User:TheMooseIsLoose

Blue Sky Noise Mapping Tutorial [Part 1/2] draft

-Uses terresculptor for heightmap work and gimp for diffuse texture, relies on SSMF for materializing

-all free! (but not all foss)

Primer

-Springmapedit aeonios version

-JAVA

-Gimp 2.9 unstable

-terresculptor standard

-blue texes/gimp .pats

-part 2 needs beherith DNTS pack, gimp dds plugin

-you have at least 8gb of ram, right? gimp will become unpleasant to use if you start needing page file

-set gimp to single core

Heightmap with terresculptor and GIMP

-menu tools/settings/dimensions check power-of-two +1

-settings/rulers and units/ change units to "generic". Set 1 unit = 175 generic. 1 terresculptor height unit = 175 spring height units

-menu file/new project/ pick 1025

-generate noise/ clamp from bottom to make flatland / erosion / etc

-when ready to export, normalize first

-save as 16-bit greyscale png, mirroring either needs to be done with SME or GIMP (or requires premium terresculptor)

-if diagonal mirroring desired must be done with GIMP

-handpainted paths are also best added with gimp

-when ready, save from GIMP as 16-bit png again

-import terrain in terresculptor

-resample to different size if desired, final small erosion pass

-export heightmap

-Set altitude to desired ingame height. remember 175 spring units for every terresculptor unit. Spring height can be seen in the bottom right corner of altitude window.

-extract 3 slope masks at (degrees) 0 - 27.5, 27.5 - 55, 55-90

-optional 4th height mask for underwater, or snowy mountain caps

-save at least 1 colorset overlays, ensure auto-range colorset is checked

-we are now ready to texture in GIMP

Diffuse texturing with masks in GIMP

-put .pat files in correct folder

-preferences / increase tile cache size to 5-6gb or so

-create new image in gimp with correct diffuse texture dimensions [springmapsize x 64 x 8]

-Image / Mode / set as RGB

-open as layers all the masks

-scale all layers to image size (cubic interpolation okay)

-right click each mask, add layer mask, greyscale copy of layer,

-Ensure you are editing the layers for the next step, NOT the masks. In the layers dialog on the right, the thumbnail displayed on the left is the layer and the thumbnail on the right is the layer mask. Click on the respective icons to edit either the layer or the mask.

-paint bucket, fill whole selection, pattern, pick one of the brushwalker patterns. Use the tabbed dialogue in the lower right corner to filter patterns to only SpringMapping catagory. Do this for each mask layer, may take a while to fill each layer with tiles.

-open as layers the colormap(s)

-scale layer to image size again, then set layer mode on the right as color[LCH]. Adjust transparency on this layer to change amount of colorizing

-diffuse texture complete

TBC