WorldCreator (formerly GeoControl) and Photoshop

[wdmartin]

So I've seen some very nice maps on here that were done using GeoControl -- notably Pasis' work, such as the Roadside Ambush set. So I bought myself a copy of WorldCreator (it just came out on steam, and is 20% off through the 27th!).

I've been playing around with it, and the basics seem fairly straightforward. There's tons more to learn about it, I'm sure, but it lets you make good-looking terrain fast.

But I'm having trouble with the next part: getting it into Photoshop. All I really need is some way to make Photoshop use WorldCreator's data as a height map or similar, but so far nothing has worked. I can export the data from WorldCreator as a TIF, but it invariably comes out super-blurred -- all the detail is lost. I can export as a normal map, and the detail is preserved, but I don't think CS6 supports normal maps for 2D objects (and I haven't got the Extended version with 3D capabilities). I tried exporting as a .raw image, and Photoshop was able to open it, but it didn't look anything like the terrain from WorldCreator.

I'm flailing, here. It feels like there's some kind of step I'm missing. Do I need to import the WorldCreator data into some kind of 3D program in order to generate something that Photoshop can use? Or am I just doing it wrong?

Totally confuzzled.

[eViLe_eAgLe]

If you drain all color for normal maps, it presents you with an "Emboss" map that you can put textures on.
Atleast, that's the way I did it for this map.

[wdmartin]

Thanks! I gave that a whirl, but it felt like it was losing a lot of detail.

I created account on the WorldCreator forums and asked them. They gave a couple of different ways to get WorldCreator data into Photoshop. Their second method, the image export, worked best for me -- it seems the terrain export is primarily designed to export pure height data, without shading. That might be good if you're applying lighting to your terrain via a filter or similar; my experiments with pasting that into an Alpha Channel and using Photoshops Render Lighting filter were okay, but had a nasty tendency to look like terraces at the more detailed levels.

The Image Export option on the WorldCreator menu works much better for me. Here's a quick sample I threw together in the course of testing:

worldcreator-export-test.jpg

In WorldCreator, I made the terrain as usual, then View > Colouring > Black and White. Then I exported it as a PNG using File > Image Export / Colour > PNG. That got me the image you see above (only in PNG format) which preserves the relief shading from WorldCreator (which is what I was really after).

Setting the above as a layer over some terrain layers with multiply and some brightness adjustment got me this:

worldcreator-test.jpg

Fairly basic terrain, and the river is way, way too dark. In future I'll try not to keep the elevation a little higher so the finished values aren't so close to pure black in the deep parts.

Still, not bad! I'm optimistic about using this for a variety of things.

[johnvanvliet]

Turning a DEM into a "texture" is not all that hard or easy
but is iffy
hard to explain but it is a artistic process
do or do you not want "shading" ( "shaded relief map" )
For me that answer is NO , but you might want it
yes a desaturated "Normal" is like a "emboss" filter

i do not use the CLOSED SOURCE Photoshop
i use Gimp
for a basic coloring a gradient map will do some of the time
or the built in tool " sample colorize"
will make a gradient to colorize a image

google "colorize a black and white image "
and use a few of the tens of thousands of guides and tutorials
or fallow the redit subredit on this subject

I can export the data from WorldCreator as a TIF, but it invariably comes out super-blurred

i am betting that is a 16 bit signed image
and is not "blured" but has 65538 tones of gray ( VS the 256 tones of gray in a 8 bit uchar image )

that is just hard to view on a 12 bit lcd screen