What is generally the best and/or most useful heightmapping tool?

[Colesy]

Hello folks.

I'm brand new to this community, if we aren't counting some anonymous lurking here and there. I've taken a look at RobA's thread titled "List of Mapping Software" and I've briefly checked out a number of the links associated with the tools. Now, I've never really done any serious mapping of really any kind, so truth be told I didn't really have an idea of what I was looking for. I've toyed around a bit with World Machine but at the moment, I am almost completely inept in that program. That said, I thought I'd search around and maybe try something new, perhaps with a little less of a learning curve.

So here's the deal. I'm trying to make a heightmap based off of one of my (wildly incomplete) maps that I've had sitting on my computer for ages. Take a look at it (and do please try to refrain from pointing out that the mountain ranges look like a stick-figure cat):
map.jpg

First I decided to use the parchment-looking image as a reference in World Machine, but I've been struggling trying to match the terrain to the original image. After I gave up on that, I decided I might try to hand paint the entire heightmap. Here's how far I got until I asked myself if there was any better way of doing this:
heightmap.jpg

All I want is to be able to maintain the base shape and add in some terrain features that won't take up too much space, because I am trying to use this for something that is gonna require a lot of flat ground, though I don't want to compromise on detail. In the end, it needs to be 8-bit and have a large resolution. So for this particular scenario, does anybody have any recommendations for which tool might suit me best here? I'm sure there's a lot of variables that can go into this question but, what does everyone think is the best and/or most useful heightmapping tool in general? If such a thing even exists. Anyway, thanks folks.

By the way, if anybody would like to see the end product (if that times ever comes) then let me know. Perhaps I can share it as my first WIP/Critique thread.

[waldronate]

https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=29412 (number 4 and the csu johnsondale one) might be of some interest.

[waldronate]

Wilbur can get from your base heightmap to the below in not a huge amount of time:
t5.jpg

[Colesy]

Wilbur can get from your base heightmap to the below in not a huge amount of time:
t5.jpg

Oh wow. Thank you very much, I'll be sure to check it out!

[Colesy]

I have a quick question which is probably pretty rudimentary to most Wilbur users. Is it possible to assign a selection to a specific, unchangeable height? My base layer's hex in photoshop is #292929 at minimum. Where might I find how to set that value as my default, just above sea-level height?

[waldronate]

Wilbur uses altitude (height) values. Forcing color values as altitudes probably isn't useful in Wilbur because the RGB color space isn't a monotonically-increasing value for most common colors that users encounter.

Having said that, you can use a grayscale value easily enough as an altitude. For example, using Filter>>Fill>>Set Value with a value of 73 (29 hex) will get you a constant middle-gray color. Use the Texture>>Grayscale Bump Shader feature to see the altitude as relative min/max grayscale values (that is, the lowest altitude is black and the highest value is white). As you raise and lower land, the altitude will dynamically adjust to keep the total surface altitude range adjusted to the 0-255 grayscale value used by most 8-bit height maps.

It's possible to use Wilbur to get a fixed color scale to altitudes, but it requires using the Wilbur shader and adjusting the altitude min/max, sea level, sea abs min, lightness min/max values and checking the Absolute Coloring checkbox. I should probably make a simper shader for that one of these years.

[Colesy]

Wilbur uses altitude (height) values. Forcing color values as altitudes probably isn't useful in Wilbur because the RGB color space isn't a monotonically-increasing value for most common colors that users encounter.

Having said that, you can use a grayscale value easily enough as an altitude. For example, using Filter>>Fill>>Set Value with a value of 73 (29 hex) will get you a constant middle-gray color. Use the Texture>>Grayscale Bump Shader feature to see the altitude as relative min/max grayscale values (that is, the lowest altitude is black and the highest value is white). As you raise and lower land, the altitude will dynamically adjust to keep the total surface altitude range adjusted to the 0-255 grayscale value used by most 8-bit height maps.

It's possible to use Wilbur to get a fixed color scale to altitudes, but it requires using the Wilbur shader and adjusting the altitude min/max, sea level, sea abs min, lightness min/max values and checking the Absolute Coloring checkbox. I should probably make a simper shader for that one of these years.

Perhaps I'm using Wilbur all wrong, but the dynamic relative scale makes this program such a pain to work with. I will be using this heightmap for something that requires very specific height levels and when the program will continue to adjust maximum and minimum heights that are seemingly irrelevant to my inputs, it gets very irritating.

[waldronate]

Use Texture>>Shader Setup, click on the Altitude tab to show the Altitude page. Check the "Absolute Coloring" checkbox, then set your min and max values for land and sea.

[Colesy]

Use Texture>>Shader Setup, click on the Altitude tab to show the Altitude page. Check the "Absolute Coloring" checkbox, then set your min and max values for land and sea.

That doesn't fix anything, I use the bump map shader most of the time anyway. When trying to make a mountain range and I use something like Set Value, Offset (Add), or Fill Mound, regardless of the input it will rescale the rest of the map in order to raise the land by a seemingly unrelated value, if that explanation makes any sense. It's frustrating because no matter the value I put in, I'm left in the dark as to how much the land has been raised or lowered by, no matter what the operation is.

[waldronate]

The purpose of the bump shader is to map the lowest altitude to 0 intensity and the highest altitude to 255 intensity. If you want some minimum value to be black and some maximum value to be white, use Texture>>Shader Setup as above, but set the Land altitude min and max to the values that you want (for example, -1000 and +1000), set the Sea level to -1000000 and abs min to -2000000 (in short, set them to values far lower than will ever happen in your surface). The click the Color List button on the land side, hold down the Shift key, and click Remove to remove all entries. Then click Add and pick black, then Add again and pick white. Click OK and OK again to take effect.
Untitled-1.jpg

If you want to have pure heights without any apparent lighting, use the General page on Lighting Settings and select Display Type as Height Code.

To save this lighting setup, use File>>Save with Lighting Definition as the file type.