C.O.R.I.M.A.P.S. - A Tutorial for SimCity 4

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

A SimCity 4 Tutorial

 

Cloud Oriented Region Import Method Adding Painted Streams

by CorinaMarie@Simtropolis

In this guide I present a method to create a grayscale image from which to render a random rolling hills terrain map that has water streams and rivers added.

Here's a random sample of a map I created using this method:

 

Note: The following is merely an alternative method to create a semi-realistic, fictional region map for SC4.  Before you waste any time reading this please be aware that the defacto standards for map making are: SC4 Mapper, SC4 Terraformer, and Landscape Designer.  Use them if you want something better. Also, as mentioned by @RobertLM78 in a reply in this thread there is another one by Ordio called Simcity 4 Region and Config Creator.

However, many peeps have said they cannot run those programs on later versions of Windoze or other OS's so what I'm presenting here is simply another method by which one can make a decent map with minimal time and effort. I'm using GIMP for this guide because it's free to anyone. Any good image editing program will have the same tools I use in this guide.

The method is quick and easy.

Initial Steps

1. Load your SimCity 4 Rush Hour or Deluxe game and create a new region. Name it whatever you want. For this tutorial I'll use Cloud Map. Exit the game, or at a minimum, exit the new region by opening a different region. This is so the existing config.bmp file is not in use.

2. Create a new config.bmp file. For this tutorial mine will be 12x12 pixels. See Config.bmp: How to Make it Yours if you are not already familiar with it.

3. Save that config.bmp into the new region folder you just made. (Overwrite the existing one.)

4. You should now have region.ini and your config.bmp in your new region folder.

Making the Grayscale Image

1. Go outside and take a picture of some clouds.

2. Load the picture into a decent imaging program.

 

3. [Optional] Crop it if there are cloudless parts you don't want in the image. In Gimp it's the Rectangle Select Tool over in the upper left of the tools box. Or you can press R. Draw a box around the part you want to keep.

 

Then go to the Image Menu and select Crop to Selection...

 

4. Scale the image to the appropriate size based on the config.bmp you will be using. As we learned in @Birdin's config.bmp guide we multiply the dimensions of config.bmp by 64 and add 1. So 12 * 64 = 768 + 1 = 769. The height and width are the same since my config.bmp is 12 x 12.

Go to the Image Menu and select Scale Image...

 

That brings up this Scale Image dialog box. First click the little linked chain to the right of the Width and Height boxes to break the chain. This tells the program that we are not concerned about keeping the cropped selection proportional to the original image. Type in the Width and Height dimensions that you calculated in the beginning of this step. For this tutorial I entered 769 in both boxes. Then click the Scale button.

 

5. Convert to grayscale. Go to the Image Menu and select Mode --> Grayscale.

 

6. Export the image as a .Bmp file. Go to the File Menu and select Export As ...

 

When the export dialog box comes up, look in the lower left for the little bitty plus sign in a box by the Select File Type (By Extension) and click it. That will open up the File Type selection box. Scroll down and click Windows BMP image.

 

In the upper left in the name box, type in Gray 1 in front of the .bmp. Note only the name portion is pre-highlighted in blue indicating what part to type over. (Brilliant programming imo.) Remember which folder you export (save) the file to. That's indicated by my arrow in this next pic. Mine is going into My Documents. Click the Export Button.

 

The next dialog box has some options. I simply click the Export Button. (I believe one could select the Run-Length Encoded to reduce the file size. I haven't tested that, so I leave it unchecked.)

 

And here's what I created:

8. Close all files. I personally do not let it save my original clouds with the cropping and changes so that way I still have my unaltered original.

9. Close your imaging program. (Or if your comp has plenty of memory, just minimize it.)

First Render

(These interim steps are what I did when learning. I skip them now I know what I'm doing.)

1. In SimCity 4, open the new region you created. Mine is called Cloud Map.

2. Press the magic key combination of Shift+Ctrl+Alt+r. This brings up the file selection box.

3. Drill down to where you saved your grayscale image file and select Gray 1.bmp then click Ok.

 

4. Now wait while the map is rendered. You will see Creating New City like this:

 

And here's our first draft render. Note that it's way too choppy. We will fix that soon. The reason I did this preliminary render is to see what part is water.

 

Tweaking the Grayscale Image

1. Reopen Gray 1.bmp in your image editor. We will paint in our rivers and streams before we smooth out the rough, choppy bumps. Select the Paintbrush tool and set it to Acrylic 05. Leave the size at 20 point for now. I selected Acrylic cause it adds a random pattern to the edges of what you paint.

