L3DT documentation
	Large 3D terrain generator

Nav | start » l3dt » formats » specs » wmf

Water map file

Water map file

The current file format for L3DT water maps is WMF v1.0. This file format is largely based on the HFF v1.0 format, but also supports multiple data layers (water level, water type, water ID#). The header structure is as follows:

Header structure

The water data in the WMF v1.0 file is preceded by a header containing the following information:

Field name	Contents	Length	Offset	Purpose
ASCII file marker	“L3DT”	4	0	Tells L3DT and humans that this is an L3DT file. Note string is not null terminated.
Binary map-type marker	USHORT	2	4	Tells L3DT what type of map file this is. This must be 600 for WMF v1.0
ASCII map-type marker	“WMF_v1.0”	8	6	Lets humans know what type of file this is. Note string is not null terminated.
Data offset	USHORT	2	14	Indicates the address of the first map pixel in this file, relative to the start of the file. See comments below.
Map width	UINT	4	16	East-west extent of the map (number of pixels).
Map height	UINT	4	20	North-south extent of the map (number of pixels).
Water level data size	BYTE	1	24	Water level data size (bytes per water level value), either 2 or 4.
Floating point flag	BYTE	1	25	1 if depth is stored as floating-point, 0 if integers.
Vertical scale	float	4	26	Vertical scale (in metres) of the heightfield.
Vertical offset	float	4	30	Vertical offset (in metres) of the heightfield.
Horizontal scale	float	4	34	Horizontal scale (in metres) of the heightfield.
Tile size	USHORT	2	38	See 'tiled order' comments for HFF.
Wrap flag	BYTE	1	40	See 'wrap flag' comments for HFF.
Reserved	BYTE	1	41	Must be 0.
Aux. data type	USHORT	2	42	Identifier for auxiliary pixel data type.
Aux. data size	BYTE	1	44	Size in bytes of auxiliary pixel data.
Reserved	0	see below	45	See comments below.

Header length & reserved section

Typically the data offset is set to 64, meaning the reserved section is 64 - 45 = 19 bytes long. The reserved section contains no information, but may be used in later versions to store additional parameters, flags, etc.

Pixel order

Please consult the Pixel order section for the HFF format, from which WMF is derived.

Pixel structure

Each pixel in the water map file consists of a water level section followed by a auxiliary data section.

Water level data types

Depending on the water level data size and floating point flag values in the file header, WMF water level data may be either:

Single-precision floating point values (32-bit).
Unsigned short integers (16-bit).

To convert the file values to real-world water levels (in metres), the WMF format uses the same vertical scaling system as the HFF format. For more information, please refer to the 'reading/writing a HFF' section of the HFF specification (link here).

Byte	Type	What is it?
0	unsigned byte	The water type ID. Values include 0 (no water), 10 (ocean), 11 (ocean edge), 30 (lake), 31 (lake edge), 90 (water table, below terrain).
1-2	unsigned short	The water body index, which identifies the lake/ocean to which this pixel belongs. Uses Intel byte order.

Source code for reading/writing WMF

The source code for L3DT's WMF plugin is available here. This code is written in C++, using MSVC 7.0 and L3DT's Zeolite plugin API.

l3dt/formats/specs/wmf.txt · Last modified: 2017/08/31 05:21 (external edit)

Except where otherwise noted, content on this wiki is licensed under the following license:CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported