Importing Heightmap from Image

[Hawkei]

Hello,

I have only ever created one map, and wanted to try my hand at a new concept for a map. What I would like to do is use actual surface topography data as my height map. However, I'm having some trouble converting and importing this into the map editor. Which I believe requires RAW file format. With my current image processing software I can change the resolution, and have converted the topography data into an 8 bit TIFF file with 800 x 800 resolution. Which was extracted from a geographical survey of Mare Nectaris, on the Moon.

I was wondering what resolution would be required for a 40 km or 80 km map? How do I go about converting this to RAW?

[biass]

Hey Hawkei

What i do is export the heightmap from your editor, and then place the mountain topography onto that file, have the exported.RAW as the working file and then import your assets onto that, should keep the sizes perfect etc.

If you don't know how to load from editor, i suggest checking through the mapping wiki

[Hawkei]

Okay I might need to read that. Would it be a simple case of exporting the RAW from map editor, opening it to determine it's resolution, resampling my TIFF to match that resolution, then converting TIFF to RAW, and importing that RAW back into the Map Editor?

[biass]

nono, open your RAW you exported and keep that as your actual map, take your TIFF and put the layer onto your RAW file, then save the file as a RAW file and reimport into the editor.

You will need to brush over the wiki for the right settings to export, but you will need to load your RAW into photoshop with one "channel" and set to IBM PC instead of MAC, you'll see when you load it.

[Hawkei]

Was just reviewing the wiki. I will try this and see how I go.

[biass]

A quick note, if the heightmaps dont match at the bottom, colour output in Adjustments > Levels will have what u need

[seero]

Also if your editor keeps crashing when you try to import your heightmap with imported graphics, you might have too big variation between darkest and highest scale of grey. You may not have fifty shades of grey so if that happens try lowering the difference using levels or contrast tools in photoshop