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Personaly I've always had extreme difficulty with doing a displacement map in photoshop. I just love using the Loathing tools. It does, indeed, take forever though... I enjoy rolling up a big doobie first, the time passes easier. Put on some good music and just get'r done.

Loathing's mesh editing tools have alot of various functions that many people don't know how to utilize. First off, it's very handy to know the quick-keys for selecting various different brush types and sizes, and tapers. Here's a breakdown:

F7: Swap tools [pan through Raise, Flatten, and Filter Tool]
F8: Toggle square brush to circle brush, vice versa
F9: Decrease brush radius (by .250 world units)
F10: Increase brush radius (by .250 world units)
F11: Decrease brush feather (by .250 world units)
F12: Increase brush feather (by .250 world units)

Now, a breakdown of the tools themselves, and the various editing palettes within loathing to change these tools.

Flatten: Personally I never use this one, however, it naturally, flattens the mesh. This means taking any mesh area, and bringing it's height to 0.0

Raise[Lower]: This tool gets used most often. By editing the size of your brush and feather you can cover large areas of terrain quite effeciently with this tool. By holding the mouse normally, you raise the mesh, and by holding shift and holding the mouse normally, you lower the mesh. Now, in some spots you might be detailing it, and you cant work with the speed that it raises at...So with the Raise Tool active, go under Edit: Tool Prefs, which should bring up a pane with the options of Raise rate, Brush, and Feather radii. You can fool around with the decimal factor on the raise rate to change how fast/slow your tool reacts with the mesh.

Filter: This is your detailing brush. It has several functions in itself that I'll break down below. There is only one Filter Tool, however under the Edit pane, you can select a drop-down menu and choose different functions for the Filter.

• Elevation Adjustment: This tool is sort of like a cross between the raise and flatten tools. You can set an increment that is a height Z value in the edit window, say for example 1.0, and then run the tool over the ground. It will raise the ground area you run it over by 1 world unit. You can effectively change elevations of an entire section, without mucking up the detail work you've already done.

• Absolute Elevation: This is like the Flatten tool, with an increment field to set the height to. So say you placed some walls that are 8 world units high, and you need to raise all the mesh up behind the walls to that height... You set your absolute elevation to that height, then paint the terrain in question. Can be a little jumpy at first (you'll see what I mean) and takes a little getting used to, but a very handy tool

• Smooth: This is probably my second most common tool next to Raise and works great in larger areas. I often set a small inner radius and a very large feather to get some soft smoothing effects. You can go into the Edit pane and change the smoothing radius as well. Leave the Filter Effect rate at 1.0, but for the smoothing radius make sure the radius is above 1.0. 1-2 will appear to do nothing to the mesh, however varius decimals above 2.0 will provide visual change on the map and help you soften up areas you may have gone a little gung-ho with earlier. Higher smoothing radius = smoother ground.

• Noise: This has the exact opposite effect from Smooth, however the same method of editing applies. It's great for creating textured looking crop plantations, and war-ravaged battle areas.


I hope this helps you adren, and possibly anyone else who reads this.

I've done all of The Fallen's Vengeance levels so far completely in Loathing... 23 and counting..

yes thanks graydon, i didn't know about any of that... and it answers alot of questions i have yet to ask

here's a few more:

How do I make my water wavy? I've made my reflection map, and I can see the wave movement in unit reflection, but the water itself does not appear to be moving.

Basically all I have right now is a color map, and a reflection map. Do I need to redo the color map after I make a displacement map... so I can add the displacement map as a layer to darken deeper water, etc?

I've had fun making the color map.... but I want to move past this stage and finish this up so I can play it How close/far am I from this being a reality?

You need to do a displacement map (the map that determines the heights and form of your 3d terrain) and apply it in loathing by importing it, so it looks nice, and to make the water appear a Water level map, which determines the height at which the water will appear.
You change the wave movement and form in Fear, under the mesh tag

The best way to understand how maps work is getting into loathing, grabbing any standard myth map there is (example=10 landing) and exporting all the maps it has.

then open in photoshop each map you exported and you'll see better how they work.

makes sense. thanks!