Terrain Dimensions and Formats

Terrain Dimensions and Texture Formats

Size	The maximum size of a terrain (the height field size) is 32768+1 × 32768+1, which is equivalent to the vertex count. The minimum size of a terrain is 256+1 × 256+1.
Height map	The height map is imported during terrain creation. It needs to be of a power-of-two + 1 size (such as 257 × 257 or 513 × 1025). The possible formats are the following: R8 - a simple height map with 256 height gradations. R16 - a height map with 65536 height gradations. RG8 - a height map with 65536 height gradations. This format can be used, for example, when the height map is exported.
Holes	The texture that determines holes placement on the terrain. It needs to be of a power-of-two + 1 size to cover the entire terrain. The possible format is R8. Holes are cut per vertex and always have squared corners.
Diffuse and Normal	The diffuse texture as well as imported normal map needs to be the of the power-of-two size (for example, 256 x 256). Alpha channel of the diffuse texture controls the specular intensity.
Mask	The mask texture needs to be of the power-of-two size. Each channel of the mask controls the visibility of one detail material (according to their order on Materials tab): Red channel defines the visibility of the 1st material, Green channel - of the 2nd material, Blue channel - of the 3rd material, Alpha channel - of the 4th material. Mask channel value of 256 indicates that a detail material (it is mapped to) is visible; 0 results in no detail material. The possible mask formats are the following: 3D texture of R8 format that allows to mask from 1 to 4 detail materials 2D texture of the following formats: R8 - to mask 1 material RG8 - to mask 2 materials RGB8 - to mask 3 materials RGBA8 - to mask 4 materials

For each surface, a texture of the necessary size can be reassigned, introducing more or less resolution on demand.

Notice

Never forget to compress all terrain textures!

Here is the example of terrain configuration. All sizes are specified for compressed textures.

Terrain Size	The Number of Surfaces	Maximum Size of Terrain Texture*	Height Map	Normal Map (ATI2)	Diffuse Texture (DXT1 / DXT5)	Mask Texture (DXT1 or ATI1 / DXT5 or ATI2)	Total Size
16384 × 16384	64 × 64	262144 × 262144	512 MB	256 MB	128 MB / 256 MB	128 MB / 256 MB	1024 - 1280 MB
8192 × 8192	32 × 32	131072 × 131072	128 MB	64 MB	32 MB / 64 MB	32 MB / 64 MB	256 - 320 MB

* The maximum total size of any terrain texture implies that each surface is assigned a texture of maximum 4096 × 4096 size.

Terrain File Structure

Terrain data is stored in the following files:

.ter file stores the meta information about terrain object, such as bounding box of terrain, bounding boxes of surfaces and whether they are enabled or disabled. It also stores vertices of a coarse level (LOD 8).
.ter0000 (and files with names of incremented hexadecimal value) store information about heights in terrain surfaces (up to 8×8 maximum), LOD 1 and LOD 4, as well as information about holes.
_d.dds is a coarse diffuse texture.
_n.dds is a coarse normal map.
Per-surface diffuse, normal map and mask textures (00x00_x.dds with a postfix) are stored in a separate folder that is named after the terrain file.

NoticeIt is recommended that terrain files are not archived, as accessing them in real-time will result in slowing down both rendering (textures and height maps streaming lags) and physics calculations.

Last update: 2017-07-03

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Terrain Dimensions and Formats

In This Article:

Terrain Dimensions and Texture Formats

Terrain File Structure