Need Utility to edit .hgt files on Windows

[Guest ptwaugh]

I can't seem to edit .hgt files with photoshop, as suggested in the Starti manual.Anyone know of a windows paint program that will allow editing of .hgt files?Thanks.

[Guest luissa]

Hi,With Sbuilder you can transform HGT > BSQ followed by BSQ > BMP. Then you can edit the bitmap.Regards, Luis

[Guest jimkeir]

Hi,.hgt are basically raw data. Photoshop will load RAW but you may need to change the file extension from ".hgt" to ".raw" first. The settings are on p25 of the manual :) although I don't say to rename it, so it could probably be clearer. When you load the file into PS, it should pop up a dialog box asking for these settings:[hr WIDTH=50%]Last, you need to set

[Guest HC001ST - Stick]

Jim,You wrote:Glad to hear you got it going anyway. Now that you've seen the expected results, do you think it'll be easy enough to do it again with your own data?-----BTW, I'm not sure what you mean that I can't pick an exact value with PS CS. I can load a 16 bit image and use the color picker to pick up a color of a pixel.Yes, after "doing" it ("To know is to do" by Tarter), I am now better able to understand what you are saying in certain unclear (for me) parts of the manual.The main reasons parts were unclear were that a) I had never read the Terrain SDK, sometimes what you say in the directions are only understandable after having completed a step (once or twice) for the first time, and in some parts there could be just a bit more direct direction on when/what to do. Again, though I don't want to detract from what an excellent job you did do! For myself and others I have talked too, this is the 1st time that anyone has put enough info together in one place for us even to attempt this. Over and over again, I hear how please others are to have such detailed explainations.My own preference would be to have a step-by-step tutorial at the beginning, assuming no knowledge, with the references after. The part before the tutorial made no sense to me (.inf stuff) before I had completed the tutorial.Yet, in retrospect, if I had suffered thorough reading some of the switch commands, or at least reviewed them as they came up in the tutorial, I might have more quickly understood what I did wrong.In particular, I had no clue that in one step I was compiling the water stuff, but that it depended on the mesh being compiled already. I had sort of performed a "make clean", thinking it would get compiled again - wrong! But, after a more careful review of the contents of the directory it became apparent.The only thing that remains unclear to me now is if I need to be working on terrain in special sized chunks (matching LOD boundaries). Also, I'm interested in better understanding the resampling of data (ie over/under sampling) graphically. I'm going to attempt to take an existing .bgl and fix a part of the river. Specically, I'm going to try to put in a marina that got lost in the mesh design orignially.I was using US Mesh, but using LWMView discovered that it is only patches of the US, not the whole thing! So, I will probably use the SRTM data I downloaded (all of it) to create a new US Mesh.Sorry for the long post!

[Guest jimkeir]

Hi,BTW, I'm not sure what you mean that I can't pick an exact value with PS CS. I can load a 16 bit image and use the color picker to pick up a color of a pixel.Yes, that's right. What I've not found a way to do yet is tell PS to use an arbitrary specific 16-bit value. The walkthrough set the height of a lake to a specific value; in PS, I've only been able to select either 8-bit (0-255) or % (0-100). At best, that value could be up to 128 meters out. Cinepaint's only saving grace is that you can type in exact 16-bit values to paint with. if I need to be working on terrain in special sized chunks (matching LOD boundaries)Yes, you do, but Slarti will try and take care of some of that for you. the mesh compiler from MS will only work with entire LOD areas; anything less gets cut off. Slarti can pad your data but that's not to useful, because you end up with mesh at sealevel. It's better to download a bit extra mesh and tell it to only process a section of it.I think there's probably US mesh already done - Justin Tyme's stuff springs to mind. Might save you a bit of time, but it's more fun and more satisfying doing it youself :)Cheers,Jim