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Terrain 1.0

This tool can convert a heighmap (tga) into a warcraft terrain (w3e). Maby it is usefull for big maps, because it's faster then the editor. It's open source so the source code is included. (Use SFmpq and cxImagelib.)
Have fun,
.:DarkLord
Contents

Terrain 1.0 (Binary)

Reviews
ZypherXII [02-07-2008]: ~Approved~
Level 6
Joined
Jan 15, 2005
Messages
188
Lets see here:
Noobs comment - "What the **** does this thing do? I don't know what a heighmap is!"
Intermediate comment - "Hmmm, this tool makes no sense to me... what does it do?"
Pro comment - "Well this thing is so useful! It can be used so easily! 5 stars!!!"

My comment: "I don't understand this, I am an intermediate mapmaker. Add some more description so noobs and people like me will be able to understand. What is a heighmap?"

That's what I think all the people would say.
But in my opinion, if I knew what this thing did, it'd be really good. So 3/5... for now :wink: .
 
Level 7
Joined
Dec 18, 2003
Messages
54
Hm.. ok I descripe how you use this tool. Ok, it's beta but if you know what you have to do, it's easy. :wink:
Lets start:
1. Just make a map with the editor.
2. Save the map. :wink:
3. Open Gimp/Photo shop or someting and make a new image. The height (width) must be height (width) of the map + 1 Pixel. Make the backgrund black and draw your terrain with a light-tool, as lighter as heighter (as darker as lower).
4. Save the image to a TGA-File.
5. Open the tool.
6. Load the tga and the map.
7. Press the "Convert"-Button an save the w3e-file.
8. Open your map with WinMPQ.
9. Delete the "war3map.w3e".
10. Add the converted w3e-file (step 7).
11. Rename the file to "war3map.w3e".
12. Close WinMPQ.
13. Open your map with the editor and place your units etc....

I'll make some examplets for you.
 
Level 3
Joined
Oct 12, 2004
Messages
8
Too much work and too many programs are involved in this conversion. Why do I need to find the "war3map.w3e" In winmpq?how do I know if the slopes are in the angle? I think it’s easier to create a new map then fix a pre made map.
 
Level 1
Joined
May 10, 2005
Messages
1
hi all this is my first message on this forum.
I'm french, so sorry for english mistakes.
A height map, also known as heightfield, is generally in 3D programs a way for modelling a landscape.
It is very powerful, because you only need to paint a 2D picture with a grey scale and each grey level will be converted into a specific height by the 3D program. The lighter the color is the higher the point of the map is.
The conversion is done here by the DarkLord tool, i think. It looks very powerful for sparing time in original map making, i will try it as soon as i can.
:)
 
Level 7
Joined
Dec 18, 2003
Messages
54
Ok, I explain it to you PitzerMike. My tool import all file, there is no problem. If I want to open the map with the WE I get an error, "File Data currpt!" or something. But if I open the map with WinMPQ, this tool gets no error, and add/edit the map (add a txt file or something) I can open the map with the WE. I think there is a problem with the compression, but I don'f find the bug.
And thx to gadax for his explaining.
 
Level 5
Joined
Jan 28, 2005
Messages
81
I have stressed in about 1 month now, and I finally made it! Your tool rock, man! It's so usefull. It makes straight downward cliffs, that I didn't know how to do, and now I only have to use this tool! If I use this tool to make a map terrain, I will give mass credits.

Here is the map I tested it on:
I only used this tool to make the terrain.

 
Level 1
Joined
Feb 22, 2005
Messages
3
sqqiii :cry: :cry: :cry: it is not working it sais it needs an .dll file somting abute MSVC71... hwat too doo.
 
