Geocontrol 2 done in sections and blend the seams in Grome manually,as Grome is only limited by your system memory as far as size of terrain and supports manual swapping of cells

#8 @steve Link www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/17145

If you have a large detailed terrain it *can* take a long time to generate some things while some parts are fast, i havent looked in any detail about seeing if this is even more optimisable yet.

#9 I think he means this resource. Thanks btw. :) *edit: beat me to it!*

My favorite editor is Grome, though it's a little expensive if you want the pro version (still, definitely worth it, but its hard to get yourself into buying it for the price before you really start to use it).

I use L3DT first to create something that looks real. Then I get the heightmap into Grome to add more features and postwork. I export that heightmap, and generate / paint layers in the engine.

#10 I also use Grome to do most of my heightmapping and texturing, I love their modifiers system, and then import it into T3D.

#11 I simply use my regular old 3D DCC app (in this case 3DS Max) to generate heightmaps that I use in the Torque engines. I haven't seen much of a point to use a specialized application at this point in time (not since they killed Atlas and thus you no longer need those splat textures).

#12 I am currently using L3DT. It's working for my needs, but I would like a bit more detail customization after the fact. I'm going to look into some of the suggestions in this thread.

For example using the design map in L3DT I attempt to create plateaus on the east/west edges and low height in the middle, but it often times results in the plateau area being too rolling and soft, or the low plain in the middle being affected by too much noise.

I admit I've only been playing with it for a short time, but not quite as flexible as I would like.

#13 Thanks for the replies, folks. Grome looks cool — though the pro version is a little on the pricey side.

Another question — I'm guessing that Torque's .ter files are different than Terragen's .ter file. Correct?

#14 @Robert - Yea... totally a coincidence that they have the same extension... its not the same file type.

#15 Though you could export a heightmap from Terragen, convert it in a graphics program to be a png heightmap for Torque. Not sure about the eula mind you, been years since I played about with Terragen.