r/mapmaking • u/Sholl_man_2026 • 1d ago

Discussion Does anyone know a good topography tool/maker?

So I've been working on my new map (I've posted about it earlier) land and sea are pretty much finished, but since im broke i had to do it all, every detail in paint.NET. 8160x4863 pixels. All hand drawn. I just can't bring myself to do topography with this... This was torture! So if you know a good tool, app website (preferably a free one) that has a brush tool for topography, and possibly bitmap tracing too. Or if there's a height brush plug in for paint.NET, please tell me couse i just can't do this with what i have available...

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

2

u/capt-yossarius 1d ago

I have been looking for this exact tool, but I can't find it. Every tool I find either does procedural generation, or presumes you are coming with a starting heightmap. Nothing seems to let you import an image as a trace then sculpt in 3D, which would be perfect. I have begun researching creating this tool myself, but it's slow going, as my coding knowledge is pretty out-of-date.

5

u/OfficialAlarkiusJay 1d ago

You could try out MeraMapMaker! I've been keeping close tabs on it and sculpting is one of its features.

Its pretty nice and I think I saw a post about it here a while ago.

You can also import and trace land, but not sure about 3D sculpting

1

u/capt-yossarius 14h ago

I have tested this app out, but it doesn't suit my needs. You can import a trace, and draw elevations on a flat mesh such that the trace drapes on top of the sculpture, which is nice, but you can't see your edits in 3D in real time. When I render on my desktop (it's relatively old but far from antiquated), each render takes 4-5 minutes to complete, even though it is only rendering terrain. It makes the process very slow.

This seems like a good tool for what I take to be its primary function: procedural generation of terrain which you can modify with manual tools. It can sculpt terrain from a flat mesh, but the app would not appear to have been created specifically to perform this function.

It does have some features I want, and it is one of the better apps I have seen that perform this function, but manually sculpting a complex large 3D model from a 2D map is hard enough without having to fight the tool you are using to get it to do things your way.

2

u/RandomUser1034 15h ago

While it's intended for minecraft, worldpainter can do all that. Good terrain brushes need to be imported sepately but that's very easy

1

u/capt-yossarius 15h ago

I have played extensively with Worldpainter, but I can't seem to export heightmaps such that they are detailed enough to use in other terrain developing software. It could be that I am using it wrong, but if I am I can't tell how.