 

2. Click the foreground color selection box. It's right under all the tools on the left. That brings up the Change Foreground Color choices. Type 40 in Red, Green, and Blue. Yes, I already hear peeps saying: Wait, that's too dark. Stay with me on this.

 

3. Now paint in streams / rivers. A twitchy hand actually improves the realism.

 

4. Now to smooth out the choppiness of the hills. From the Filters menu select Blur --> Gaussian Blur... This also blends the rivers and streams so that's why I picked color level 40 (which equates to 120 meters height after rendering but doesn't count the blur merging). This'll be an area to experiment on your own based on your original cloud picture.

 

5. In the next dialog box change the Blur Radius to 10.0. Or pick your own number. Higher numbers means more smoothing and lower ones give less.

 

6. Export the image as Gray 2.bmp. Here's my new grayscale:

 

7. And here it is rendered:

 

The map is now ready to paint trees in game or load your favorite terrain and tree and other landscape related mods. Or, tweak it some more.

 

Further Refinement

1. Let's say I want everything to be a little lower elevation to get a bit more water. From the Colors menu select Levels...

 

2. Then I adjust the Gamma Level to 0.85. (I derived this number thru trial and error for this particular cloud image.)

 

3. Here's the new Grayscale image I exported as Gray 3.Bmp:

 

4. Here it is rendered:

 

5. And then I painted Maxis trees in every tile:

 

Edit 2016.11.02

I've discovered a couple new things. I started with this cloud picture:

 

Then in GIMP I did the normal stuff outlined above and then I used the Burn Tool to lighten the banks of the rivers:

 

And I blurred it after that. Here's the grayscale I created:

 

Another new thing I noticed is having mods for terrain, rocks, water, and beaches already installed means the import rendering colors the region view with them so I don't have to go into each tile to do that. Here it is rendered:

 

Then I did go in and paint Maxis trees as thick as the program would allow:

 

^ What I really like is the banks of the rivers seem more realistic to me inasmuch as they show the effect of previous flooding. Also my heavier use of Gaussian Blur means the map is much more friendly when using a slope mod to lay out the transportation network.

 

Where to go from here

1. You can alter the gray shade of your paintbrush to a lighter one and paint along the sides of the streams to create gentler slopes if you like. It's best to do that before adding the blur cause the blur does a bunch of evening out. (See my edit above. Using the Burn Tool works even better for this.)

2. If your cloud picture has a much lighter blue sky you might want to play with brightness, contrast, or color levels to darken it before for you start any other part of the editing. Use the Color Picker Eyedropper to see what shade any given area in your grayscale is. Providing you have not installed a Height Mod with an alteration to the scale factor and/or sea level, grayscale 83 is slightly below sea level. Lower values are farther under water. Grayscale 84 is slightly above water. Higher values are then higher elevations up to a max of 255 (white).

3. Experiment with various options in the imaging program. Render and see what you get. Learning by doing is loads of fun.

4. Experiment with altering the moisture content as discussed here to change the ground texture appearance.

5. Extract the Terrain Properties exemplar from Simcity_1.dat and play around with the variables there like ImageImportScaleFactor and SeaLevel or the Erosion settings.

And Lastly

Feel free to post your map creations in this thread. Ideally, post both the final grayscale image and then a region screenshot. Reply with what you've discovered that might be useful to other peeps.

[FoxieHikari 212]

Amazing method Cori! It looks like i could use this method to create come really good mountains for future map. It looks like it's 100% guaranteed to work, and that's something a lot of people could get behind. Is this the method you use to create maps? (I just can't build w/o flat terrain tho.)

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, TheLynx99 said:

Amazing method Cori!

Thank you! Thank you! It does my heart good to hear that.

1 hour ago, TheLynx99 said:

Is this the method you use to create maps?

Yep. So far it's the only method I've used, however, my earlier ones were not nearly as refined. I just recently came up with the idea of the Blur to smooth out the choppiness.

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Great work with this tutorial. Just had a read through and it looks like a very cool method for map creation. I'm sure it could lead to all sorts of possibilities -- using different images and techniques, etc. It does have an element of randomness, which would make each map unique. Maybe this could also form a possible challenge idea for next year...

[SecretMbr_735754 2,157]

Good work, this tutorial is easy to read, follow and understand.  I think the method you've described actually allows a lot more creativity than the map making programs, it puts the user in the front seat, from selecting a picture or photographing one, to then manipulating the image to make it useful, and finally adding their own creative touch by adding rivers/streams.    So in the final result, the region one plays really is their own.   The element of randomness is as natural as what I think is normal in any creative process.   

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

Very nice and I will try this for my next map.

