height maps

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/height maps

Picklesworth(Posted 2004) [#1]
how do you make height maps work? I'm trying to load a terrain into my scene, but it just appears flat. The image size is 1024 x 1024 and it is a proper height map made in total terrain (and viewing it in paint, it is made up of many different shades of gray).
Graphics3D 800,600

SetBuffer BackBuffer()

;load in the height map for the 3d scene
Global terrain = LoadTerrain("worldmap_1.bmp")
TerrainDetail terrain,4000,True
TerrainShading terrain,True

;load a texture for the height map
terrain_Tex = LoadTexture("textures\grass_painted.bmp")
ScaleTexture terrain_Tex,1024,1024
EntityTexture terrain,terrain_Tex

;create the water DO THIS NOW!!!!


;set ambient light
AmbientLight 150,150,150

;create a point light (the sun... Just to simulate very basic shading)
;maybe make it rotate with time in the future
;sun = CreateLight(2)
;LightColor sun,200,150,150
;PositionEntity sun,100,200,100

;create the camera
cam = CreateCamera()
PositionEntity cam,500,40,500
CameraFogMode cam,1
CameraFogColor cam,150,150,150
CameraFogRange cam,300,1024



While Not KeyDown(1)

TurnEntity cam,MouseYSpeed(),MouseXSpeed(),0

RenderWorld
Flip

Wend

End



sswift(Posted 2004) [#2]
I haven't used Blitz terrains in a long time, but have you tied scaling the terrain vertically? It might be that it simply has a max height of 1 until you scale it.


Picklesworth(Posted 2004) [#3]
okay, that worked, thanks.

While on the topic of height maps:
I'm going to use terragen to do them properly, and I find it's texturing functions to be quite amazing. So is there a way to actually export the texture maps produced in terragen?


Rob Farley(Posted 2004) [#4]
For want of not pimping my own software... check out terrain shader in projects on my site.

The problem with terragen texturing is that there is a massive amount of detail, something that blitz terrains can't handle.