Ok get it while it is hot! 72K of Awesomeness!

http://www.alii3d.com/download/jojoe-3D-heightmap.zip

Screenshots:

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/6290/heightmapexample2.jpg
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/2279/heightmapexample.jpg
(the blue and green rectangles on the ocean are to show you where the bases are! :D )

Requirements:

Blender 2.59 or newer. (SVG is always broken only use stable version)
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

The AoS bitmap converter by Buildramer.
http://ace-spades.com/forums/topic.php?id=1023

After blender is installed, you should see the height map editor icon change. After every save the icon refreshes for a top down thumbs eye view of your project.

Features:

*Automatic X axis Mirror, so making symmetrical maps is 100% automatic now. (remove the tick from the "Symmetry" panel to the left of the 3D view.

*Both blue and green base are marked on the water.

*Grid is exactly the same as it will be in game m-key "Mapview"

*Uses open source software for that fresh open feeling your mother always told you about.

Tips.
Use the default "layer" brush first to map out where you want the shoreline. By default it paints exactly 1 row of blocks for the first stroke.

Use the "Grab" brush to quickly sculpt out major features like mountains or valleys first. then co back and "carve" and "build" smaller details later to save time.

Use the Add and subtract buttons frequently to randomize the terrain.

If you do not want any water in the map, make a HUGE brush radius. Zoom out with the mouse wheel, and click once on the center of the terrain.

The "flatten tool" is pretty nice for leveling out house and building pads.

The "Layer tool" is great for roads and rivers that you want at a spacific depth.

The "Draw tool" I nice for doing rolling hills and valleys.

The "smooth tool" is good for making nice roling hills, it gets rid of cliffs and holes if used correctly.

Look at the bottom of the editor. The text is the keyboard key layout!! Can browse easy!

Controls:
Left mouse button - Raise terrain (3D view only).
Control-Left mouse button "Diggs" rather than builds. (add rather than subtract)
Shift+Left mouse button - Smooth terrain (3D view only).
F- change the brush size/radius.
Middle mouse button - Rotate in the (3D view only).
Mousewhee- Zoom in and out
F12- Render the bumpmap.
F3- Save the bumpmap.
F: an interactive brush resize
Shift F: an interactive brush strength adjuster
Ctrl F: in interactive texture angle adjuster for your brush.
Shift B: a rectanglular zoom selection for close-up work
Alt B: hides all but selected rectangle
A: toggles airbrush
S: smooth
D: draw
G: grab
L: layer
I: inflate
P: pinch
V: toggles add and subtract in draw mode
* Use X, Y and Z buttons to toggle axis mirroring. (REMOVE ALL CHECKS FOR NON-SYMETRICAL MAPS)

*Click on the picture under "Brush" to change the mode.
* Change the brush size with the Radius slider.
*Control-W or control-S to save the blender file.

Coming soon:
Automatic Color map generator +textures for water.

Here is a video tutorial to get you guys going!
http://www.alii3d.com/download/JoJoe-Heightmap-Video.zip

Sounds awesome, definitively gonna play around with it. Thinking about making a video tutorial for noobs like me?!

Hi [Elite] Zeke.

Sure later on I will do a video.

But before then, here it is in 6 easy steps.

1. Get blender, run the heightmap.lend file you downloaded from here.
2. Leftclick anywhere on the ocean to add shoreline.
3. change the tools by clicking on the picture in the top left corner of the screen.
4. If you want to make a valley or a river/lake hold control and left mouse click to subtract rather than add.
5. After it looks cool. press F12 with your mouse over the 3D view to render the heightmap. (you will see it on the right side of the screen.
6. Press F3 over the BLACK heightmap view to save your heightmap. (control-s will save the blender file so you can tweak it later.)

Seriously, just jump in and start painting basically. :)

If only some one could make this for an easer way to make irons.
Looks great i will give it a go becuae i dont really get vox.

Ok, going to do! Ill give you my opinion after I use it ;D

<.< This was not meant for a 12 year old! You might have to make a tutorial starting up the program!

Crap, i just redid #6 sorry about that

6. Press F3 over the BLACK heightmap view to save your heightmap. (control-s will save the blender file so you can tweak it later.)

it is the black area on the right side of the screen.

I didn't even get there lol! I was still trying to find all the files -_- Ill try again later. Wanna go on one of your maps?! Im gonna test out some mods :D

Ok, sorry for the delay... 5k upload cap from Verizon!

http://www.alii3d.com/download/JoJoe-Heightmap-Video.zip

video should get you up and running right away :)

I will do some work on a converter script later on.

Sounds really cool, can't wait to start working on maps.

Dumb question, but how do you rotate the camera? (also would it be possible to upload the tutorial to youtube? Windows is being a douche and not letting me view it or choose the program to view it)

^Yeah same here. It may be the old software im using, but it is mostly a big douche ;D

Best reason to learn blender!

Ok figured out the scrolling while holding ctrl and shift changes the camera a bit, but is there a way to rotate?

@Articsledder
Holding the middle mouse button down will rotate the camera, and scroll wheel will zoom.
The numeric keypad does stuff too 7-top down view, 1 and 3 are front and side view snap.
5 will make it orthographic/isometric, or perspective.

@MegaDeuce,

Well ,you should only need to learn the controls I listed so far. That is the whole idea behind the template.
Blender is a great thing to learn tho. It has a really easy to use game engine that you can use without any programming knowledge.
The GE also has a Physics engine called Bullet, that is really fun to play with... Break things, and knock them over, just by turning on a couple of settings.

Thankyouthankyouthankyou

that helped so much, well on my way to making a default-ish map with a town in the center now.

@Articsledder,

Looking forward to seeing it :)

Adding some more Tips:

The "flatten tool" is pretty nice for leveling out house and building pads.

The "Layer tool" is great for roads and rivers that you want at a spacific depth.

The "Draw tool" I nice for doing rolling hills and valleys.

The "smooth tool" is good for making nice roling hills, it gets rid of cliffs and holes if used correctly.

Look at the bottom of the editor. The text is the keyboard key layout!! Can browse easy!

Alright, so I used this to make a cool map where there are lots of mountains, and in the center, there is a village with water. It may not be perfect, but I am only 12. Thanks JoJoe!

Darkness that sounds just like my map :/

Then again mine more of an even default map with the river in the middle.

Edit: I'm also having trouble with converting the hieghtmap/bitmap. Could you sort of make a short walkthrough on that part? The readme and thread for the bitmap converter is extremely vague for someone whos never converted a bitmap before and I just keep getting the moon example instead of my map.

@Articsledder

What I did was edited the example.bat with my Color.bmp first and then my Heightmap.bmp after that. It sorta puts the color of the first image and puts it on top of the heightmap. I am just having colors with making the colors change with my height. Kinda annoying :P

Hope I helped.

Going to be adding some terrain coloring options to this later today 8)

JoJoe,

How do I fix the map wraparound so that at the edges, the mountains are even, and look like they go on and don't stop at a steep cliff?