Terrain Texture Generator - Readme


Version 2.0 - Copyright © 2002-2004 by Sascha Willems


Note :
TerrainTextureGenerator (short : TerrTexGen) is Freeware and you are not allowed to charge any money for it. You're also only allowed to distribute it on the net or other media (CDs, etc.) after you have asked me for permission. If you're allowed to distribute this application, then you must distribute it in an not-altered way, so that it contains all files that originally came with it's package (including this file).

License for generated images :
TerrTexGen generates texturemaps for terrains. You are allowed to use those textures as you want, may it be for commercial applications or something free. And if you do something interessting with it (except the ten-milliont terrain engine...), it would be nice if you let me know.

Usage


When you start up TerrTexGen, then you'll see the mainwindow as shown on the left. This is where the textures will be generated.
To make it easy, the parts of the application have benn numbered in the left screenshot and I'll explain them here :
    1 - Heightmap and Preview
    This shows the current heightmap that has benn selected to create the terrain texture for. After the texture has been generated, this view will show you the final image instead of the heightmap. Click on the picture to bring up a file dialog for loading another heightmap. Note that heightmaps have to be in BMP-Format and should be 2^n*2^n in Dimension.

    2 - Height textures
    These are the five textures that'll be assigned to the terraintexture according to the current height on the heightmap. The lowest textur stands for lower parts of the terrain, the upper texture for the highest part of the terrain. As with the heightmap, click on any of the images to bring up a dialog for loading another image, that also has to bee in BMP format.

    3 - Presets
    To make working with TerrTexGen easier, I've implemented presets that store what heightmap-file has been used and what height textures have been used. So if you save this profile, you can load it later without manually having to reload textures and the heightmap.

    4 - Lighting
    If you want lighting and shadows on your terrain texture, you'll need to activate it (default is activated) and with the two scrollbars you can set the sun's height above the terrain and the angle in which the light falls onto the terrain.

    5 - Texture size
    This combobox let's you choose how big your final texture is going to be. Note that this app only supports sizes with dimensions of 2^n*2^n (max. is 4096x4096). The bigger the texturesize, the longer the calculations are going to take, but it'll also give higher details.

    6 - Blur
    These two checkboxes allow you to apply a blur to the terrain texture and/or the lightmap (where shadows are also stored). This may give smoother results depending on the size of the texture. Smaller sizes should only blur the lightmap to get smoother shadows. Blurring the terrain texture itself often is not necessary, but may reduce banding effects.

    7 - Generate texture
    After you have set up all necessary things the way you want, you can click on this to start calculating the texture map. A progressbar left of the height textures will show you the progress of that task, and after it's finished you're asked to save the terraintexture to disk (in either BMP or JPG). After that, you'll see that the preview image will be updated with the final image.

    8 - 3D Preview
    If you have generated a texture, you can use this to bring up an OpenGL-Window that'll show you your terrain with the just generated terraintexture in 3D (rotating), so that you'll get an impression of how that texture would look in a realtime environment.

Made with Delphi.

Copyright © 2002-2004 by Sascha Willems - www.delphigl.de