[TekindusT 3,809]

Never thought that a realistic and varied map could be derived of a simple cloud image! Cool tutorial!

[jmsepe 2,038]

Interesting, clouds can now become patterns for cities. Great work in here. 

[rsc204 21,808]

It's about time I popped in to say "Whoa, cool!" here. As others have said, what an unexpectedly simple way to make such wonderfully random maps. Along with some great step by step instructions, thanks so much for sharing this with us.

[lsrprules2 7]

This is a really neat and resourceful idea. I'm not very creative/artistic so I could never come up with a landscape that was convincingly realistic on my own. Grayscaling clouds actually makes for a pretty natural-seeming geography. Thanks for sharing!

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Thank you all for your kind words and for the Likes on my first post !

I just now edited in a Further Refinement section near the end of post 1 which addresses changing the overall elevations of the map with a few simple mouse clicks.

Also, feel free to post samples of what you make using this technique. I'd love to see what everyone else creates.

[Manuel-ito 322]

This is pretty nice! Never thought of using photos of clouds as a grayscale map before. Need to try this somethime soon

[Revyzer 252]

Oh my gosh; that is actaully pretty helpful.  Clouds for grayscale, that's pretty creative, to be honest.

[RipRap 4,400]

These looks so far so good!

[fballjones 3]

Thank you for writing this <3.

[Starglow 45]

Thanks for writing this!  No more regions terraformed one tile at a time by hand for me!

[Benvoliorus 1]

That's fantastic

Simple and brilliant like any genius thing!

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

On 28/08/2016 at 11:26 PM, Benvoliorus said:

Simple and brilliant like any genius thing!

IKR! Er... Wait. I mean, D'aww, thank you.

 

So, this morning these clouds were begging to be shot as the Sun was waking up:

 

I did the following in GIMP:

1. Cropped to get rid of that telephone pole and wires.
2. Converted it to grayscale.
3. Scaled it to 769 x 769 pixels.
4. Adjusted Contrast to +15.
5. Added Gaussian Blur of 10.0.
6. Rendered in game.

And here's what it looks like:

 

Then I painted Maxis Trees all over it:

 

I'd love to see what other peeps create using this method. Post them in this thread.

 

(I've attached the Config.bmp and my final grayscale in case anyone would want them.)

config.bmp

Gray 3.bmp

[nilepereiraa 21]

18 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

...

I'd love to see what other peeps create using this method. Post them in this thread.

 

(I've attached the Config.bmp and my final grayscale in case anyone would want them.)

config.bmp

Gray 3.bmp

This!

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

I'm definitely going to give this a try at some point. It would be neat to see what variations everyone can come up with.

[raynev1 1,886]

    Nice tutorial , It is somewhat like what I did a long time ago (not the tutorial , but a map . For personal use ) That was three PC's ago or I would have posted an image . I used MS Paint and Landscape Designer . Your tutorial is straightforward and easy to understand , even a dork like me could follow the directions and have a new map to play SC4 . Nice job and the maps turned out pretty good too . You have inspired me to pull out the old camera and give it a try . 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Ok, let's do something silly. Here's a picture of an asphalt driveway with bunches of little cracks in it:

 

I pulled it up in GIMP, scaled it to match my config.bmp, and converted it to Grayscale. Then I rendered it in game:

Yikes! Right?

 

With a practiced eye, I then re-edited the Grayscale. I adjusted the Gamma to 1.15 and added Gaussian Blur of 30.0 and here's what I got:

 

And then I painted Maxis trees all over it:

Pretty cool. No?

 

Here's the bmps for rendering in case anyone wants them:

 

Gray 2.bmp

config.bmp

[Starcade 22]

Very nice tutorial! For sure using this for my next regional map.

[Starglow 45]

I made a map!

First I grabbed this picture of some cirrus clouds from the NOAA.

 

Then I grayed it, resized, cropped and adjusted the contrast and brightness and used Gaussian blur.

And then imported it to a small region.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

On 18/10/2016 at 2:16 AM, Yum said:

I made a map!

Very nice! And when I saw your water was not default Maxis I wondered if you entered every tile to update it or if that happened automatically. So, having finished my Terrain Shoppe, I decided to do another map.

I discovered another cool thing to do when editing the grayscale image. Use the Burn Tool to improve the river banks. (See my edit near the bottom of post 1 for details.) Here's what I created:

 

 

Edit: Per @BugeyedDragon's request, I've attached the grayscale and my config.bmp to this post. Note that I'm not using any height mod so the default scale of 3.0 is how mine was rendered.

