Heightmap Creator work around?

[kyago8]

Hi everyone,

I'm creating a mod that includes it's own worldspace and struggle to use the heightmap creator (my eyes are bad, I struggle to see the color adjustments). There are two theories that I have to work around this, but I'll need help from people a lot smarter than me. 

1) I can follow this tutorial: 

(I adjusted to this tutorial by grayscaling the image in GIMP)

The biggest issue I've found is that GeoControl 2 is no longer available (technically it is on internetarchive.com, but no product key to activate). I've tried other programs such as TerreSculptor 2.0 - which is quite nice for fine tuning, but it doesn't have the option to export the heightmap without purchasing the $95 pro-version. Is there another terrain editing/generating program that I can use without this paywall? I've thought about blender, but the issue with that is exporting in a RAW file.

2) I can take the .png from the heightmap created in GIMP and convert it to a RAW file directly, using TESAnnwynn and seeing the results in the GECK and use the landscape editor to slowly fine tune the terrain. The issue I've come across is that according to the GECK Wiki, to import a height map "The files should also have been saved with these Raw Option settings: Header: 0, Non-interleaved Order, Count: 1, Depth: 16 Bits, Byte Order: IBM PC." I don't know how to edit this information, and google isn't helping. The Wiki also says for exporting "These files can be opened in Photoshop with these Raw Option settings: Count: 1, Depth: 16 Bits, Byte Order: IBM PC. (Paint Shop Pro and the Gimp do not seem capable of handling 16bpp .raw files.) For those who cannot afford photoshop, ImageJ, a free photo editing software can open the raw files by importing RAW with the settings 16-Bit Signed and 1024x1024." I assumed this would mean I should be able to take .png files and convert them through photoshop or ImageJ. I tried ImageJ because it's free, and it is capable of exporting RAW, but again I haven't found anything online on changing RAW Option settings. I don't know if this problem persists in photoshop. Is there a way to change RAW Option settings through these means or am I being dumb?

It is a relatively old tutorial and I'm not sure how much modding through the GECK has changed since then. I'm sure that madmongo would tell me to just use the heightmap creator in the GECK, but it takes forever and is difficult for me to see my edits. Thanks for any help!

[madmongo]

3 hours ago, kyago8 said:

I'm sure that madmongo would tell me to just use the heightmap creator in the GECK, but it takes forever and is difficult for me to see my edits.

Heh. That is what I would suggest, but only because I don't know of anything else that works. I tried following some online tutorials for creating heightmaps from real geological data, but could never get anything to work.

Speaking as an old fart with bad eyes, I can definitely sympathize with your complaints. For what it's worth, you can go into the heightmap editor, then click on View -> Color Masking, and you can change the height vs. color allocations to make the differences in height a lot more visible while you edit them.

The GECK heightmap editor is extremely clunky and I also find it a bit difficult to use. I will be watching this to see if anyone has any better suggestions.

[kyago8]

30 minutes ago, madmongo said:

Heh. That is what I would suggest, but only because I don't know of anything else that works. I tried following some online tutorials for creating heightmaps from real geological data, but could never get anything to work.

I found an unfinished tutorial of Heightmap Generation on the Wiki and a follow up which I'm going through and testing now. I'll update if I'm able to make any progress. (https://geckwiki.com/index.php?title=File:Heightmap_Generation_Tutorial_Incomplete.7z ; https://geckwiki.com/index.php?title=File:Heightmap_Tutorial_Ashton.zip)

[kyago8]

Small Update: (tl;dr not fixed yet)

I've made it decently far in the second tutorial. It seems like the biggest limiter is RAW metadata. GIMP isn't capable of the necessary export settings for the GECK and photoshop is expensive. There still may be a possibility of success (without paying a dime) through ImageJ as preferences are done through command lines -- but I don't know how to script, so I will leave this information here for someone a lot smarter than me to find.

That being said, it seems that the work around is plausible, but I can't confirm it until I purchase photoshop or find an image editor capable of exporting RAW images with the required raw options.

(if this isn't solved until long after this thread has died, please message me privately to share your findings)

[kyago8]

7 minutes ago, kyago8 said:

There still may be a possibility of success (without paying a dime) through ImageJ as preferences are done through command lines -- but I don't know how to script, so I will leave this information here for someone a lot smarter than me to find.

*** I was successful in exporting the image as a stack in a raw file, but was unsuccessful in adjusting the parameters to fit with the GECK.

[madmongo]

Unfortunately, Photoshop has gone to a monthly subscription model. It's about $270 per year, which in my opinion is ungodly expensive.

I think you're stuck at about the same place I was. I could export from the GECK but I could never get anything to import back into the GECK.

[kyago8]

7 hours ago, madmongo said:

Unfortunately, Photoshop has gone to a monthly subscription model. It's about $270 per year, which in my opinion is ungodly expensive.

I think you're stuck at about the same place I was. I could export from the GECK but I could never get anything to import back into the GECK.

At some point (when my pockets are a bit deeper) I may purchase the subscription for one month to see if this method will theoretically work, with paywall or not. If this thread is dead by then I will post an update where appropriate.

[kyago8]

Returning with a small update:

I've been searching the forums and Reddit for any relevant information on importing heightmaps into the GECK. It seems that Adobe Photoshop CS2 is or was at some point able to export in the required RAW settings for importing a heightmap into the GECK (it's also available for free). I know that some people commonly use this with the NVIDIA plugin for photoshop in order to export .dds files for textures. 

I've definitely made some progress, but this is getting into some forgotten territory, as the latest post I could find on this forum addressing heightmap imports (other than this one) was way back in 2016. It seems that the export settings are available in this program, but for some reason when I tried to change 8-bit to 16-bit, the dialogue box grayed out. I'm sure that there is a common cause leading to this problem (perhaps the scale of the image at import? I used Tanagrams.io to get the basic heightmap, as suggested by the Height_Map_Tutorial_Ashton on the GECK Wiki, and then edited in PS CS2), but as far as I'm concerned, the dialogue option with the necessary exports -- though locked -- is progress. All other export settings that the GECK requires as a heightmap are readily available to change.

If anyone has experience with Photoshop CS2, I implore you to try this out for yourself and you may be able to get this to work. It'd be great to restore one of the GECK's lost functions to be used by the community.