Help Needed Accurately converted painted Game Map To Heightmap for terrain.
Hi there. Me and a few other people have been working on developing a game for the past couple of years as a joint friend hobby. We've got a point where we want to create the final game world we're to be adding content to. As it's a sandbox RPG the aim is to have a large open game world ala Elder Scrolls. We have the entire world map planned out and drawn very meticulously and a very in depth and expansive lore tied to the different regions, certain topological landmarks and societies e.t.c. We plan to ideally make a series of games and have decided where we are now to base the first game based on an area of the game world.
This is the map in question. Which is the south west section of the southern continent in the over all world.
Out of the three of us, I am the one tasked with managing and to a large degree creating a lot of the art assets, with concept art falling more to the writer, who designed the map within the process of his lore development over the past few years.
I have become quite proficient with actual terrain generation and have made a number of test maps of varying sizes to great effect. Now though that we want to develop the main map and require an accurate representation of the game world as depicted in the linked image above. I am having great difficulty figuring out an effective way to essentially generate a height map from the image linked above accurately enough to be satisfactory.
I have so far tried generating a normal map with a normalmap plugin for gimp that also allows you to convert a normal map to a height map. In an earlier test on a smaller Island I actually managed to create the height information to a satisfactory degree via the GIMP plug in. This Image is the original outcome from GIMP, which I then used as a base for displacing a SUBd'd plane in Blender and baked a cleaner height map from which I then transfered to Terrasculpt. The end result being this. This map seemed pleasing so I went ahead with the same workflow on the larger map area.
The problem now is that no matter what I try I can't seem to get the same result. I can't quite get my head round what I'm not doing right, or how, then, I got the first map to come out so nicely. My current attempts are very inacurate as the direction information from the initial normal map is translating in to height information, I am getting huge gullies and large peaks instead of say a single mountain ridge, as well as other strange issues with how the plug in is generating the heightmap. you can see here the strange criss crossing effect and the uneven grayscale distribution across the image. I have masked out the sea area with a flat grey, but the unevenness creates a large absolute height difference between one side of the map and the other when it is used to generate a 3D terrain map in Terrasculpt.
I would like some advice on how to best approach my intention, and ideally have people with a bit more knowhow about this walk with me a little as I try to do this. Again, any advice on any part of this will be highly appreciated, it's becoming quite encumbering!
This is the map in question. Which is the south west section of the southern continent in the over all world.
Out of the three of us, I am the one tasked with managing and to a large degree creating a lot of the art assets, with concept art falling more to the writer, who designed the map within the process of his lore development over the past few years.
I have become quite proficient with actual terrain generation and have made a number of test maps of varying sizes to great effect. Now though that we want to develop the main map and require an accurate representation of the game world as depicted in the linked image above. I am having great difficulty figuring out an effective way to essentially generate a height map from the image linked above accurately enough to be satisfactory.
I have so far tried generating a normal map with a normalmap plugin for gimp that also allows you to convert a normal map to a height map. In an earlier test on a smaller Island I actually managed to create the height information to a satisfactory degree via the GIMP plug in. This Image is the original outcome from GIMP, which I then used as a base for displacing a SUBd'd plane in Blender and baked a cleaner height map from which I then transfered to Terrasculpt. The end result being this. This map seemed pleasing so I went ahead with the same workflow on the larger map area.
The problem now is that no matter what I try I can't seem to get the same result. I can't quite get my head round what I'm not doing right, or how, then, I got the first map to come out so nicely. My current attempts are very inacurate as the direction information from the initial normal map is translating in to height information, I am getting huge gullies and large peaks instead of say a single mountain ridge, as well as other strange issues with how the plug in is generating the heightmap. you can see here the strange criss crossing effect and the uneven grayscale distribution across the image. I have masked out the sea area with a flat grey, but the unevenness creates a large absolute height difference between one side of the map and the other when it is used to generate a 3D terrain map in Terrasculpt.
I would like some advice on how to best approach my intention, and ideally have people with a bit more knowhow about this walk with me a little as I try to do this. Again, any advice on any part of this will be highly appreciated, it's becoming quite encumbering!
Replies
When you have a coder at hands, you could try to scanline the image, starting at the water level (height 0) and scan the image in light direction (rotate the image previously so that the light shines along the x-axis). The value of a pixel indicats the slope (hi-value =>increasing slope=>height+X, low-value=>decresing slope=>height-X), this could result an heighmap you could work with.
We do have a coder, and a pretty tallented one at that! The idea for scanlining the image is actually pretty damn interesting. I'll have to run the idea by him and see what he can cook up.
Thanks again!