"Josh" <s### [at] acom> wrote:
> >
> > 1) Is there a an easy way to paint the heightfield in any tool?
>
> Any paint program should allow you to produce an image that you can base the
> height field on.

Just create a grey-scale image (the bigger the better, so as to get some
good resolution), with tonal values that range between black (lowest
elevation) to white (highest elevation), then save it in one of the file
formats POV supports for heightfields. Note that most image editors create
8-bit images, not 16-bit.  This means that no matter how LARGE your image
map, the grey-scale values will still be "divided up" into a set number of
finite steps. That is, changing the size or resolution of the image won't
alter this min. to max. tonal value. So even with a large-size (or
high-resolution) image, you'll still probably see some "stepping" in the
vertical direction of the generated heightfield, particularly when you
scale up the HF in that direction. 16-bit images have MUCH finer grey-scale
"steps." But in my experience, even Photoshop doesn't create or edit 16-bit
images. POV -Ray itself does, strangely enough!  (See the comments made
earlier.)

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