Elevation Guide

By Kumar Shah
created 6/30/03

Another important aspect of map designing is elevations. The ground that we live on, walk on or fight on has different elevations and same is to be seen in the maps we make. A flat piece of forest looks much more dull than one which uses elevations. First I shall explain to you the various tools used for elevation purposes and than I will show you some screens of good elevated portions of a map and guide you through them.

Elevation Tools

  • Raise/Lower Terrain : This tool is accessed from the toolbar and is used to either raise or lower the elevation on the map. Left-click in the desired area to raise the terrain height and right-click to lower it. For this tool also you can change the brush sizes according to your needs.
  • Sample Elevation : This tool also available in the toolbar is used to copy a elevation from one place to another. To use this right-click on the are which elevation you need to copy and left-click in the target area to copy the elevation there.
  • Smoothen : This tool is used to make the jagged part of the map/terrain much more smoother. You just left-click at the points where you want to smoothen the map.
  • Roughen : Exactly opposite of the smoothen tool, use this tool make your smooth terrain more jagged.

TIP : Roughen and Smoothen tools complement each other. You should use roughen for random elevations and smoothen to make them look better. Your map would look good this way.

Next : More on Elevations.

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