How to make a heightmap, by FLESH and DarkAsmodeous

[FLESH]

Hello everyone, Well seeing as me and DA have kept the secret for waaay yoo long, I have decided to post a step by step guide on . . . . . . How To Make A Heightmap.

Here are the following things you will need:

Equipment

GeoControl (It has a free trial for 30 days, if it says your trial has ended and you are sure you still have many more days left: Restart your computer, make sure it is on the right date)

Or the alternative: World Machine (It will take much longer to make a heightmap with this if you are planning to make more than one quad, will explain below)

If you are going to use World Machine, you will also need Photoshop (CS2 to be percise)

Now why choose one over the other you may ask? The reason is that with GeoControl it makes a whole quad in one go. With world machine it makes 4 separate pieces that you must put together in Photoshop.

If you decide World Machine, here is how to use it with photoshop.

Creating Land With WorldMachine:

Generate the type of land you want, then press the green circle button, located below Paramater Operators. Then you will see the generated land in the main window.

Right Mouse click, and you will see a red box called File Output, double click on it. Select the Raw16 option and click on Write Output To Disk. Make 4 of these type of lands. Then go to ProgramFiles>WorldMachine, find the files you saved, and change their extension to .raw instead of .r16.

Then open up Photoshop, and click on File>New, then a couple of options pop up, modify only the following things. For the Width and Height, type in 1024 and select pixles. The colour mode must be greyscale and 16 bit.

Then click on File>Open, go to the World Machine directory, and open up all four of your raw16 heightmap files. When you are opening the .raw files make sure everything is as follows: The Width and Height are 512 pixles, the Count is set to 1, depth is set to 16 and the Byte Order is set to IBM PC.

Now you should have 5 smaller windows open (1 big white one, and 4 of your .raw files). Click on any of the 4 .raw file windows, and CTRL click on the picture and drag it into the white window (the biggest of the 5). Line it up into the corner, do the same with all of the 3 remaining images and put them all into the corners so that they snap perectly. Now you have made one quad.

Now go into File>Save As (Shift+CTRL+S), name your file whatever you want (try using the grid and name it 0_0, the bottom left corner of every height map, 0_1 would be one up, 1_0 would be one to the right, you can do the same with all e.g. 0_1, 1_1, 2_1 etc. It can go up as high as you want, so make sure to make a grid of your map and decide how many quads you will use.) for the format, save it as a raw file. Then another window will come up. Make sure you set the following: Header is 0 and Byte Order is IMB PC. And click ok.

You can skip all of the above if you are using GeoControl
Here is how to make a quad with GeoControl:

Creating Land With GeoControl:

Open up GeoControl. You may notice it is not in English, do not fret. At the very top of the window, you will see 5 options. Click on the 4th one which is Preferences, then then go to the middle option (when you click on Preferences) and select your language to English.

You will imediatly see land, you can click on 3D to see how it looks like in 3D, heck you can even use that land for your quad. However, if you want some differnt land, you will need to use the Brush Tool. In the Manipulations section of the window to the right, (if you don't see it then it is probably set to project, instead set it to Terrain) use Raise land and Lower land to set it to your liking, if you want smoother land use -Slope. If you want the land to raise only to a certain height, select enable limiter, and set the height number to your liking, use raise land (for lower areas) to raise it to that level, and use lower land on higher areas (to lower it to your chosen height).

(IMO GeoControl put Wolrd Machine to shame when it comes to world building)

When you have your land like you want it, click on Terrain (one of the top options), selct Terrain Expot, and export it as a Raw16 bit file. Name it according to your grid (remember 0_0 is ALWAYS the bottom left corner).

Putting Land Into the Construction Set

Now you have a quad . Now you may be asking, how do I get this into the Construction set. Make sure it is named according to the grid, as the CS only accepts those type of file names, nothing else, so sorry you can't name your heightmap wilbur. Put the quad into Program File>Bethesda Softworks> Data> Heightfield. Now, open up the CS. Create a new World Space. World>World Spaces, right click, and click on new. Then press the globe button and click on your World Space, and a window will come up, with an overview. Then click on File>Import, when it is done click on File>Generate LOD> Full (you may want to get a sandwich) .

Wait for it to finish, save it, then exit. Select your World Space in the render window. Select any cell. And have a look around, see if it is to your liking. Then save it too an ESP (click the diskette button).

GUESS WHAT Now you have created your very own land, as simple (well relativly) as that.

Quads Explained:

A Quad is 31 cells by 31 cells (31x31). That is pretty big. Cyrodil, with borders is 12 quads. if you disable the borders it is 16 quads.

Tips:

When at the Photoshop stage of making a quad with World Machine, use tools such as Blur at the edges of each quarter of the quad, so that they fit together pefectly on the map.

350 is just above sea level with geocontrol and is the perfect height, needless to say, Elsweyr and valenwood did not use this.

Well, I hope now that you can make your very own heightmap with relative easiness. Have fun with your project .

Remember:

You may not always be able to import all the quads you made into the CS, which will cause it to crash. For me the limit was 21 quads. If I loaded any more than that my CS would crash. For DarkAsmodeous, if I recall correctly was 17 quads? I do not know why people have this issue, but i am pretty sure it has NOTHING to do with RAM. As i have 1 gig and Dark has 2. It is probably a fault in the CS itself and random for everyone.

Don't let this get you down as there are ways around it. And congradulation to TheImperialDragon for finding them for us. As I do not know what the mechanics are, perhaps he will like to post a little update to the guide saying what to do.

-FLESH

[DarkAsmodeous]

Tip: 350 is just above sea level with geocontrol and is the perfect height, needless to say, Elsweyr and valenwood did not use this.

[FLESH]

Heh? You serious DA? Damn man, *sigh* will edit.

[noremorse]

Nice. Thank you guys for (finally ) sharing this with us!

FLESH: Would you mind breaking the tutorial up into sections to make it easier to find information?

[FLESH]

NorseMorse, please elaborate

EDIT: NVM, let me think up some names.

[DarkAsmodeous]

I think this should be accessible by registered members only. I like our method.

[FLESH]

Ok, I agree, how to do this?

[noremorse]

NorseMorse? :lol:

:no:

Anway, like this:

EDIT: Never mind.

[FLESH]

NoreMorse ( I got it right ) How about restricting access to members only?

[noremorse]

That is something that RW will have to do.