Level 3
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
27
so... nobody has got it to work except for the guy with the picture of random cliffs? sounds pretty crappy by the sounds of it (no offense). Doesnt really make sense, seems the took is just spam, you dont even give proper directions just "this only works for tft but iono" you dont even explain HOW

A: Pixels = cliffs = useless
B: Takes a screenshot of entire map and puts it in a tga file
C: Does nothing

hmm ill pick C
 
Level 2
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
9
ok i saw that map and all i did undestand is that tool lets you make more than 2 up whit out largening the cliffs
 
Level 4
Joined
Jun 4, 2004
Messages
20
For those of you that are missing DLLs, do a search on google and download them. You can find installation instructions for DLL files there as well.

For those of you that don't understand what a heightmap is--obviously, this tool will be of little use to you. The explanation that gadax gave is about as good as it gets.



The purpose is this tool is that the WE doesn't allow you to create steep terrain. Normally, you'd use the tools under the "Apply Height" section to raise and lower the terrain, but the WE forces it to be a gradual, more realistic effect. So if you want steep terrain, you have to use a 3rd party program like this one.

To demonstrate the effectiveness, I took a class image of a ying-yang. Heightmaps work on shades of gray, and ying-yangs are traditionally black and white. I decided a good resolution for the map would be 128x128, so I resized the image to be 129x129 and saved it as a targa.

yingyang.jpg

Download the TGA

So once I had that saved as a targa and a new 128x128 map created, I used the tool to supply the paths to the two files and generated an Environment file (war3map.w3e).

Then I used WinMPQ to open the map file (*.w3x), deleted the (attributes) file, and dragged my new war3map.w3e file into the archive to overwrite the old one. Then I closed WinMPQ and opened the map in the WE.

This is bird's eye view of the new terrain. You can see how well it matches the ying-yang heightmap.
wc3terrain_yingyang.jpg


Next, I angled the camera down and got a shot from the side to present how the height map works in 3D. Since my height map is pure black and white, there are only two levels of terrain. Everywhere that the image was white is very high, and where it was black is very low. You can use shades of gray in your own experiments in order to lessen the extremes.
wc3terrain_heightmap.jpg


Finally, to demonstrate the benefits of this over using the cliff tool, I added a bit of terrain to this circular pocket. You'll notice a few things here:
1) The variation between high and low terrain is significantly greater than can be achieved through the cliff tool.
2) I'm no longer limited to using one of two types of terrain on my cliffs--they can be any available terrain and those terrains can even touch each other.
3) The edges are a near perfect circle. Using normal cliffs, you're forced to apply the height on a tiled pattern which makes it impossible to create curved edges.
wc3terrain_terrainedcliffs.jpg


I should note for all the newbies out there that, since the game does view this as a deformation of the terrain and not a cliff, the game will allow ground units to walk up and down them as freely (and quickly) as over normal terrain. The easiest way to prevent this is to use ground pathing blockers (in the doodad pallette) at the bottom and top of each cliff.
 
Nah. The problem most of you are having with dlls is because I'm guessing this is a VB/Visual Basic program.

----------------------------------

1) Go to the microsoft site
2) Search for ".NET framework" (w/o quotes)
3) Read instructions on how to install, etc
4) Have fun.

----------------------------------

And if you want to do steep cliffs without this program, you need the miscdata.txt file, available on wc3campaigns.net.
But this tool is very useful because it's much much quicker than doing it all in WE.
 
Level 3
Joined
Mar 4, 2008
Messages
35
Lets see here:
Noobs comment - "What the **** does this thing do? I don't know what a heighmap is!"
Intermediate comment - "Hmmm, this tool makes no sense to me... what does it do?"
Pro comment - "Well this thing is so useful! It can be used so easily! 5 stars!!!"

My comment: "I don't understand this, I am an intermediate mapmaker. Add some more description so noobs and people like me will be able to understand. What is a heighmap?"

That's what I think all the people would say.
But in my opinion, if I knew what this thing did, it'd be really good. So 3/5... for now :wink: .
Are you ****ing retarded highmaps are war3/2 terrain textures...:ctwist:
 
Level 5
Joined
Jul 6, 2005
Messages
112
Awesome

This tool changed the way I make maps forever! It lets me crank out new terrains in a matter of minutes. It's especially useful for when you need to make real life maps into wc3 maps because it translates the scale perfectly. The process is a little complicated, but I was able to figure it out with no instruction at all.
 
