Converting .raw to sculptie

Hi folks

I'm trying to convert a terrain file I created by hand in to a sculptie and have been trying to get Emma Nowhere's TerrainTool to do this for me. For the most part, it is working, however I have been noticing that it only takes a portion of my .raw to export as a .tga. Am I doing something wrong here? The .raw is 256x256, and is part of a three part map i want to convert in to a sculptie.. so cutting off a bit isn't really preferable. The final export appears to crop off a significant part of the bottom and right hand side.

If you are making this for a planer sculptie you can do it in Photoshop.

Make a new image at the desired sculptie map size, put the grayscale heightmap in the blue channel and then hit "d" and select the gradient tool. In the red channel the gradient should run white to black from top to bottom. In the green channel it should go white to black from left to right. Both should be edge to edge. Guides and judicious use of the shift key to force striaght lines helps get it nice and neat.

Just a quick add-on tip to what Pygora said. To ensure a perfect edge-to-edge straight gradient, a useful trick is to copy from a layer effect instead of using the gradient tool. That way you can avoid any mishaps that might come from working by hand. Here's how:

1. Create a new layer, and fill it with a solid color. Any color will do.

2. In the Layers palette, double-click on the layer's thumbnail to bring up the Blending Options dialog.

3. In the Blending Options dialog, click on the words Gradient Overlay, and in the settings, apply a black-to-white linear gradient with a scale of 100%. Make sure the angle is set to either 0 or 90. When you're done click OK. The layer will now be covered with the gradient, and since it's an overlay, it will position itself relative to the entire layer exactly, so there will be no need to worry about aligning anything by hand or by eye.

4. Now create another layer underneath the one with the gradient, and then merge the two together. This will rasterize the blending effect, which will allow you to copy it.

5. Select the whole layer (ctrl-A), copy it (ctrl-C), turn off its visibility, and paste (ctrl-V) onto the channel of your choice. Rotate accordingly to match the orientatios Pygora explained (white to black, top to bottom for the red channel, and left to right for the green channel).

It sounds a little more complicated than it actually is, all written out like this as five steps, but really, it's a 2-second process.

An alternative is to enable snapping with the gradient tool, which in theory will keep everything aligned properly edge to edge, but there's still a margin for error there. The layer effect method will be more reliable.

Woot! Thanks, both!

Did not try the more precise positioning Chosen mentioned, but i have much more I'll need to do with this method in mind, so I'll do this for all further work.

Cheers!

Glad it works for you.

You can also use a Gradient Fill layer and do a Right click > Rasterize Layer then copy pasta to get machine accuracy.