How to; make a map_heights ....

[Red Spot]

.... without having to be a Photoshop expert ...


Hiya all,


Have been messing around for the past few weeks making my own map(s) for RTW but have been unable to master Photoshop (or grow artistic skills) in such way I was able to make a satisfying map_heights (they tended to look unpleasing to the eye in-game)

Now after lots of trial and mostly error I set out to find a method to make a pleasing to the eye map_heights without expert skills, I ended up royaly messing up my system thanks to google and certain unnamed (so called) tools...
BUT .... succes, after I first found EarthSculptor it actually ended up in the bin, nevertheless I now am promoting it ....


EarthSculptor ( www.earthsculptor.com )
is a tool that allows you to ... er .. sculpture .. er .. earth .. er ...
the important thing is that it allows you to import and export height-maps (square grayscale pictures)


Let me just show you by a simple example what I mean and see for yourself how easy and quickly you can build huge maps ...

-get the tool; www.earthsculptor.com

-I suggest you make a general outline of a map_heights in photoshop at it gives you beter "global" control and you need to edit what the sculptor exports anyway, like;



-now you need to do 2 things to get a patch of your map "sculptor-ready"
+you need to edit the sea to be like height 0 (RGB 0 0 0) (you dont need to convert it to greyscale)
+the sculptor converts any size map to a square map and you really want to prevent this as it makes your map ugly when you need to mold it back in shape later, so you want to make a selection of your map wich is square in shape
the editor can start out with a set out of fixed size square empty worlds, for the example I'll go with the one of 2049*2049pixels, now you may be wondering why I jump to telling you this, well because you really want to enlarge your map before you edit it in the sculptor, the sculptor is much more detailed and if used 1 on 1 you wouldnt be able to get high mountains (hard to explain with my poor english, but you'll find out what I mean if you dont enlarge ..;))

What I did for this example is take a patch of my map_heights thats 204*204 pixels, made the actual ground RGB 16 16 16 and the sea RGB 1 1 1, than enlarged the map to 2049*2049pixels setting the "nearest neighbour" option
ending up with just this dark patch of ground (upper right corner);



-I than start the sculptor and start a new map at 2049*2049pixels and just select a small texture setting (you dont need it and has no effect for what we're doing here)
-Than I import the large map I just made as heightmap and use the tools in a "generous fashion" (dont be afraid if your hill ended up like mountain, it looks just a tad bigger in the sculptor than in-game, specially after a bit of a "blend-session" :P)
export when you want to take a look at your map (or just save and look at the [map name].png picture there where you saved)
you can export your map to .tga but it will be 8bit grayscale


-I suggest the first thing you do after opening the grayscale-map in a tool like photoshop is to convert to it RGB-setting than rescale it back to its original size (dont forget the "nearest neigbour" setting)
-Take away all the RGB 0 0 0 bits, in my case thats all ocean so I just make it blue again and patch the new piece of map over where it came from


and just repeat the process for each patch of land you rather mold into shape in the sculptor than by painting pixels ....
(took me 3 weeks to get to this point in mapmaking, I did the above map in like an hour thanks to the sculptor.....)


This actually looks pleasing to the eye in-game and I havent even done map_features/climates/ground_types ...
(I'll post a screeny later today...)


G

[Red Spot]

some in-game screenshots (just plain "low fertillity" all over)



the same zoomed in;


near Rome (on the example in the first post that would be the lower right corner)



(sorry for the double-posting, I just so miss that edit-button ... )


G

[Red Spot]

little update ...

I first of all have been tempering with the "descr_terrain.txt" file in particuler the following;

heights
{
min_sea_height -3122.256
max_land_height 7511.272
}

and roughly doubled the values, perhaps well known but I just figured out these values dictate how big the difference between heights will be on your campaign map (and if I may say so "can" have a major impact on how your map feels and looks!)

anyway it made me want to rethink things over and with it I changed my methods to be mostly easier...

============

-first of all I used a "made me feel good" portion of my previous map to decide what values in the descr_terrain file I liked best so I have the abiliy to check out my map from time to time and have a good representation of how it will really look in the end

-I made a new map_heights (you can just as well import existing maps but you'll need to tweak them after changing them to grayscale map) and made a copy of it into a square shaped map by enlarging the canvas, made the sea black, than I resized the map to use size used by the sculptor, in this case 2049*2049pixels.
picture of before resizing the map;


-using a smaller enlargment-factor I have less molding to do and am able to import/export my entire map in 1 go, though I need an small enlargment in order to be able to achieve certain heights in the sculptor

-I than mold my map bit by bit, constantly having peaks seeing if I like what I made, currently this is what I have after 1/2 a day of molding;



this is how this looks in game;




it will take a nice amount of time to make a big map, but imo its pretty easy utulizing the sculptor as you get a good impression of what your doing in the sculptor while you do it.
anyway hope this is hope use to others like me (people with no artistic skill whatsoever ... :P)


G

[Red Spot]

last update ...

I'd like to give you an impression of what I've been able to whoop up just to give you a bit of an impression what a possible product might look like ..

this is my small map heights (I flipped this map over 3 more times to create a 4 times as big a map)
this is basicly the end result of roughly 3 full days of molding;


an in-game look at the first groundtype-mountains I included;


and a snowy highland Iland;



G

[Makanyane]

I've been trying this as it looks really interesting ( and I have a fantasy map to do ) , I'm finding I'm a bit lost though. Do you have any tips on knowing where you are on map when in the sculptor? It seems to have a sort of Fog of War effect so you only see isolated bit of map. I'm also not sure how you preserve your water (0,0,0) areas I've tried fiddling with the enable water settings / height but can't find setting that makes coastline look like the one I started with!

Thanks, Mak.

[WImPyTjeH]

Looks interesting :)

I've been trying this as it looks really interesting ( and I have a fantasy map to do ) , I'm finding I'm a bit lost though. Do you have any tips on knowing where you are on map when in the sculptor? It seems to have a sort of Fog of War effect so you only see isolated bit of map. I'm also not sure how you preserve your water (0,0,0) areas I've tried fiddling with the enable water settings / height but can't find setting that makes coastline look like the one I started with!

Thanks, Mak.

Yeah, I don't get it either. The fog can be disabled by clicking on the 'fog' button, but as soon as I zoom out a bit, my screen becomes with. + I also can't difer between heights (water and land)

W

[Red Spot]

was checking the vanilla map in EarthSculptor;


the map isnt too detailed, but the .. er .. square-ness comes from it not being scaled properly here ...

Anyway just too let you see that this isnt just for "fantasy-maps", but can be a great tool to check your map for unrealistic slopes etc, and ofcourse right away be able to alter them ..


G