Building terrains from heightmaps and colormaps?

I couldn't find a section in "Content Creation" that matches what I want to ask:

I made some terrains in a separate editor and have been trying to find a game to bring them into for a while. I brought them into a couple fps games (with a lot of steps involved)--Delta Force II and Delta Force Land Warrior, but they're not exactly the types of terrains that are appropriate for an FPS--they're more adventure/fantasy-oriented terrains. http://www.infraxes.com/kizzume/artwork.html

I don't have the slightest clue as to how terrain building works yet in SL, but I'd like to give it a try.

My questions are:

1. Is there a way of converting a greyscale picture into a heightmap?

2. Is there a way of converting a large picture to be the texture of a terrain or at least the color of a terrain--basically, is there such a thing as a colormap in SL that can import a large picture as the color of a terrain?

Yes this is actually possible, but its only applicable at the Region\Estate control level.

So if you don't own the sim, you can't use it.

So, I could create it, but nobody could use it?

??

EDIT: Let me rephrase that--I could create it, but nobody could see it?

Correct.

You can terraform an entire estate/region in this manner, but if you don't own the entire region you don't have access to the tools it would take to do it.

Like me, I own over half of Satellite on the mainland, but since I don't own 100% of it I don't have access to the region\estate management tools. And even if I owned all the ownable land in Satellite, the Lindens have a strip of land through it reserved for a road thats never going to be put in....so I'd probably not even have access to those tools even if I owned all the ownable land.

Wait--I'm still confused:

Could I create land with this type of terrain that people could at least visit and see, but maybe not put any content on, or would they not be able to go to the area at all?

If you own land (not your sim, but a parcel) you can terraform it to +- 4 M from the default height.

If you own a sim island you might be able to transfer your file to a .raw file and upload that to your sim, but that can cost $1250 US to buy and something liek $ 190 US in monthly tier.

The private estates are the only land in SL that you can upload a .raw file, which as far as I know one of the layers is a greyscale height map.

So what he's trying to say is you can make the height map, but you can only apply it to a private estate you own, or you could give it to an estate owner for them to use, but they are not usable on mainland SIMS.

First, you pay LL $1250 USD and $195 USD a month for a sim.

Once you own your own sim, you can make a greyscale heightmap that will terraform your land to that specification.

Anyone you allow to see your sim can see your sim and your land in it. You can set your land public or private as you wish and change the terrain any time you wish. You may build anything you wish on your land or even divide your land into seperate parcels and allow other people to "rent" that land from you and build and live on it. Its your sim, you can do with it as you wish as long as you pay the fees and follow the ToS.

To answer question 2:

I don't think its possible - you get 4 textures for the terrain, and they are linked to altitudes, they merge from one to the next gradually over ranges of altitudes. This might be good enough for some of what you want to do. The textures themselves are repeated on the land at a pretty small scale (maybe once every 12 meters?), I'm not familiar with the details but I don't think you can choose the repeat.

Well, there went that thought. I guess I won't create anything here. I guess it's only a flexible engine if you're rich. Real nice, in a sarcastic sort of way..

Thanks for you help, but I now know that I won't be creating anything here. I'll just continue creating things for FPS games that nobody will play.

EDIT: Everything that I thought was so cool about SL just got flushed down the toilet with the quote of "$1250 USD and $195 USD a month for a sim".

That is a bit of a leap if you ask me. SL is only worth it if you can use greyscale heightmaps? wow. That is odd to me.

I have been here two years and only recently bought a sim. In the previous two years I owned anything from no land to a half a sim, and I build some rather cool and very well liked places on that land, no height maps needed.

I am really astounded that height maps are THAT important to you. Especially since all a height map does is save you some time of manually editing the land. You can terraform any parcel you own of any size anywhere by hand. Heightmaps can only be used however if you own a full sim. Its a time saving device and nothing more.

Well unfortunately the terrain you want to use is inextricably linked with a processor on a server in San Francisco, and that costs money. It's really unlucky that you want to use terrain as your canvas... almost anything else, avatars, sculptures, animations, textures even architecture etc. etc. can be played with (using sandboxes say) for very little money outlay.

Ooh, idea: maybe it would be possible to make scripted tools to import the heightmap in, either by building the terrain with prims (and here you would be able to colour it how you want), or using the land editing script functions.

Then with this you can have it build the terrain temporarily in an empty sim... probably easier to build with prims because you don't need to have land editing controls. Then you can show people what you're doing, and maybe someone who is looking to set up some futuristic fantasy sim (and your terrains do look awesome) might decide that they want to build their sim on top of your terrain.

