Program overview

 

GENERAL
This tool is created for leveldesigners who wants to make an outdoor (or incave :) areas with soft relief.

REQUIREMENTS
You'll need any graphic program (I like Adobe Photoshop).

HOW IT WORKS
Source - any size .bmp file (up to 64x64 recomended). You may use
as greyscale image as colour (program will convert it).

After that program will translate every pixel colour value to height coordinate and build appropriate 3D surface.

You may also use the grid with variable resolution over tour heightmap to operate with less pixels number. Beware of large terrain creating!
64X64 source gives you 7938 surface polygons in result!

There are 3 STYLES of generating polyhedrones for .map file.

You're to try each method to find the better result for your level. I've found that X-style terrains looks better :)

Also it's possible to variate {X;Y} size of each quad-shape pair of polyhedrons to make your terrain
wider and vertical scale {H-factor} of your mountains :)

 

ADVANCED FEATURES

You may use colour heightmaps instead of grayscale.

Tere are some abilities in ADVANCED SETUP for colour mode: 'Colour method' and 'Texture by color' selection.

In 'Texture by color' you may select textue for each colour. Program will define dominate colour for each pixel (R, G, or B) and set appropriate texture in map file.

NOTE: If there will be the equal R, G, or B values of pixel found, the default Face texture will be used.

There are two 'Colour methods' of heightmap translation. Here you may define will program be translate your colour heightmap to grayscale or use pixel brightness value. Try and you gain different results...


Another feature in Advanced setup is 'Texture by form'. Here you may define side and default top texture for each polyhedron.

 

At last you may save your work to .map and use in any quake editor.

 

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