So I'm making a map and I've been following tutorials like Map in a month and, level building with lidar. in the 3d viewer in blender the model looks smooth, but when I import it to beamng with a heightmap it is just spikey and choppy. it basically looks like the colour gradient is rough any tips would be highly appreciated
Two problems with importing real terrains: The elevation models often have artifacts that result in spikes, cracks, or other discontinuities. One map I abandoned had a river that jumped about ten meters before returning to its normal level. There are only 256 shades of gray, which results in terracing. You can reduce the effect by introducing a blur (Gaussian, small radius) in GIMP or another editor, but you will probably have to smooth it manually. I've also found it effective to scale up a heightmap in IrfanView using the Lanczos filter. GIMP got rid of Lanczos in favor of LoHalo/NoHalo, but they wreck fine detail. I've found that DEM exports, despite being maps of real terrain, have too many discontinuities to look realistic. I've had some luck importing a DEM heightmap into Gaea using a File node, then reprocessing it to restore realistic fine detail.
It may not be relevant anymore but 8 bit heightmaps do this. 16 bit heightmaps solved my problems with jagged terrain.
16-bit is all I ever use, but it still doesn't increase the number of gray shades. At least it's more than 50...
