"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> I've mostly used images and data-converted-to-images to make heightfields, but
> I've been toying with a scene where I'd like to make a heightfield with certain
> specific attributes.
>
> I have an island, with loosely-specified dimensions.
> It has a port, and roads, and buildings, and other "flat" regions.
> The topology of the land mass ought to match the location of these features.
>
>
> Are there tools that are especially suited to this task?
> Hoping the usual suspects who create landscape scenes can recommend a solution
> and work-flow.

I got want you want! Well maybe. A long while back I was playing with height
fields and try as I may it was just to hard to make a good landscape with roads
and hills just where I wanted them. So... I wrote a series of window programs to
do the trick.(or tricks)
 The first one was base on a contour map idea. You draw a bunch of contour lines
and the program make a tga image by filling those lines. That'll let you place
roads, hill, lakes just where you want.
 The second program took that tga and let you do thing to it. Like roughing it
up, smoothing things out, flattening areas.
 The last program was made to put stuff on the height field made with your final
tga image. It started out just just to put stuff ON the height field.(trees,
bridges, houses...)  It grew so that you could put things above also. It lets
you select 16 different arrays to store locations. So I use an array to put
trees ,weeds then another to make a fly over path.
 I don't use them much an more. I haven't used height fields lately. Right now
I'm making log cabins.

All three are at my 'new' web site   https://leroyspovstuff.yolasite.com/

Hope this helps!
Have fun!

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