image drape for "bulldozing"

[guy Riessen]

I'm not sure how you'd do it, but it would be great to be able to have an image drape when editing the height field for bulldozing roads right where they're supposed to be!

It would be great to have a way to edit the grayscale hight map in a top down view so we could place stuff precisely. Hmmm, in the meantime I suppose we could export the heightmap then edit it in photoshop. The bulldoze brush would function pretty much like the burn brush in PS--that is, it darkens the grayscale, relatively to the existing map--so the roads while being inset some from the original, remains relative, so the road would climb hills or drop down valleys, etc.

[Aaron]

Hi Guy,

I'm not sure how you'd do it, but it would be great to be able to have an image drape when editing the height field for bulldozing roads right where they're supposed to be!

At the moment, the way to use an image drape in Sapphire is to do the following:

• Import your image drape using the 'File->Import->Custom map layer' menu option in L3DT.
• Open Sapphire and the heightmap editing tools window.
• Select the 'Options->Select texture' menu item, and choose your image drape.
• Select the 'Options->Runtime lighting over texture' to apply shading to the otherwise flat-looking terrain.

Here is a really quick-n-nasty example, using a screenshot I found on my desktop as the drape image:



I'll add it to my to-do list to make a nice 'image drape' menu option in Sapphire, so as to condense these four steps down to one.

It would be great to have a way to edit the grayscale hight map in a top down view so we could place stuff precisely.

Using the heightfield tools in the 2D view is on the to-do list as well.

Cheerio,
Aaron.