The mapping uses four different materials and as there are only three color channels (red, green, and blue) the alpha channel is used as a fourth channel. BTW, I have had trouble creating such maps in Paint Shop Pro, even with the alpha channel.

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Okay, so the 4th channel is alpha, not black.  I sort of wondered about that, but I only played with it briefly and didn't dare question it.  Thanks for the clarification.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
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In my tests, The Alpha does not map to Material 04, but an RGB value of #000000 does. #000000 equates to black, IE no Red, Green or Blue.

Thanks for the clarification.

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If it still helpful to anyone you will need to create a 32bit png image to get it to work as an iclone heightmap terrain mask. 24bit is a common default for png files so you need to check. You can create a 32 bit png with gimp or photoshop the extra 8bits are for the alpha/transparencey information. Iclones terrain system needs an upgrade for sure. 

3d terrains like that are not found, at least by me. You can use a real HD Photo scene as a background. That does limit you in movement around the terrain though but it does come in handy for some scenes.

If you have a local area you can photograph.....that will help also by photographing different views for different scenes angles of the same area.

It would be nice if we could get iCloners to actually take photos like that from  their areas of Earth and offer them for such a purpose and use. With HD scene areas Photos we could use that to make our scenes from anywhere on Earth....if....only!!!  They would not be in 3d but could be used for different angle quick view shots.

Hollywood has them for sale and other websites too. $$$
The 3d world is taking over scene location shooting. It is much cheaper.



MSI GE66 Raider, Intel 10th Gen, I7, SC Turbo to 5.3 GHZ, 240HZ, 64GB 3300 Ram,  2x 1TB M2 SSD Drives, NVIDIA GPU RTX 2070/8GB, 55" Sony 4K Monitor  External data drives total 7 TB. and an AUDIO Studio Recording system.

Actually you can use photos and make it seem more 3 dimensional.
The great thing about 3d film making is we only need to generate enough of the terrain to fit the scene
Unlike a game where you need the whole terrain so the play can move around anywhere.

Here's a couple of "experiments" I did using photos

This one is photos used for the backgrounds. Only 3D here are the characters


this one is just a photo on a flat surface with 4 3D trees stuck in front of trees in the photo and particle effects in front of the water to make the water look like its flowing


This one is a photo that I cutup into its parts adjusted in Paint Dot Net and then used them to texture flat surfaces


And this one is a photo I cut up into parts and put on flat surfaces in sketchup
I then roughly modeled the shapes and imported them into iClone


Again these are just experiments. I wanted to see whether photos could be used effectively as 3D scenes in videos.
Yes, with more work than the very little I put into these, I think they can


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Bray42
Sharing photos freely between people around the world is something I have wondered about for a long time.
I just thought no one else would be interested. I take lots of photos for texturing and modeling. From Sydney down the NSW south coast in Australia mainly.
I'm willing to share with you (or anyone else willing to do this). By email probably the best way?


i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
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ahso LOL
This is very nice work........I think we need to make a few major posts.....Voice overs and HD scene images.
That can be a permanent sticky on the forum to keep it showing all the time. not lost in  the scroll.
I think this is a great idea for all IC users.

I will get with RL (on forums) and see what we can do. Thanks for doing that it was very nice to see them in use. I will fet back with you on getting some by PM...... by the way. I did a Pro Photo shoot in Australia in 1988-1989 but all the Slide film ended up being stolen. yea all of em and more I had stored in Germany for my personal Stock. wo.Same week I also lost my pro cam equipment, robbed in Rome, Italy.....about $10K so I just gave up. LOL whats a man to do? Life goes on, hu. I will be in touch....



MSI GE66 Raider, Intel 10th Gen, I7, SC Turbo to 5.3 GHZ, 240HZ, 64GB 3300 Ram,  2x 1TB M2 SSD Drives, NVIDIA GPU RTX 2070/8GB, 55" Sony 4K Monitor  External data drives total 7 TB. and an AUDIO Studio Recording system.