- Home /
Should Heightmap Resolution be one greater than Detail Resolution?
In the Terrain examples I've found, the Heightmap/Detail Resolutions are usually 513/512 or 1025/1024.
Is there some reason they're not both regular multiples of eight, and is there any relationship between these two values that I should think about for performance or memory concerns?
Answer by Eric5h5 · Jan 13, 2011 at 05:27 AM
Terrain heightmaps need to be power of two plus one, because they construct a mesh, which is made out of quads (two triangles), and the heights are the values at the vertices. For example, a 3x3 heightmap:
+----+----+
| | |
| | |
+----+----+
| | |
| | |
+----+----+
No resolution has any relationship to any other resolution, other than if you use a really high heightmap res and a really low detail res, it will probably look bad. The larger the values, the more memory is used.
Hi Eric. I was wondering if you could elaborate on why a heightmap's resolution $$anonymous$$UST be a power of 2 plus 1. Is it because the resolution of the mesh that is constructed from the heightmap is defined in terms of the number of "squares" (ie, 4 squares as pictured in your post above), and if so, that resolution must be a power of 2?
Your answer
Follow this Question
Related Questions
[semi-solved] My .raw heigtmap repeats itself? 1 Answer
Is there any way to rescale a terrain map? 4 Answers
Quick Terrain Sizing Question! 0 Answers
Terrain: Detail resolution per patch 2 Answers
Terrainmap is lined 1 Answer