Topic: [tutorial] height-maps, terrain and sculpting

[kat]

Uploaded a new tutorial video to YouTube on using gray-scale height maps as part of the process of producing more interesting terrains for games using Blenders sculpting tools. You do need to know your Blender Basics for this, making the terrain use of some of Blenders core features and tools, nothing special is being done, so what's shown are the principles and general process.

Although it's a relatively old video I recorded a while ago (crikey!, almost two years ago now looking at the file dates!!) and sent out to a few bods I thought it'd be a useful reference that will hopefully be one of a series of videos covering the making of terrains for games using Blenders sculpting tools.

[ratty redemption]

cool video and the sculpting looked responsive, what spec laptop/pc were you using back then kat?

also I was surprised by how subtle a gradient you had in your height map considering the amount of mesh displacement. do you find that works better then a high contrasting heightmap with lower displace values?

[kat]

I can't remember exactly, but I think it was more or less what I've got now (it was the one that got killed by lightning), which is now getting long in the tooth a bit - it has a 7600 nVid and 2GB of ram I think, don't recall the CPU though. I'm debating whether to add an audio track I recorded for it because the vid is actually a couple of years old now (recorded using 2.45) and I've got other vids planned that are more up to date.

I've 'improved' the process a bit since so I only use the heightmap as a starting point, but yes, so long as you have the polys available and the gradients of relatively smooth in the image, it will give a pretty good rendition when displaced in to the mesh, you do need a high contrast image for best results though - so regardless as to what you're doing and what you're doing it for, you lowest value should be black and highest white (rather than shades of gray).

[ratty redemption]

understood, thanks and personally I didn't need an audio track for that video, especially with the button and mouse display, but perhaps record your vo for new videos.