FTerrains - Reconstruct heightfield?

[Sigurd]

I love Fractal Terrains and I am using it far beyond its designer scope.

Don't think this is a slam on a world building software when from the world you're carving off 300mile square pieces.

Basically the problem is this. To work well on home computers, FT has a fast method of generating landmass consistent with its usual viewing point of seeing continents from orbit.

When you zoom in on a place you get a reasonable image on your screen but it is not a bump map. The light is directional (so lighter is not higher) and there are a number of squiggles that come together to make the image.

This is what the uncoloured physical image looks like at roughly 300 mile square:




I thought I could smudge the image into something usable and I achieved this:



(I actually think thats pretty amazing for a 300 mile square chosen arbitrarily from a whole generated world.)

The problem is I cant make this work as a heightfield. This is what the smudged version looks like (with a little tan coloring). You can see the squiggle lines more clearly.



What I'd really love is some sort of mechanical process to convert the smudged map into something more like a heightfield.

Any guesses? Advice?


Sigurd