Terrain Heightmap
Grayscale image that defines terrain elevation
Also known as: Heightmap · Landscape heightmap · Terrain height map · World Machine heightmap · Gaea heightmap · Heightfield terrain
Definition
A terrain heightmap is a grayscale image in which each pixel's brightness stores the height of the terrain at that point, usually in 16 bits so that smooth slopes do not show steps. Game engines turn it into a landscape mesh, and tools such as Gaea, World Machine and Houdini heightfields generate and erode heightmaps with realistic mountains and valleys. Unreal Engine landscapes use specific resolutions, such as 1009 by 1009, 2017 by 2017 and 4033 by 4033 pixels.
In production
Create the base shape by hand or with noise, then apply erosion to get natural slopes, rivers and sediment, and export in 16-bit with the engine's required resolution. The same tool can export masks for slope, height and flow to texture the terrain. Check the scale: the height range and the horizontal size decide how steep the terrain is in the game. Sculpting tools in the engine allow touch-ups.
Learn Terrain Heightmap in
Tools that use Terrain Heightmap
See also
Landscape Layers (Terrain Texturing)
Painting materials onto terrain
Bit Depth
8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit textures
Displacement Map
Actual geometry from a texture
World Partition
Unreal Engine 5 large-world streaming
Houdini Digital Asset (HDA)
Packaged Houdini network with parameters
PCG (Procedural Content Generation)
Rule-based placement of content in Unreal