Raw Terrain Editing Tools

I've been experimenting with the various terrain editing tools out there. Of course, the classic method of using in-world tools and using Photoshop gaussian blur for smoothing is tried and true, but there are a number of other interesting tools out there that look very promising.

I thought it might be useful to create a thread where people could post which tools they've found and/or tried.

Keep in mind, before you expect to have product results with any editing of terrain files, you really need to fully understand the KB article:
http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=288
(by the way, the description of how parcels are encoded does *not* work)

Second Life Specific - these will directly open an unmodified SL RAW terrain file:

Bailiwick
http://www.spinmass.com/bailiwick/
Windows only, nice for visualizing the coastlines, good for getting the terrain layer in and out of the raw file for editing with something other than Photoshop CS, for example Paintshop Pro, Photoshop Elements

Backhoe
http://www.notabene-sl.com/Backhoe/
Mac only, open source, beautiful 3D visualizing, editing tools are ok but somewhat coarse grained, I tend to use this side by side with Photoshop to see what changes I make in 2d effect the 3d view.

Second Life Compatible - these will work with an SL RAW file, although some finessing of the file may be required - for example, the SL raw file contains 13 256x256 8-but channels, only the first of which is used by the terrain editor. As a consequence, if the editor wasn't designed with SL files in mind, it sees the extra data and chokes. The workaround is to open the SL raw file in PS, copy the heightmap channel into a new 256x256 8-bit greyscale image and save that as a new raw file.

Height Map Editor
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hme
Windows and Linux, although open source, so maybe a Mac version could be compiled

Freeworld3d
http://www.freeworld3d.org/
Windows only, I had high hopes for this one, but couldn't get it to run under Vista. Should work with SL files and I've seen a couple of positive comments about it on various game developer forums.

L3DT
http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/
Windows and Linux, looks very powerful, didn't spend too much time with it

Terragen
http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/
Windows and Mac, this one wants a 257x257 heightmap file, so I had to extract the heightmap channel in PS, resize the canvas to 257x257, and resave as a new RAW file to get it to open. Looks like it has potential.

Leveller
http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller/index.htm
Windows only, looks interesting, haven't really tried it yet

Hi, I'm using Leveller in combination with Bailiwick. gives very quick and nice results.
You can import the terrain file from Leveller into Bailiwick and do the .raw file with it. Sometimes you still need to adjust some infos like parcels, etc. in Photoshop.

Hi, I recently began editing terrain files and trying some of the different utilities you've mentioned.

The only thing I've had success with is Freeworld3d. Everything else I've used has to go through photoshop on it's way to raw, and for some reason all my raw file generation in photoshop is giving me horrible results. I have bryce, but it's got to be run through photoshop to save as raw. I've also created raw files in photoshop from scratch but the results are no better. If I upload a raw file that has never been saved in my photoshop it works fine, so I know it's some setting in photoshop (that is making me insane...genuinely insane) but I can't figure out which. Bryce has some nice editing features I would love to give a try in SL, but if I can't get the issue with photoshop worked out soon I'm just going to do all six sims in Freeworld3d and live with whatever I end up with.

I'm using photoshop cs3, which I upgraded because cs2 was doing the same thing.

But, to Freeworld. Pros: It's inexpensive, fairly intuitive to use, renders in real time as you work. It's been better than anything else I've got and it's the cheapest utility I've used by far. Cons: Understanding scale is difficult as your only option is to set max height, pull up a section and use that as your visual guide (as far as I can tell). Also, there is a bug in the "Second Life Raw" export feature. When you try to save you will get an error message, just save again and it will work fine (developer promises a patch in the next release). The developer seems good about answering questions on his forum, too. Also, moving the camera around in the program is a bit slow even using the shift button to increase speed. My system can run photoshop, bryce, freeworld, illustrator and sl, in addition to three or four browsers being opened, all at the same time, so I'm pretty sure the slowness in freeworld isn't my system.

Bryce - I'm sure I'll love it if I can ever get it to work with my photoshop. Very powerful editing capabilities. At this point, however, it's been a waste of money (in spite of the very pleasant and responsive support folks, who are also in SL). Again, I think it's a photoshop setting issue, so I must reserve judgement on Bryce until I get the kinks worked out.

If anyone out there has some insight that isn't already on the wiki or in the knowledge base, I'd be forever in their debt. Assume I've spent 4 ten hour days trying to fix this problem and exhausting every resource I could find, and that I have well above average graphics and photoshop abilities. Honestly, I wouldn't ask for help unless I'd exhausted all resources I could find on my own first.

Ok, I thought it only fair to update my previous post regarding RAW file editing and software for same.

Since I last posted I've had one week of hell trying to get the raw files to work. I've run the gamut from upgrading my photoshop to completely new installations of same. I've purchased Bryce and Freeworld3d and I've attempted to contact support people for both. I've posted to this forum, to the Adobe forums, to the Freeworld3d forum and to various obscure forums.

My problem? Aside from freeworld3d being VERY glitchy about when it will or will not export an SL formated raw file, the primary problem was that any time I saved a raw file with photoshop the file became unusable. The layer and all channels became pixelated messes that uploaded to SL as even bigger messes. I couldn't really use bryce for this because without photoshop to finish the file I couldn't get a working raw file from bryce. I suggested that bryce was a waste of my money because of this. Nevertheless, I endeavored to persevere.

Today I decided to completely disregard SL's instructions for proper formatting beyond 13 channels. I accepted the default settings and instead of picking non-interleaved I allowed it to default to interleaved, and saved in 8bit rather than the alleged requisite of 16bit, and saved in photoshop.

It works perfectly. I am now making and editing terrains with bryce in a way that can only be described as heavenly, particularly after the last week.

While bryce does not export directly to raw file, the work arounds are very easy and, in all my above mentioned trials, the folks at Bryce have been the ONLY people who responded not only in a timely and professional way, but seemed interested in helping me with the problem. Nobody else even responded.

My money's on Daz & Bryce, and will remain there.

I use Photoshop to hand-paint my terrain heightmaps, and then, bacause my copy of Photoshop is too old to directly access .raw files, I use Backhoe to add the heightmap into a .raw file and preview the results. I also use Backhoe to set the terrain height multiplier value and water level value.

I generally don't use the Backhoe terrain editing tools, because they do too much, too fast.

I've heard good things about backhoe as an inexpensive and workable option. Unfortunately it is only available for Mac and therefore doesn't help those of us on other platforms.

I do the multipliers and water levels in photoshop in the channels.

Until this morning I was starting to think I wasn't going to be able to use my photoshop for the sims I need to terraform. Now that I realize that, for whatever reason, my sims will NOT accept 16bit, non-interleaved raw files, I hope to actually make some progress. 8bit interleaved is what I needed all along, apparently. Does anyone else have these problems?

Interesting that I just spent a week chasing my tail because I read all Linden's documentation TOO well. Had I just clicked 'save' all along I never would have had these problems.

Freeworld3d
http://www.freeworld3d.org/
Windows only, I had high hopes for this one, but couldn't get it to run under Vista. Should work with SL files and I've seen a couple of positive comments about it on various game developer forums.

Run the app as administrator, works fine.