Level 5
Joined
Jun 25, 2005
Messages
92
Woah, I really love this tool!

Anyways, 4/5, because it's extremely useful, but too complicated for n00bs, bad descripted and there are too much involved extern tools.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Extended version of DarkLords how-to-use-it-guide:

What you need:
- this tool (http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/resource.php?t=62919)
- a tool which can create images and convert them to .tga-files, for example gimp (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/#mirrors) or photoshop (or sth. similar; afaik IrfanView can do that, too)
- WinMPQ (http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/resource.php?t=62969)
- a warcraft 3 world editor (the original WE is recommended)
- the WEU Enhancer (just for editing the tileset)
- Tft (dunno if it works with RoC, too)

Lets start:
1. Make a map with the editor (the tileset has to be Lordaeron summer!).
2. Save the map.
3. Open Gimp/Photoshop or something similar and make a new image. The height (width) must be height (width) of the map + 1 Pixel (for example if your map is 256x256 the image has to be 257x257). Make the background black and draw your terrain with a light-tool, as lighter as heighter (as darker as lower).
4. Save the image to a TGA-File.
5. Open the tool. (if an error occurs which says that there are some .dll-files missing, then download them at www.dll-files.com)
6. Load the tga and the map.
7. Press the "Convert"-Button an save the w3e-file.
8. Open your map with WinMPQ.
9. Delete the "war3map.w3e".
10. Add the converted w3e-file (step 7). If WinMPQ asks you to create a folder just press enter.
11. Rename the file to "war3map.w3e".
12. Close WinMPQ.
13. Edit the tileset with the WEU Enhancer.
14. Open your map with the editor and place your units etc.... FINISHED

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Level 9
Joined
Apr 14, 2007
Messages
437
ok, after reading all this, it STILL doesn't work. can som1 please make a north American terrain with this tool, upload the war3map.w3e on this tool-thread so i can dl it, and ill give creds to you? then ill import the .w3e and my map will look better.
 
Level 7
Joined
Apr 28, 2006
Messages
113
Anyone could do it with Rektis' explanation.

Anyway.. isn't there another tool like that for the terrain type? I mean, grass, dirt, snow...

It would be cool as hell.
 
Level 1
Joined
Apr 11, 2008
Messages
5
Just to annoy you... On the programm des you wrote ''Rhis is sa small tool'' .... Instaed of ''This :DDDDDDDD
 
Someone wanted to know how to turn a photo into a wc3 map? Here is the Queen of England in all her glory as a wc3 map:
attachment.php

So how did I do it? Simple!
1. Open GIMP (or another program that can edit images and save a TGAs) and open the photo you want to convert, in my example, this one.

2. Resize the canvas to something proportional to your map size (in GIMP this is Image >> Canvas Size), while keeping the whole photo. For example, my map is a square, 128x128, so I resized my canvas to 400x400. IF your map is 64x128, you should resize your photo to something more like 200x400. Just make sure it's in proportion.

3. Now you have your photo in the right proportions, you need to scale your image (in GIMP Image >> Scale Image) to the size of your map +1. My map is 128x128, so I would scale the image to 129x129. If your map was of 64x128, you would scale your image to 65x129 etc.

4. You'll remember the heightmap needs to be in tones of grey. So we need to desaturate (remove the colour from) our image (in GIMP Colours >> Desaturate).

5. Save the image as a TGA.

6. Convert the TGA into a .w3e and import it into your map. Done!
 

Attachments

  • Queen.PNG
    Queen.PNG
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Level 4
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
84
omg i love this tools...it will change my crappy terrain...
its not that hard to use it but sometimes i get error but u just have to restart and it work again. 5/5

~White
 
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