Texturing Landscapes

First of all, we need a heightmap. For this tutorial, we'll make a valley-like landscape. Here is a small version of the heightmap we will be using:

Here is the heightmap. The dark area makes room for a nice water surface when we get there.

The original heightmap is 750x750 pixels, but when you use this method, you can of course use a larger image to get more detail.

Now, second, we need the map. To make this, load the heightmap into your favourite paint program, and start painting the texture. It's important that you know what the grayscale image represents here. The darker colours represent the lower areas in your landscape, while the lighter colours represent the higher areas. In our case, this means that we will have a landscape that looks like a valley, and has a "lake" in the middle, and with some high peaks around. Of course, in a real job, this one wouldn't be very good. But for this turorial, it's ok.

Now, in our case, we use Photoshop 3.0.4, which has the possibilty of using layers. This means that we can load the grayscale image, add a new layer, and paint on that:

The Adobe Photoshop work area. Note that we have just begun on the paint process.

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