L3DT HeightMaps

[zu Pferd]

Bonsoir :

I found this in the Kriegspiel Forum site.
There is been a lot of talk lately about height maps. (The Brucepus Method , The Alfiere Method.
In an earlier post of mine :Son of Height Maps, Alfiere and I generated a compressed 30 km height map
It was populated and you may notice that the exercise gave us a further complication.
If you take a look at the picture you will notice that the church tower appears to be a little too high
with respect to the hills behind it...the operating word is compressed.
In other words Alfiere had to make a further adjustment in the actual map height because in the original
the highest mountain looked like K2...that's ok because non one would want to maneuver in that area
intentionally, but you know in Histwar that's impossible to control.

So why build height maps with a specific powerful tool like Scilab when what we are really after is
a simulation of the Corps command and control system generated by Histwar, where very little definition
is generated manually or by the Editor to create an environment suitable to have the simulation running on top
and be disappointed because there is no applicable backslope defense strategy  or a K2 like mountain which
the engine will never tackle realistically when it moves units over it.

Why are heightmaps so important (linguistic license)  and or why not a compromise between the two.
I've said it in another post that I personally would prefer the F4 simulated terrain to play the 'game' on
(we currently have F2 with NATO style units) considering that its useless to switch back and forth between F3 F5 F6
and F2 just to see the units march through the wheat/corn/vineyards ect..when a player is busy making decision
strictly on the F2 map...it may sound arrogant but try to get as high as you can in F3 to draw forward an...Order: any Order
further then what you can see on the screen.

In the stylized world of the F2 F4 map the actual details are meaningless: the canals, fences, bushes, sunken roads : what pops
up in front is the action between the sparring sides...all that minutiae of detail is unnecessary.
A revision of meaning of these within the scope of the 'game' is necessary in my view.
Thanks for viewing
Best Regards
zu Pferd

L3DT is a Windows application for generating terrain maps and textures. It is intended to help game developers and digital artists create vast high-quality 3D worlds. Its freely available HERE from the Bundysoft site.

What it can do:

Generating and editing heightmaps
 Designable heightfields using a high-level 'design map' in which you can specify land altitudes, roughness, lakes, climate, etc.
 A fast and flexible fractal 'inflation' based heightfield generator, including effects such as erosion, terraces and cliffs, volcanos, mountain peaks, etc., all of which are controlled from the design map.
 An integrated 3D heightfield editor that allows you to easily shape and reshape your heightfield using mouse-driven brush tools.
Generating textures, light maps, bump maps, alpha/splat maps, etc.
 A texture generator for high-resolution interpolated ground texture maps, as well as the ability to generate alpha maps for run-time 'texture splatting'.
 A extensible climate modelling engine for controlling the distribution of ground textures, including water-table and salinity modelling. Supports up to 65,000 unique and user-definable land types per map.
 Automatic and manual water-flooding routines, for making sea and lakes at different water levels.
 A fast light mapping module for pre-calculated terrain lighting and shadow casting, including high-resolution light mapping and bump mapping.
3D display
 Real-time 3D rendering and editing of maps in the Sapphire plugin, as well as support for Terragen, VTP Enviro, and other popular renderers.
Calculations and optimisations
 An automated calculation pipeline that allows you to queue-up some or all of your calculations, set the relevant settings, and then walk away while L3DT does its thing. No program baby-sitting is required.
 An automatic disk paging system that supports heightfields up to 128k × 128k pixels in size (16 gigapixels) and textures up to 4M × 4M pixels (16 terapixels). Want to make megatextures? No problem!
 Support for multi-core processing.
 A batch generation engine for making multiple map projects automatically.
File formats
 Support for a broad range of file formats:
 Image formats, including BMP, JPG, PNG, TGA, DDS, PGM, PBM, PCX and RAW.
 Mesh files, including DAE (COLLADA), OBJ, X, 3DS, B3D, and TIN (export only).
 Terrain exchange formats, including TER (Terragen), BT (Virtual Terrain Project), GeoTIFF (import only), and HFZ.
 Game engine terrain files, including TER (Torque 3D), SD7 (Spring) and HTF (GLScene).
 Support for more formats may be added by plugins.
Customisation
 A graphical interface for performing custom calculations by connecting together multiple 'filters'.
 Support for scripting using the Python and ZeoScript languages (via the cdPython and ZeoScript plugins).
 An extensive plugin API that allows developers to directly access L3DT data, perform calculations, load or save files, add new file format options, etc. The source code for many examples are provided.
User support
 A walk-through tutorial is integrated with the program.
 A comprehensive and up-to-date user guide is available on-line.
 Support and advice is available through the community forum.
 A users' wiki is provided, including spaces for user-submitted tutorials, climates, and other material"