Bumpy terrain from SC4 Mapper

[RedDunoVn 17]

Guy, I'm playing USA map and this happen, why it have so many holes. HELP ME PLEASE !!!!!

It look like this in SC4 Mapper

[markussaage 762]

hey @RedDunoVn, and welcome to Simtropolis!

You picked the right place to ask about your problems.
I've gotta say, I've never had a problem like this, but my first guess would be to ask you, are you running your game in Software Mode?
If so, did you try to switch to Hardware Mode? Does this happen with other maps or just with this one? What's the graphics adapter you're
using to pay the game?
That's just a few questions for starters. I am sure, the real gurus wills how up soon and provide you even better support.
But at least you've got something to work with for now...

Again, welcome!

[RedDunoVn 17]

3 hours ago, markussaage said:

hey @RedDunoVn, and welcome to Simtropolis!

You picked the right place to ask about your problems.
I've gotta say, I've never had a problem like this, but my first guess would be to ask you, are you running your game in Software Mode?
If so, did you try to switch to Hardware Mode? Does this happen with other maps or just with this one? What's the graphics adapter you're
using to pay the game?
That's just a few questions for starters. I am sure, the real gurus wills how up soon and provide you even better support.
But at least you've got something to work with for now...

Again, welcome!

Thanks you for your welcome and I run it in Hardware mode . This happen wwith other map wwhen i use SC4 Mapper

[Cyclone Boom 17,033]

One thing I wonder is whether the images you've used to import and render using SC4 Mapper are in a lossy or lossless file format.

With JPG images having a reduced file size due to compression, this means such renders would apply any averaging out with the details. Then in the game depending on the extent of reduced quality, it could be causing the bumpy terrain appearance which represents "noise" from undesired pixels. Your preview from Mapper does seem to show these clusters which are then more noticeable in each tile, scattered throughout the landscape.

From the import options in Mapper to create a new region:

It might be worth testing by importing a SC4M file. This is the Mapper-friendly format designed for optimal rendering with increased terrain elevation accuracy. If importing a standard 8-bit grayscale however, it's best to use one which is a pure BMP. This being a lossless bitmap image means there won't be the problem with JPGs where the compression is a detriment for preserving details (including terrain smoothness). One important point though is the image must be originally saved in this form. Simply saving a JPG to a BMP (lossy to lossless) won't improve quality degradation, since the data would be identical with the file saved again simply without further loss.

So just an idea of what's potentially the problem here. Should this not prove to be the cause, if you could post links to the map(s) you've tried rendering and we can then take a look to determine whether there's anything else not working properly.

  Edited September 12, 2018 by Cyclone Boom  
Added pic for clarity.

[Cyclone Boom 17,033]

Just adding to my prior post above...

After I've checked into this with @CorinaMarie, we came across this map of the USA with the same name from your preview pics. Then I loaded this up inside Mapper and saved it as a new region for testing. Once the 494 tiles rendered after a few minutes, I started SC4 and located the same one.

As follows:

Yep, very bumpy indeed. This looks identical with the undulations (previewed using the default Maxis terrain and water).

Then on the west coast over in Washington:

The uneven appearance was even more prevalent in the tiles representing the Rocky Mountains and other elevated terrain.

For instance:

 

So based on this I can confirm it's a limitation with this specific map. Most likely it was originally created as a JPG before being converted to a SC4M, and therefore suffers from the aforementioned issues I mentioned with quality degradation. For smoothness to be preserved, a large map especially covering such an area really cannot have such defects in the image. Every little detail is expanded on a vast scale, and so those unwanted pixels become much more noticeable.

As a possible alternative, maybe this map of the USA is more what you're looking for?

This consists of 240 large tiles, and the SC4M file opens in Mapper and can render it accordingly. Although it's far from completely accurate comparing to reality and with the scale (which would otherwise be pretty massive in SC4), I've found the terrain is a lot smoother and would be much more usable.
 

Spoiler

A region preview with Maxis flora and my terrain & water mod:

 

Then 3 samples without trees to show that the terrain is very buildable.

Firstly one of the more mountainous tiles:

 

Another with somewhat fewer mountains:

 

And finally one with gently rolling hills:

 

I hope this helps.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

1) There should be options in the terraformer to control how exaggerated the elevations are (e.g. vertical scale, smoothing etc).

2) Sometimes all water, even high-elevation lakes, are pictured as sea-level water (elevation sea-bottom). That can punch deep holes into the terrain where lakes and wide rivers should be. Before map-rendering such an image again, try image-editing to replace the dark spots with some more reasonable color copied from the shoreline. This will create flat areas that can then be covered with lake-water and shoreline "parks" such as those found in the PEG Pond Kit. They'll end up looking like lakes at appropriate elevation, but they won't be Maxis water.

 

[Cyclone Boom 17,033]

4 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

There should be options in the terraformer to control how exaggerated the elevations are (e.g. vertical scale, smoothing etc).

Here are the "Scale factor" options which are shown in the dropdown menu when importing an 8-bit grayscale image into SC4 Mapper:

Adjusting this can be needed so a map is rendered proportionally at correct height elevations in the game. It determines how many metres separate each grayscale unit, and so a higher value results in steeper transitions, stretching the land heights. This option in Mapper does the same job as DAT files containing the ImageImportScaleFactor and other terrain properties. These must be placed in one's Plugins folder when rendering a grayscale map using the standard in-game Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R method from region view.