[3.1X][How to] Import a real world heightmap into the editor

Full instructions, start to finish on how to find a real world location and prepare the heightmap data to importing it into Unturneds Editor to give you a unique, realistic setting for your map.

New Guide Update

I have released an update for this guide which is much simpler and faster to get the map you want!
Verifyed working on 3.15.2!
Check it out here:

http://saor-gaming.co.uk/unturned-easier-heightmap-method/

Getting the heightmap data

This section will cover how to find your heightmap and where to download it from.


1. Download Google Earth
2. Open Google Earth and find a nice place that you wish to use to create your map.
In my example I have chosen the Grand Canyon.


3. From the top toolbar, select a placemarker and place it on the area you want to use.
The properties panel for it will open up and give you the longitude and latitude of the location.

4. Now go to http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2_1/SRTM3 this site contains global heightmap data.
5. Select the region your location is in. In my example it would be North America.
6. The site will give you a list of files for each North/South East/West coordinate.

7. Now since in my example the coordinates were 36.2 Degrees N and 111.55 degrees W round these numbers, you get N36W112

8. On the site with the heightmap data CTRL+F to search for your location, if its not there double check your N/S/E/W on your coords or check another region.

9. Download the zip file and extract it somewhere easy to get to, my downloads, desktop etc.

Congratulations you have your heightmap data!

Making the heightmap data usable.

Unturned requires a heightmap image, not raw data, this section will show you how to get the heightmap image you need for your awesome map!

1. Create a folder on your desktop or somewhere for you to work.
2. Download MicroDEM for opening the raw heightmap data.
64bit MicroDEM[www.usna.edu](Windows only)
32bit MicroDEM[www.usna.edu](Windows only)
3. Move the md64/microdem file to the folder you created.
4. Open md64. When it starts it will ask you to open a project, click close.
5. It will then ask to update several things, click yes to everything as it comes up.

6. Once the program is updated, at the top right, click open then open DEM.
7. Navigate to where you saved extracted the zip folder you downloaded earlier. Open the file.
8. You should now have a nice heightmap image!
9. First we will check you got the right area! Right click the map and go to Export > Quick map to Google Earth.
10. This will make the image overlay on its exact coordinates on Google Earth, so you can check you got the right area where you placed your marker. If you got the wrong map section, double check your rounding on your longitude/latitude, you may of rounded them both down or both up, they should be rounded up if equal to or higher than .5 and rounded down if lower than .5.
11. Go back into MicroDEM. Were going to make sure the depth is correct for your height map.
12. Go to Modify on the toolbar, then click Elevation, a window will pop up.
13. What we do here is set the range of grey colours so we get nice smooth transitions and set our sea level correctly. Select Gray Scale (monochrome)
The "Missing" colour block, which is black, is our sea level colour, Black = Deep, White = High.
If your map shouldnt have any sea in it, and theres some black parts on your heightmap, this is missing data, you should change your Missing colour block to a grey closer to the shade around the missing area, so you dont have sudden oceans or rivers where there should be none.

14. Click the z Range button.
The "z Range" defines the range of heights that will map to our grayscale, 0-255 values.
The Max and Min values are the range of heights picked up from the heightmap data. So in my example since 2593 is the highest elevation, that is the max for the z range. These areas will be bright white. Min is the lowest elevation in the heightmap, as such they will be black.
Any "missing" data will be black as well as I have said previously.

You can change these values to make a height map overall more flat, or steep. Simply raise or lower the Max value. Raising it say, to 4000, will put the range from 853 to 4000, meaning our actual highest elevation in the heightmap of 2593, will be just about halfway on the z range, so it will be a grey colour rather than white. Effectively flattening the map. Lowing the Max value will have the opposite effect.

In my example I left the values default.

15. Click Ok to close the z Range and Elevation window.

Your image should now be a nice grayscaled heightmap.

16. Click File > Save image > Name your file Heightmap > Save Type as PNG > Click Save

You can now close MicroDEM!

Adding the heightmap to unturned

In this section we will generate our map with our heightmap image.

From the last section we have our heightmap.png file, this image may be too large for the map size we want, we need to resize it to fit the Unturned map sizes.


The image we saved from MicroDEM was 669x830.
We either need to resize it to one of the below sizes, which would squash it/stretch it.
Or only use a section of the heightmap image.

This below table shows the resolution you need for each map size.

HeightMap Resolution	Map Size
1025x1024	Insane
513x513	Large
257x257	Medium
129x129	Small
65x65	Tiny

Since our image is too small for insane, I will use a large map.

1. In photoshop/GIMP/Paint.net create a new image 513x513 (or your desired map size resolution)

2. Add in your heightmap image. In photoshop, I opened the image then selected the entire image (ctrl+A) and then pasted it as a new layer into into the 513x513 project. this is so we can keep the full resolution of our original image.

As you can see in the below picture our heightmap is too big for the image.

3. You can now either stretch or shrink the image to fit the specified resolution. Or you can keep it the same resolution and crop it to fit the 513x513 image size.

Heres 3 comparisons

Stretched, aspect ratio not kept.
Stretched, aspect ratio kept.
Cropped.

4. Flip the image horizontally as Unturned flips it for some reason. Then save the image as heightmap.png

5. Open up unturned 3.x

6. Go to Workshop > Editor

7. Create a map of the size fitting your heightmaps resolution, in my case, Large.
8. After clicking Add. Minimize Unturned.

9. Open up the Unturned folder in your Steam/Steamapps/common folder

10. Open the maps folder

11. Open the folder with the name of the map you just created, in my case GrandCanyon.

12. Open the terrain folder.

13. Copy your heightmap.png file into the directory.

14. Go back to Unturned. Click on your map on the right and click Edit.

15. The map will be black, so hit terrain > materials > then in the bottom right Bake Global.

This is just so we can get some textures in to see our lovely work.

Tada your heightmap has been imported!

Heres what mine looks like.

How pretty! Barn in the distance for scale :)

[JJBMartin]

Is there an updated guide, was following this but am running into some problems - my height map shows up blue in Microdem so am stuck at that point.

[LazySpaceRaptor]

I want to do this with my hometown.

[KeasKa]

does this still work since there are more than one type of heightmap?

[Dune Jumper]

This is amazing.

[Admiral Bratan]

It works! Thank you very much! :D

[Wully]

Sorry the websites down. I've submitted a ticket with the host and waiting for them to resolve it.

You might be able to access it via google cache.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oLjmwcskfh8J:saor-gaming.co.uk/unturned-easier-heightmap-method/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

[Admiral Bratan]

I can't access the website with the easier method. :/

[NinoSecret]

Nice! I am waiting just for your tutorial to start my map

[Wully]

Updated version of my guide here:
http://saor-gaming.co.uk/unturned-easier-heightmap-method/

[Wully]

I figured it out Nino ;) I'll post an update soon.