hello all - I've read the map making guide and searched the forums - but am still a bit perplexed - does water always have to exist on map_h at height 0? or does it merely always have to be at the same level? and are the rules for sea vs rivers or lakes different?
Example - if you have a river flowing into the sea, the river must be at height zero along its whole length, but if a river is on a map with no ocean, then it doesn't matter what the height is on map_h as long as it is level?
Thanks for your help. --viking
You can make the map_c from the Grey Image with all the lakes and rivers. Map_h only give the elevation...
So, if u have to copies of the Grey Image, one with the rivers and lakes and the other just with the coastline, you can use the one with the rivers and lakes to make the map_c and then use the other with just coastline to do the map_h. That way you will get rivers in height and the same with lakes...now the problem is that the water texture is trasparent (anyway to fix that?) so you can see trough the rivers in height when you fly low over them...is kind of weird.
Thanks.
So adjoining bodies of water need to be all one height on map_h but not necessarily at height=0, if I understand correctly.
But you may have a problem with bridges.
Bridges can only be placed at height 0
Let me see if I got this right:
A river need to be the same height along it's whole length, but any little pond or lake can be at any height I place it at, provided it does not have any contact with any other body of water?
Thanks everyone that clarifies it - what is the easiest way to reset map_h to sea level? so, for instance, if the height ranges from say 500 meters to 1500 based on the curves obtained from microdem, to reset so that map_h is 0 to 1000 meters? I've been using gimp and is there an easy way to basically step down the whole range of rgb values at once? Thanks! - viking