G16Ed is an application that edits UnrealEd 3 terrain heightmaps. These are 16-bit greyscale (G16), and can be exported from UnrealEd as BMP (Wikipedia:Windows bitmap) format. Currently, G16Ed is the only graphics application that allows you to work with this format and keeps the 16-bit accuracy of the heightmap, so you can change it while developing the map in the editor. The latest version has fractal noise creation and PSP-like interface.
You can't "see" more than 8 bits of grayscale in any image editors, since 24 and 32-bit textures have 8 bits per channel, and since grayscale means r=g=b, no video adapters will show more than that for one channel. Both UnrealEd and G16ed show you an 8-bit representation on the screen, but the full 16-bit information is there.
Tips
If you need to select a precise area of terrain, do the following:
- In UnrealEd, find the corners of the area you'll want to select. Go into Terrain Mode, and set the brush size to the absolute mininum and the strength to 100%.
- With the Painting Terrain Tool, lower the single terrain grid point that you want to mark. The further you lower it, the easier it will be to see in G16ed, so go as far as you like. You can actually do this step in an orthogonal UnrealEd Viewport, which may be easier. Don't worry about damaging your terrain, you can easily restore the lowered point with the Flatten tool later.
- Export your terrain once you have marked all reference spots you need
- Open it in G16ed. Zoom in on your terrain. Your reference points should be clearly visible as single black pixels.
Feature requests
- define a selection numerically
- rotate non-square areas
- clearer indication of which tool is currently active
Comments
Aphex: Whoops re: bug - I tested it with terragen heightmaps which I found out later are flipped in the Y axis :o
Tarquin: That would be cool :D
Aphex: New version of g16ed uploaded. That Y flip bug Tarquin; what were you importing? The code seems to work ok as far as I can see...
Tarquin: 16-bit bitmaps from UnrealEd. The bug appears fixed in 145. I have just tried opening files in both 145 and 144, and in 144 they are flipped and 145 they are fine. Nice work! :)
Aphex: Lol - I probably fixed it ages ago and forgot ;) I'll add the other improvements when I get time.
Anonymous: A wonderful tool thankyou - I have been searching for something that did this job for days and yours is the only one that works. I used it to export to an 8 bit image that I could then edit in the GIMP and then I converted it back into 16 bit again.