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ADuke

A more accurate representation of waterways?

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Hi everyone,

So I have this island/map I am making, I have created some waterways on a portion of the map, the effect I am going for is something like this picture from a river valley in Afghanistan.

What I would like to do is edit my layermask.png with an accurate representation of my waterways so that I may use a "river rock" texture for the area underneath and around the water.

But.....

When I export my map as an image for editing in PS, I get this.

The blue portion displayed in the pic is not very accurate and is very pixelated.

So that you can see the difference, here is a pic of what the water looks like when I zoom in in Buldozer

So, what way (if any) can I get a representation of my water areas, down to the last pixel?

Thanks,

-AD

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Export the image from Visitor at "Full Res plus BlueEdge" - trim BlueEdge back off again and you should have a 1:1 pixel representation of the maximum zoom Visitor image...

People get confused about the BlueEdge thing, but it's really very very simple...

Blue edge = the number of Sat layer pixels per heightmap pixel...

eg:

You have a 1024x1024 heightmap, and a 10240x10240 Sat/Mask size - that means there's 10 pixels of Sat layer for every 1 pixel of heightmap... BlueEdge = 10

You have a 1024x1024 heightmap, and a 20480x20480 Sat/Mask size - that means there's 20 pixels of Sat layer for every 1 pixel of heightmap... BlueEdge = 20

You have a 2048x2048 heightmap, and a 10240x10240 Sat/Mask size - that means there's 5 pixels of Sat layer for every 1 pixel of heightmap... BlueEdge = 5

You have a 2048x2048 heightmap, and a 20480x20480 Sat/Mask size - that means there's 10 pixels of Sat layer for every 1 pixel of heightmap... BlueEdge = 10

Notice how the actual "size" of each heightmap cell is irrelevant... they could be 5m cells, or 50m cells - it doesn't matter... all that matters is how many pixels wide they are, then divide one by the other and that's your BlueEdge value...

So then... what do you do with that info?

Well - when you export your image from Visitor, you add the BlueEdge value to your export image size...

So - if your heightmap is, say, 1024x1024, and your sat/mask layers are 10240x10240, then you've calculated your BlueEdge to be 10 pixels...

Export the Visitor image at 10250x10250 !

Load the image into Photoshop or whatever - you'll see there's a 10 pixel blue edge down the Left Side and across the Bottom of the image... Crop it off!

Now you have a 10240x10240 image again! - and it'll overlay perfectly on your Sat & Mask layers...

Use the same BlueEdge trick every time you export a Visitor image to guarantee a perfect overlay at maximum res....

B

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Wow man, you are my lord and saviour, lol :)

It's a good thing you are always here and always have the perfect solutions.

I exported at 10250x10250 and everything looks crisp,

Thanks again,

-AD

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Now I have a problem, when I try to import satellite+mask, Visitor crashes when trying to load those huge images. :(

Nevermind, my math was wrong, it works now.

Edited by ADuke

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You may already know this but if you go to View>Define Configuration>Colors Height (Tab) you can change the elevation lines and where they start. So you could say use .25 meter elevation lines to really get in there and tell where the water is at. You can only see the elevation lines on Elevation Interval Gray Scale mode though (next to the contour lines button on the project tool bar (I think). Then when you export it those lines will be there and you will be able to see very fine details in the terrain. .25 may be a bit excessive and it only draws so many lines so you would have to export it more than once if you have a "vertical map".

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