I hope you stay!

I'm not saying I won't stay, but I am saying that the only ideas and experience I have that is worth diddly-squat as far as creating things for a 3d environment are in making unusual terrains based on mandlebrot fractals. I also have some interesting game physics ideas, but since I don't have experience in implementing that sort of thing, those ideas won't do much good.

I have no idea what "prims" are other than someone telling me to get a "prim" beard in order to get a long beard.

I have NO skills in creating 3d objects.

I'll just explore the things that everyone else has created and be happy with it, knowing that, with the skills I have, I can't do much more without creating a sim, or possibly learning what "prims" are.

P.S. Zoe, did you look at the link? If you looked at those pictures, you wouldn't be asking what you asked. I'm not trying to create something standard--if I can't create something truly different in SL, I don't feel like putting in the effort to create something standard--I'll leave that to the people who already have the experience in doing that.

Don't tap out so soon. I felt much the same way when I first started. That I'd never be able to afford to have that kind of thing.

Simple facts are, if you're creative and can make interesting and quality products for the SL economy...island set up fees and tier more or less take care of themselves if you manage everything effectively.

Sure anyone can walk into SL with alot of USD and be at the top of the food chain as far as availible land....but the true gems in SL come from the people that are creating SL and working their way up from the bottom while mastering the creative suite SL offers.

And, whats more, most people that walk into SL with alot of money and no talent don't know what a RAW file is anyways .

Don't give up hope right out of the gate, sure the numbers look big, but...time and experience changes everything.

If you want to see how you can make a terrain map in SL, look here. If you make it, maybe you can either rent or find someone that is willing to to use your skills (and maybe even make some money off of it!)

Actually that page, while doubtless useful to the geek element, is of very little help in creating a terrain map raw file for upload to SL.

There is also bugger all useful information and /or tools on the web either, despite what that page suggests.

However, when you get your first island, just download the raw file of whichever of the 4 basic islands you ordered. Load it into photoshop and bear in mind that you ONLY need to manipulate the 'RED' channel to create a new terrain map. Dark is low - light is high. The rest of the 13 channels? <shakes head> Who knows or cares? Save as RAW, upload, check it out and adjust as required.

It took about half a day experimenting to get it right, the most important stage was determining the precise grey level that matched 'sea level', after that it was pretty much plain sailing.

The result, if you are clever with Photoshop tools (blurring, dodging and burning are your friends), is a nice natural landscape. Though some proper ground textures to replace the supplied ones will help too!

Actually, the other channels hold important information:

1(red) Height Field - Indeed, this is the terrain greyscale you manipulate BUT...

2(green) Height Multiply Factor - The green layer tells SL by what factor to multiply the Red channel, it allows for a much more subtle gradiant with higher multiplier numbers.

3(blue) Water Height of sim in Meters - Sets the height of water in your sim. Sure, you can set this with the estate tools, but it can also be all brought in at once with the RAW.

4 Land Parcels - Allows people pre-planning sims to divide the sim into parcels before importing, which can save lots of time over doing it in SL, if you have an idea what plots you whatto begin with.

5 (alpha 1) For Sale land - Sets up land as 'for sale'.

6 (alpha 2) Public Edit Object - Sets the ability of the public to rez objects on the parcels defined in this layer.

7 (alpha 3) Public Edit Land - Sets terraform ON for all residents.

8 (alpha 4) Safe Land - Sets land to safe or unsafe

9 (alpha 5) Flying Allowed - Allow or disallow flying

10 (alpha 6) Create Landmark - Allow the creation of landmarks

11 (alpha 7) Outside Scripts Allowed - allow people to run scripts

12 (alpha Original Heightfield - Sets the heights used when a person uses 'revert terrain' on that land.

13 (alpha 9) Original Height Multiply Factor - works with channel 12 to establish default heights.

Now its true, most of these channels would only be used by folks pre-planning a sim, but that hardly makes them useless... rather they are useful to the people that need those features.

-Ghoti

now that your picture killed my retina i can tell you that it's not really what i call skill, randomness at best.

I can achieve the same result in world machine in 15 seconds

Mmmm, yes. But most of those functions are simple zero/non-zero switches and also duplicated in Land Tools or Estate Tools. Fairly redundant for one-of islands too.
Didn't even try the multiplier gadgets, the results were quite satisfactory without the added complication.

