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As a follow-up to my previous tutorial on how to create single-region terrain .RAW files, this advanced tutorial will show how it is possible to create seamless terrain raw files that stretch across multiple regions. As a side-effect, this will also solve the previously unresolved problem on how to rotate / edit these files in photoshop.
First, create a terrain in terragen, as described in the first tutorial. Note that terragen will only create square terrains, so if you plan on using a different shape layout for your multi-region estate, think ahead of which part to exclude from the terrain map. For this tutorial, we will create a 4-region terrain (a square 2 regions wide and 2 regions high). Once you created your terrain in terragen, save as a terragen terrain file and then export it as an 8-bit raw file.
Open the file in photoshop (it won’t open in gimp). Note the image is 257×257 pixels in size. Change the image size to 514×514 pixels (as we will need an image that is four times as big, for the four regions). Then, mirror the image vertically! This will make things very confusing, but is a neccessary step, as terragen will mirror the photoshop files vertically upon re-importing and thus this step is crucial for your terrain to tile correctly. Remember this association when naming your terrain files, as they will be upside down now, thus southwest becomes northwest, etc. Next, change your canvas to 257 x 257 pixels again and select the corner you want to create. In the above example, I picked the southwest corner (making it the northwest terrain). Save the file as a photoshop raw file (naming it nw.raw, for example). Go back one step to bring back your full region again and do the same with all other corners of your terrain.
Now, one by one, re-import these raw files back into terragen using File > Import > 8 bit raw for it. Notice how during that step, your terrain gets turned back upside down again. Now, save the four pieces as terragen terrain files and convert them into sim raw files with Bailiwick, as described in the previous terrain tutorial.
As you will have noticed, this procedure does not only allow for the creation of multi-region terrain files, but also allows you to edit your terrains in photoshop, enabling you to scale and rotate them, among other things. Only remember to mirror them vertically prior to saving.
(Download the resulting terrain files here, and further terrain files in our terrain category.)
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jonc on 06.12.2010
Stumbled across you blog – great article this
OpenSim already has some native support for terragen files but it has been borked for the longest time – seems no one cares about terragen – L3DT gets all the love when it comes to OpenSim terrain generation
there is a patch however http://opensimulator.org/mantis/print_bug_page.php?bug_id=1564 that’ll allow you to import your megaregion terragen files directly into OS.
This will allow the load-tile console command to splat a single .ter file across a megaregion for you – handles the rotation issues as well
- jonc
V on 06.12.2010
Wow, thank you jonc, that’s great!