Remove Stepping from 8bit Heightmap

Bug Reports
#1

Hi all. Been toying around with WM for a while now. Love the program. Plan to purchase a pro license when I can afford it.

One thing I’m struggling with however, is finding out how to remove stepping when using a low quality source image.

Basically. I have some old heightmaps that I have laying around that I want to bring up to standards with WM.

The source image is a 1024x1024 8bit tiff.

Any ideas how I can improve its quality without drastically changing the appearance?

Thanks in advance all. Very much appreciated!

#2

Add some combination of blur (to average out steps) and noise (to randomize things and put back some high-frequency detail the blur washes out).

#3

Hi there,

Navigate there:
C:\Program Files (x86)\World Machine 2 Professional\Examples\New Examples for WM2.3\Techniques

There is a project file named “Improving Real World Terrain”. In there you get to see how the author tried to solve the stepping problem. Though it’s destructive but it depends on how strict you are about the form.

#4

Thank you both very much. Both suggestions helped a lot. I went with the latter option with a lot of my own tweaks and values and it ended up looking practically the same but with more detail and no stepping.

Thanks a lot!

#5