Heightmap

Heightmaps can be created by hand with a classical paint program or a special terrain editor. These editors visualize the terrain in 3D and allow the user to modify the surface. Normally there are tools to raise, lower, smooth or erode the terrain. Another way to create a terrain is to use a terrain generation algorithm. This can be for example a 2D simplex noise function or by diffusion-limited aggregation. Another method is to reconstruct heightmaps from real world data, for example using synthetic aperture radar. == Use ==

Heightmaps are widely used in terrain rendering software and modern video games. Heightmaps are an ideal way to store digital terrain elevations; compared to a regular polygonal mesh, they require substantially less memory for a given level of detail. Most modern 3D computer modelling programs are capable of using data from heightmaps in the form of bump, normal, or displacement maps to quickly and precisely create complex terrain and other surfaces. In the earliest games using software rendering, the elements often represented heights of columns of voxels rendered with ray casting. In most newer games, the elements represent the height coordinate of polygons in a mesh. Rendering software • Terragen – terrain renderer • Picogen – terrain renderer and heightmap creation tool • Materialize – Free PBR (Physically Based Rendering) creation tool Generating software Trivia Although the terms heightmap and heightfield are often indistinguishable from each other, there is still a small difference in the terms. Heightmap comes from the mathematical term 'map' and heightfield comes from the mathematical term 'vector field'. Heightmap is the more correct description because most heightfields are not a (vector) field in mathematical terms but they are always a map (in mathematical terms as well as in the visual representation). ==See also==