P9280003b Gray08.bmp

config.bmp

[Starglow 45]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Very nice! And when I saw your water was not default Maxis I wondered if you entered every tile to update it or if that happened automatically.

Thanks!  Yeah, you know, sometimes the rendered tiles sow up automatically on the region map, sometimes I have to go into the tile and exit before it shows up as not a plain tile in region view, and I've even seen a few times that some tiles are rendered while others are plain.  However, when the tiles do show up automatically as rendered in the region, they do show up with the correct water mod already active, so I don't have to go into city view.  I know you know which mod I use, but for everyone I haven't told yet, that's Pegasus' Hawaiian Holiday water mod and HD White Sands beach, found in the Water Shoppe and Beach Shoppe respectively.

[BC Canuck 207]

Hi Cori

As I was writing up that tutorial/custom content article I looked up your map making thread here.  Good Grief how did you make the leap from clouds to map making.

because the connection is so obvious (not!)  As someone else said "genius" idea .  This is such a unique way of making maps I thought I would try my hand at it. However I am quite clueless about that config.bmp file....

Currently just started a downloaded map with 8 medium tiles that has flat terrain along with mountains and rivers.  I tried others but they were either too "lumpy" or very large city tiles, and since I play rural/small towns/farms not appropriate for me.  Your cloud map making has possibilities I would be interested in pursuing.

So, attached is a picture of  the green sandbox region, medium tile size, I use.   I've been terraforming the tiles as I need to for my towns/farms and the medium tiles are the right fit for me.     Can I copy over the config.bmp file to the new region I create with your method?  And can I change the size from 16 tiles to perhaps 8 medium tiles...Sorry I'm in the dark about how to actually create the config.bmp.  

I need the "dummies" instruction version.

Hope you or someone else can direct me to the appropriate thread/instruction so I can read up on the "How To Do This" otherwise your instructions are very clear and easy to follow.   I'm just not computer savy enough to "get it".

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

On 09/11/2016 at 9:06 PM, BC Canuck said:

Good Grief how did you make the leap from clouds to map making.

It started in this thread. Where I made this map:

And at the time I was really happy with it. Then @T Wrecks gave me some good advice in this post (same thread). So I subdued the choppiness a bit and made this map using clouds:

 

Then a couple months (and several maps later) I had an inspiration to add Gaussian Blur and I re-did that first map and made this one:

 

Then a couple weeks later I wrote this tutorial. Next I started using a Slope Mod trying to make more realistic looking cities and I found even the map above was tedious to work on. So then I had another inspiration and came up with using the Burn Tool along the sides of the river banks and applying a lot more Blur. That's when I made this map (also pictured a couple posts up):

 

 

On 09/11/2016 at 9:06 PM, BC Canuck said:

I play rural/small towns/farms

Me too! Here's one of the tiles in the above map:

It's still a work in progress as my imaginary story line is the farms were laid out somewhat haphazardly except for the roads that will connect the tiles. No thought is given to where bridges will go as that's centuries in my Sim's future. Once I've filled my region with these farms and illiterate Sims, I'll then begin small centers with some industrialization. Public outcry over the pollution to their once pristine air will result in an elementary school and a move toward manufacturing. Right now I'm playing just for the fun of creation. I've already proven to myself I can handle the vanilla income vs cost and build bigger stuff, so now I'm playing more as if scripting my imaginary movie and so I've written my own cheat which gives me five times more income from the farms. This lets me have complete vanilla fire station coverage.

Anyhow, sorry. I got sidetracked there cause I'm having so much fun in my game.

 

On 09/11/2016 at 9:06 PM, BC Canuck said:

Can I copy over the config.bmp file to the new region I create with your method?  And can I change the size from 16 tiles to perhaps 8 medium tiles

Yep, you can copy any valid config.bmp into your new region. Just do the math to make sure the grayscale cloud image is the right size for the config.bmp you use. And yes, you can make the config.bmp whatever size you like. So, for 8 medium tiles you could use a 4x8 pixel config.bmp all painted green. Or a 6x6 painted green except 4 pixels in a square being not red, green, or blue to get just 8 tiles or paint it all green and you'd have 9 medium tiles arranged as 3 x 3. I believe it's explained pretty well in Config.bmp: How to Make It Yours.

If it's still unclear after reading that, just let us know and we'll see if we can explain it another way.

 

[SherylinRM 3]

Until this article I always stayed away from grayscale maps.

I might even try this next year.

Thanks for this

[cromabianca 158]

This is the wierdest thing I have ever seen doing in this game... and yet it's genius!!!!

 

Clouds for maps! Who would have thought that!!!! Absloutely brilliant!