Making terrain from contours in Crysis

Hi all, this is a short tutorial on how to make terrain from contour maps. It will be in 2 sections: 1 on crysis, 1 on photoshop.

Photoshop: creating a heightmap from contour map

1. Open Crysis and Go to: Terrain > edit terrain. Then go to: File > export heightmap

[The reason for exporting one from crysis is just to get the image size + format correct.]

2. Open the heightmap that you saved in photoshop

3. Find yourself a contour map (google) and open it in photoshop

[Here is the one I used:]

4. Select all (ctrl+a) while in your contour map, copy (ctrl+c) and paste (ctrl+v) into your heightmap.

5. Using paint bucket, start painting the areas inbetween contour lines from black to grey. If you are more careful than me, you will get a BETTER image than this;

[Note: each increment of the RGB (Red,green,blue) value, eg 122,122,122 >> 123,123,123, will become 1 unit of height. The maximum is 255,255,255]

[The units of your heightmap were selected when you first made your level]

6. Save your image as a new file (File > Save as).

7. Try importing it into Crysis

Crysis: importing a heightmap
1. Go to: Terrain > edit terrain
2. Go to: File > import heightmap
3. Select a image (must be in powers of 2 and a bitmap [.bmp] )
4. Click ok.

5. If you have some edges click "smooth". [Thanks to Tim for this tip]

6. Go to: File > Generate surface textures. Done!

Tryout some photoshop filters: