blender heightmap>beamng

Discussion in 'Content Creation' started by fillman86, Jul 1, 2025 at 7:51 AM.

  1. fillman86

    fillman86
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    Joined:
    Apr 18, 2020
    Messages:
    187
    I do my work in blender, I know that other's use other tools that may work better for map making. Blender can very simply export maps. I learned from this old tutorial - https://forum.rigsofrods.org/threads/tutorial-how-to-export-height-map-from-blender-to-ror.3073/ however a few little changes have happened, so I'll give my update to it (also so I can come back and remember how to do it).

    After you've made your map, place a camera, you can use shift+a to make one. By default it should be looking down, if not, make it look perfectly down, and have it sitting *above your map. Then change the camera to orthographic, and set the Orthographic scale to something that'll easily divide into your resolution (or just the same as your resolution)
    upload_2025-7-1_14-51-59.png

    now set your resolution (you can click and drag from the top to the bottom number to edit both at the same time).
    In my experience, this must be a power of 2, like 512, 1024, 2048... and perfectly square.
    upload_2025-7-1_14-52-46.png

    now go to the shading tab, and make a material that looks like this. Add things with shift+a again, you can instantly start typing to search for them, and make sure the outputs are correct. Optionally, you can see what it looks like now by clicking the button in the top right that I've highlighted.
    upload_2025-7-1_15-2-29.png

    Now press f12 to render the image as a picture, it'll open a new window. Click save as (I suggest not overwriting your previous ones).
    upload_2025-7-1_15-6-6.png

    Then PNG, BW, 16 bit, turn on "override", and set Raw.
    upload_2025-7-1_15-21-12.png

    Now select your map object (as an object, not in edit mode), and take note of the z dimension. If you don't have this side menu, whilst your mouse is in the main viewer, press n
    upload_2025-7-1_15-10-59.png

    Now in BeamNG's terrain editor, import your terrain as shown, but set the meters per pixel to something other than 1 if your orthographic scale wasn't the same as your resolution (you'll have to figure out how to math that out). Then using that z dimension from just above, put that in your max height.
    upload_2025-7-1_15-15-25.png

    Done. Trust me, don't skip steps.
     
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