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jakerod

Wilbur to Visitor Problem

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I initially used Wilbur to make my terrain. I kept Wilbur open for a few days while I was editing the main part of the terrain and kept making small adjustments and then looking at them in buldozer. I eventually decided shutting off my computer was a good idea so I had to close Wilbur. I saved it as a png and several other files.

I've been working on my map for about a week. I wanted to alter some coastline so I put it back in wilbur and edited the coast. When I opened Wilbur I'm fairly sure that the max terrain height went down by like 60. I have no idea why. If anyone could explain that part to me that would be awesome. I tried the other format types too but most of those were even worse off with deep valleys where hills used to be etc.

My main problem is that because it did that I had to adjustment the .pbl heights but that was no big deal. I saved my visitor file as a new name before I loaded it just incase. I loaded the terrain in and now the terrain is all blocky looking on the map but isn't really noticeable in buldozer. Compare the two pictures below. Additionally, I didn't save my file as a .pew so when I realized this after I added in the .pew and everything seems fine but is there some consequence to this that is going to make my life suck later?

Three Main Problems:

Why did the terrain in wilbur change?

Why is my terrain blocky?

Will the loss and addition of that .pew at the end of the file have consequences later? Perhaps when exporting it to .wrp or something?

Original

smoothterrain.th.jpg

After

blockyterrainproblem.th.jpg

Edited by Jakerod

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Hi Jakerod,

reimporting a heightmap from v3 to wilbur and back into v3 will always end with the result you posted. Bushlurker explained it somewhere here on the forums. I think it´s because of the loss of information by conversion to greyscale heightmap.

The conclusion of that is that Wilbur may only be used for the first preparation of your heightmap or you have to accept this kind of loss of information. The blockyness may be solved by using a blurfilter in wilbur prior to importing it into v3 again.

Anyway.. the blockyness you see in v3 will definitely be obvious on your finished map.

If you want to finetune your terrain you may try and use L3dt. There is a free version which can handle heightmaps up to 2048 i think.

Maybe do a search for the posts by bushlurker i mentioned... he does some very good explanations over there.

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Hi Jakerod,

reimporting a heightmap from v3 to wilbur and back into v3 will always end with the result you posted. Bushlurker explained it somewhere here on the forums. I think it´s because of the loss of information by conversion to greyscale heightmap.

The conclusion of that is that Wilbur may only be used for the first preparation of your heightmap or you have to accept this kind of loss of information. The blockyness may be solved by using a blurfilter in wilbur prior to importing it into v3 again.

Anyway.. the blockyness you see in v3 will definitely be obvious on your finished map.

If you want to finetune your terrain you may try and use L3dt. There is a free version which can handle heightmaps up to 2048 i think.

Maybe do a search for the posts by bushlurker i mentioned... he does some very good explanations over there.

Okay, thank you. I didn't save it again after I got the blocky terrain so I went back and just used the terrain vertices tool to get the port area correct. I hate that blocky look and honestly I probably should've just used the terrain vertices tool in the first place.

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Hi again Jakerod!

I think Beton is definitely right... somehow you ended up with an "8 bit" greyscale (= 256 possible height values = instant legoland).

An easy mistake to make (Photoshop for example, defaults to 8bit for greyscale... well, the old ones anyway), and it's not instantly visually apparent that there's a problem.

There's other hassles with the .png & .pbl format too... it's ok at the early stages, and the .pbl thing gives you a relatively easy way of fine-tweaking sealevels, but... once you have a lot of models on there, if you decide "I'll just tweak that port area externally then reimport"... you can go to lunch, come back, and the damned thing will still be importing!

Visitor also accepts "XYZ" format for heightmaps, and that format works consistently well regardless of the number of objects you've placed.... something to remember for later on...

Wilbur is getting a little old nowadays... I meddled with it recently because it has some nice shading and erosion options, but nowadays you'd be far better off taking a look at L3DT Standard version... It has a full set of global and "spot" tools for pushing the landscape around, it has 2D and 3D views, works on heightmaps up to 2048x2048 and - it's free!!

A bit of practise with that and seriously, you'll never look at Wilbur again...

Better still - it will also intelligently generate basic Mask and Satellite images based on the heightmap you feed it! These are great as the basis for some subsequent hand-painting and can save you a lot of time...

That side of things is limited - a little - in the "Standard Edition" (4096x4096 max for Satellite layers is a little cheezy), but you can apply for a Free 3 month Demo of the Pro edition (Sat & Mask layer generation up to 20480x20480 - and beyond!)

It's well worth checking out the Free Standard edition anyway - it should be the only heightmap editor you'll need... and, it outputs in that handy XYZ format too (or even proper 16bit greyscale - if you prefer)

PS...

Additionally, I didn't save my file as a .pew so when I realized this after I added in the .pew and everything seems fine but is there some consequence to this that is going to make my life suck later?

Visitor doesn't add the extension automatically - as you noticed... I've never heard of any issues arising from this though - you should be OK...

B

Edited by Bushlurker

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A tip regarding Wilbur:

You may use the SPAN function in FILTERS menu...

How does this one works is simple: Just copy and paste your own terrain values obtained from visitor3 (File -> Export terrain as image... then visitor informs you about your max and min heights)

So, when you apply this span thing Wilbur will display your map exactly as visitor shows it... with rivers, lakes and sea, in example...

Hope it helps, cheers!

EDIT: In addition, you may develop some quick experiments with this span, it is useful to stretch or expand your mesh terrain so you can have a first idea about how it would look before reimporting in vis3

Edited by Robster

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There's other hassles with the .png & .pbl format too... it's ok at the early stages, and the .pbl thing gives you a relatively easy way of fine-tweaking sealevels, but... once you have a lot of models on there, if you decide "I'll just tweak that port area externally then reimport"... you can go to lunch, come back, and the damned thing will still be importing!

It actually did take a long time to import it when I had objects on it. But I think the only reason was because the height map changed due to the whole 8-bit thing so it had to update EVERYTHING on the map. Once that was loaded and I was just messing around in the port area it loaded nearly instantly because it seemed to only be updating objects affected by the recent terrain changes. But now that that terrain is compromised and the island portion of my terrain almost finished I'm just going to stick to Visitor.

I'll look into that Span feature though.

Thanks again guys.

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