Raw Heightmap

[gamecreator]

I'm having trouble understanding how heightmaps work. I created a hill next to my 6 foot tall character, as shown below. I exported a RAW file (just raw, not r16) which was 131,072 bytes. I imported it into Photoshop with the settings below. And it loaded as shown on the right (I took only the "hill" portion and zoomed it in 1,000% to illustrate).

 

Back in the LE2 days when I did this process it showed an image that had brighter pixels the higher the hill got. Here, I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Am I importing it incorrectly into Photoshop or is this just a different way of representing the heightmap? My goal is to draw heights in Photoshop.

 

[YouGroove]

My goal is to draw heights in Photoshop.

 

Can be a really good method to create very fast map general design, than continue refining in the editor.

Why not using Tga, Gif ? A heightmap is simple image with levels of grey color.

[Josh]

Image file formats are usually 8-bit and don't have the resolution to store terrain in. You end up with a bad "stepped" appearance due to the limited resolution.

 

The format of the data is GL_RED with a data type of GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT...so I don't see anything odd there. Not sure why Photoshop doesn't load it right. Maybe it expects 32-bit data?

[Josh]

The xtension r16 or raw doesn't actually change the format, it just controls the file extension name. I wonder if Photoshop is expecting 32-bit floats?

[gamecreator]

Ok, confirmed. It needs to be imported as 1 channel, 16 Bits and the Byte Order needs to be IBM PC (not Mac). Thanks Josh!

[SavageDogg38]

That was helpful to me as well. Seems to work well. thanks all!