Something you could load a raw file into and see how your island would look would be nice - I thought Terragen might, but the results bear little resemblance to the actual island. Good job it was free.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Maybe I should have made a video of it instead of just pictures, so you could see that it's not random, and it's CERTAINLY not something you could generate in 15 seconds--maybe you don't agree with what I want to do, but you don't need to put it down quite like you did.

I'm not going to claim "skill"--it's mainly bringing forth ideas, like I said, it's based on mandlebrot fractals with effects (using Sterling and Photoshop), and quite frankly, I've never seen mandlebrot fractals generated in a truly 3d environment until I did what I did--granted, the graphics engine I was using makes the terrains look a bit choppy, so that might have been what you saw.

Again, I'm sorry you feel that way.

I'm just going to continue enjoying SL like I have. I hope you continue to enjoy it the way you've enjoyed it.

Best wishes, blessed be and all that,

--Fmeh Tagore / Kizzume

Fmeh,

Don't let the haters get you down. It looks like an interesting terrain to explore. It might not be practical for plopping down some prefab house though, and that's where many people's brains are focused.

One thing you might try, as far as getting access to a sim to try out your designs... You might search around these boards and in-world for people that rent and sell land. Sometimes they might have a currently vacant sim or a void sim they will let you play with. The only problem with this is that only the sim owner can actually import a RAW file (estate managers cant even do it), so you might only get limited attempts at laying out new ideas (since the landowner in question would have to be the one doing the importing)... but who knows? Maybe you'll find someone with a vacant sim, some time to play, and curiosity about your ideas.

-Ghoti

Yeah, I've had very poor results with trying this... Terragen and Bryce both do not provide suitable results. I'd really love an out-world tool for visualizing the RAWs too. Betcha we don't get one though, since I can only imagine a very small demand for this.

Maybe someday we'll be able to host our own servers, and at that time we'll have more ability to play with this.

-Ghoti

Interesting idea. Thanks.

Hi Fmeh,

I'm an estate manager for a sim, and I've had experience terraforming an entire sim to meet my own requirements. I'm afraid that even if you bought a sim, the types of terrain you want to make are impossible in SL.

First and foremost, the gridpoint spacing for the terrain grid in SL is way too coarse to duplicate the fractal terrains in your link. So it wouldn't come close to your visual goal. A sim is 16 acres of land. It's 256 Meters long and 256 meters wide. The smallest selectable area of land is a 4 Meter by 4 meter square, and the grid points within that square are something like half a meter apart. It's really a pretty coarse grid. (I'm not in-world right now, so I can not verify the exact grid spacing. But that is pretty close.) The position of each grid point is not movable in the x/y plane.

Apply to that grid a vertical (z-axis) component for each gridpoint of +/- 4 meters on the new continent areas, +/- 40 Meters on a fair portion of the mainland, or +/- 100 meters on a private island, as measured from the initial terrain features burned in to that sim by the last download of a RAW file by the sim owner, or at sim creation. That is the 'surface' that you can generate in SL for terrain.

The owner of a private island sim can capture a RAW file, edit the terrain of the whole sim, and can load the new terrain back in for the whole sim at once. But they can't make the grid any finer, and they can ONLY alter an entire sim at a time by using an uploaded file. So it is impossible to apply that generated terrain to only part of a sim.

Using the manual tools on a private island, without using RAW files, I have created mountains 70 meters above sea level, with volcanic craters all the way back down to sea level inside them. I have sculpted fairly realistic lagoons, mountain ridges, and watercourses for rivers and waterfalls. But the tools for doing that remain very crude.

On the mainland, I've also sculpted terrain, using the manual tools. In the areas that are restricted to a mere +/- 4 meters, it can be an excercise in frustration, and a challenge to creatively overcome those limitations. Yet you can still do some amazing things.

SL was designed to be an interactive, real-time 3D environment. To make that possible, without requiring every player to have a maximum bandwidth Internet connection and a mega-huge computer, they had to limit the resolution of terrain and other features to something less grand than your vision.

For similar reasons, terrain texturing is also very basic. You apply four textures to four altitude-restricted bands, and can adjust the limits of those bands somewhat at each corner of the sim. Then the SL client 'paints' that terrain based on altitude, blending the tiled textures at each border. With effort, you can do things like having coral sea-bottoms, white sandy beaches, green hills, and rocky ridges and mountain peaks. By adjusting the corners, one area may have sandy beaches, while another has rocky coastlines. But there is no fine control on a per-parcel basis.

Great post Ceera! I was always curious about what kind of terraforming was possible on private sims vs. the mainland +/- 4m choices, and it's much clearer now.