Feature Request #1: Enhanced Height Maps

[Olivier Saraja]

Hi all,

recently, I experimented heavily with the Height Map function. Woah, a cool 
feature indeed, far more powerful than the Noise of a Mesh workaround 
available within Blender. But alas, I think the way kpm handle this kind of 
object could be enhanced.

As always, my complain is about the representation in the 3d views: I'd like 
to see at least level lines describing the geometry of the landscape within 
the box describing the Height Map boundaries: it would considerably ease the 
placement of many objects fitting in the landscape, houses, light towers, 
bushes and trees, etc... Could you think it would be easy to implement? I 
mean that curves of level could easily be extrapolated from the height map 
and plotted in 3d in any of the views... Ideally, we could set the tightness 
(e.g. the space between two levels) of the curves, using percents of increase 
(a curve each 15% of elevation could be a good default value).

This feature would help a lot in constructing whole outdoor scenes without 
using terraform or other terrain generators... I think that kpm is near to 
self-sufficientness... (huh! does it really sound english??? ;o)

Very soon will come a new tutorial about Height Maps... I'm still waiting for 
the publication of the two previous tutorials in a french linux magazine 
before setting them online... :o( Sooo long to wait! :o(

-- 
Cheers,
Olivier Saraja
<http://www.linuxgraphic.org>
<http://www.blender-cafe.org>