Best Tools to create Satmap and heightmap?

[StarThornberry 10]

Heyya.

Felt the itch to have another go at creating a map.

I was in the process of creating a small map previously, however at the end of last year after Updating TB it crashed when loading

However now i want to have another go at it, and to start fresh

in my previous one all I used was L3DT for sat map and height map, however the sat map didn't look anywhere near as good as some of the other map's out there

I was thinking of making a fiction map, however I'm not sure what would be the best tool to start using to generate the heightmap and sat map

I've followed most of the tutorials out there (from what I have found), mainly the A2 ones, as most A3 ones I could find have dead links

I was going to simply re-create it all based from L3DT, but I want a more realistic looking satellite map, how do most people get one? is it via using real world Satellite map's and basing off real world terrain only?

I tried using Terragen and Terresculptor, but was just curious what other people have used/use before I invest my time into one

[Yuval 29]

I'm still working on my mask and also tweaking the heightmap according to it. But it seemms pretty logical that you can generate a sat map using the mask and layers.cfg. Would like an answer here too!!

[sama 67]

is it via using real world Satellite map's and basing off real world terrain only?

i think this is correct.. from what i get out of l3dt with fictional ,generated terrains, the sat map is pretty poor resolution.Hopefully a more experienced mapper can answer.

[Guest]

Hey,

well I´m not experienced but I can share my way of doing :D

This is my Satmap: http://puu.sh/j1lbr/c768919e0a.png

1. As I´m also doing a fictional map, I took a real word image form Google Maps as my base terrain (in my case this place: https://www.google.de/maps/@52.2399214,9.9369833,6763m/data=!3m1!1e3 )

2. Then I took over 40 different pictures and put them all together in Photoshop. You should have some basic knowledge of Photoshop, if you dont, there are millions of tutorials on yt. If you dont have PS you can also take something like GIMP, but I prefer PS in anyway.

3. With the repair tool I tried that it all look very realistic, but you can see in my satmap, especially by the forests, that it dont look completely realistic but very close.

4. Then I did the basic .asc/.xyz file in L3DT and if I finish with the obj placing in one place, I add more details to the terrain in L3DT so it match to the objects and the location.

5. In the end you should remove all buildings and shadows from the satmap, so the grass/clutter doesnt look stupid (again with PS)

6. You can do the mask with TB: export shapes to image, add the image to your satmap and thats it (If you interesset I can write you how this work exactly. I didn´t have done any work on my mask so it looks very boring: http://puu.sh/j1lJB/e079cc6e7a.png

7. Roads: if you have really much time, take reallife roads and put them with PS on the map, but as you can see I didnt had this much time, so I took the brush tool and draw them my self, isnt the best way but it works

But note: You need a lot of RAM if your map is bigger than 5120x and PS will have a hard time. And you need a lot of time, really a lot, mine took me more than 10 hours for the currant stage... If I ever make a second map, I would take a full reallife sat map I think xD

ir0n

[sama 67]

Hard to do with an irregular shaped island with variations in terrain height...looks great tho mate

[Richie 330]

For my sat and height i used Terraincognita along with global mapper, my sat fits my terrain perfectly :)

If you guys are serious about terrain making then join the terrain builders skype group, it's an essential resource and full of experienced terrain builders.

The link to join can be found Here

[StarThornberry 10]

That's really helpfull thanks!

I was thinking that that appeared to be the way to go, using real world sat map as a Start, then use Photoshop to change it up, with finally creating the mask based off it with a height map

[nanobot 10]

I use a combination of programs (some of which are professional "paid" versions but have free trials or limited use versions.)

Programs are L3DT, World Machine, Universal Maps Downloader, Google Earth, and Photoshop.

Use L3DT in combination with World Machine to generate your initial heightmap. Worldmachine is great at creating the first heightmap if you want something more procedural. L3DT is great if you want to use the design map to have more control over your landmasses. World Machine is also great at doing things such as erosion. I generally get my basic landmasses in L3DT then export to World Machine. Then use WM to run some erosion passes. The Terragen file format works well between the two but you need to make sure you have your project settings set correctly in Wm and L3DT (world size, scale, coordinates, etc.) Then export back to L3DT to do any manual terrain work. Back to WM to generate masks or textures based on the erosion channels, bake a erosion flow map (and perhaps a deposition map if you want), then back to L3DT.

Universal Maps Downloader (UMD) is a great (paid) program. It allows you to choose coordinates and download image files from Google, Yandex, or bing. And depending on the service you can choose satallite images or terrain (low resolution topo. Which is usefull if you want to do a real terrain but lack the DEM.) The program also saves the coordinates of each image tile it downloads and can stitch them all together for you. MUCH easier then manually screen grabbing areas from google earth and more accurate. If you are creating a non real terrain you can use UMD (or google earth if you must ) to get images of terrain that is typical for your terrain then cut out areas in photoshop, arranging them how you want.

L3DT is great for generating a base texture map. It can generate a map larger then the base terrain (for example a 8192 px map on a terrain of only 1024. The program includes a small number of sample textures but it's true power lays in the ability to make new climates (basically the system used for laying out the textures procedurally) as well as import your own unique textures. Many people don't realize you can actually manually paint textures (and attribute maps [masks]) in L3DT as well straight onto the 3D terrain then export out the 2d map.

In photoshop, or other paint program, combine your texture map from L3DT, erosion maps from WM, and colorMap from google to create your sat image. I like to overlay everything on top of the base texture map from L3DT, using the erosion map to color the erosion channels lighter or darker.

Here's a recent sat image I did using the method above to show results. (Though much smaller then it actually is.)