Importing Landscape Heightmaps and Grayscale

Development World Creation
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I have been trying to use an imported heightmap (.png) to create my landscape in UEFN but received an error for the heightmap not being in grayscale. I used GIMP to change the image to grayscale, 16- bit, and used the Gamma setting in the Precision submenu under Image (I tried the sRGB, just to troubleshoot, but that didn’t work as expected). However, no matter the settings I am still receiving the error that the heightmap is not in Grayscale. I looked into this more and found another post about this in the Unreal Engine forum and the discussion is now locked saying it is resolved but it appears to not be for UEFN and I haven’t found any other information at the moment. All of the settings I mentioned were included in the now-closed discussion. @Flak

Thanks!!!

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Hello Padala,

In this doc it shows creation of an 8-bit grayscale texture.

Does it give the same error if you set it to 8-bit instead of 16?

Feel free to link the other, locked post you mentioned.

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Thanks for replying Astrotronic.

Yes, I had tried the 8-bit first and the other information I read suggested the 16-bit.

Here is the link to the other discussion:
The imported layer is not grayscale - Development / Programming & Scripting - Epic Developer Community Forums (unrealengine.com)

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Ah, It looks like there is some extra flexibility with heightmaps.

I’d try creating a new ‘grayscale’ file with GIMP and copying the map over into it.

If you want to post the file here I can poke around with it too. (I pay 10$ a month for Photoshop :money_mouth_face:)

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The error shows that the “file appears to 8-bit png, 16-bit is preferred but can continue”. The file is 16-bit, and it shows that information in GIMP. The issue is that the landscapes can come out looking like needles standing up on a board.

This image is supposed to be the heightmap of Fortnite Ch.1 Season 1. This one came out rather good compared to another.

FN Ch1 S1
FN Ch1 S1932×811 93.1 KB

Here’s a different outcome from a different heightmap with its grayscale image.

Result1
Result11273×777 113 KB

White topography Grayscale
White topography Grayscale1920×1675 403 KB

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Hi @padala23 I had this issue before and in fact, it’s still but I played around with it by blurring the image a bit to make the sharpness and the Differentiations between the colors (Bleck/White) smooth to avoid this spiky shape

I remember this answer of my question here of the forms

here is the link of it

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