Hailthorn 1 Posted February 23, 2015 Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere a quick search revealed nothing of use. What resolution should I aim for for terrain height-maps, from other thread I have gathered that the cell size for Altis is 7.5m and for Stratis it is 4m does this mean my height-map should have pixels corresponding to this, i.e 7.5m per pixel for Altis and 4m per pixel for Stratis or should I aim for a higher resolution height-map: 1m per pixel. Furthermore the highest resolution images I could find online were between 10m - 30m per pixel, depending on Global location, is there some secret resource I'm missing out on or do I need software to generate the small changes in terrain height. My plan is to make a small Mediterranean island (mainly so I can reuse BIs lovely Greek buildings) so if a developer could point me to where BI sourced their elevation data that would be extremely helpful. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jakerod 254 Posted February 24, 2015 It depends on how big of an area you are making for one. You are limited to heightmap sizes of 256?, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, and 8192 (buggy). This means that you take that size and multiply it by your cell size. For example, if you want a 20480m x 20480m terrain you can do a 2048 x 2048 at 10m, a 1024 x 1024 at 20m, or a 4096 x 4096 at 5m. That isn't all your options but they are the more realistic ones. Ideally you will also want your imagery and mask to be at 1m/px so in this case a 20480px x 20480px image. As for sources you have two options really; 1.) Make one yourself 2.) Download one There are a bunch of tools that can help you make your own terrains. L3DT and Leveller are the two that I use the most. There are many sources for downloading elevation data as well. The USGS in the United States has good coverage of the US with some areas being at 3m/px or better I think. Outside of the US it gets a bit trickier. The two more common types in my experience are SRTM and ASTER. Both of those are fairly low resolution though. You can always resample them down but you won't get perfect data like that. For example, with SRTM I have had many instances of rivers being on the sides of hills. There are some islands off the coast of California in the US that could probably pass for Greece in terms of erosion and land features. You could probably find hi-res elevation data for them. Other than that try doing google searches for SRTM or ASTER data. Here are two links too: ASTER Various elevation data types Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Hailthorn 1 Posted February 24, 2015 Thankyou very much for the reply. Just to confirm what I think you said: heightmaps must conform with cell size, 1px for one cell (irrespective of the size of the cell) however satellite imagery and masks can have multiple pixels per cell. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jakerod 254 Posted March 1, 2015 Thankyou very much for the reply. Just to confirm what I think you said: heightmaps must conform with cell size, 1px for one cell (irrespective of the size of the cell) however satellite imagery and masks can have multiple pixels per cell. Yep. A 1024px x 1024px heightmap can really be any size depending on what you set the cell size as. Imagery and mask are then overlaid on the heightmap at whatever resolution you have set for those. Ex. a 10240px x 10240px sat/mask would go onto a 1024px x 1024px x 10m cell at a resolution of 1m/px. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
