Easy way to add countour/elevation lines

[Syt]

Battle Command? The MAK sim?

No, this one is by Historical Software.

[redleg7]

You did look at the Fun With Wilbur set of tutorials, correct?....

Rgr I did, and I was able to do a few neat things with it, in fact I think I emailed you about how I was using it. I intend to experiment with it even more, I'm swamped with creating maps at the moment for some upcoming exercises. I like those contour linesin your attachment, is there a way to "round" those mountains so they look more like rolling hills? The neat thing about creating maps my own maps is the ability to create terrain decisions of my choosing. For example putting one hill within small arms range of an objective and another hill that's not. Or creating two bridges where one is in fairly open terrain and the other is easily accessible from a wooded area that provides good cover and concealment. This is one of the biggest reasons we do not use any kind of imagery or real piece of "dirt". In most cases I want to create a terrain problem that has one good answer and one bad answer. For more advanced audiences I may create terrain problems that have many shades of right or wrong depending on the situation.

I think Wilbur has some great potential, I just need to figure it out.

[redleg7]

No, this one is by Historical Software.

Rgr, Mike Pelosi no relation to Nancy. It's a good game but very detailed, learning curve is somewhat steep.

[MitchPjm]

Not sure if this is what you are asking for or not, but if you have the height map/greyscale image then this might sufffice:

(Quick and dirty for the moment until I get a cahnce to document it properly - Works in either PS or GIMP)

1. Posterize your image (number of levels determines how many contour lines you want) - You can create/duplicate new layers etc here as you wish.
2a. In Gimp Filter > Edge-Detect > Edge (then you can play about with the setting until it looks ok.
2b. In Photoshop Filter > Stylize > Find Edges

Then you can mess with the contour line layer, stroke or blend it with another layer to get your desired effect. You do get double lines where it detects the lower and upper edges. I imagine there are ways around it, and a more adept PS person may be able to help out here. Personally I liked the GIMP effort myself.

As I say, I will try and get a more detailed tutorial here soon.

[MitchPjm]

Here is the before and after done in GIMP.

And the final one is a Hypsometric rendering from link

[redleg7]

Wow great technique. I tried it for the first time this morning.

Here are the results. Sorry for the really late reply, I finally have a requirement to do a campaign map.

Not sure if this is what you are asking for or not, but if you have the height map/greyscale image then this might sufffice:

(Quick and dirty for the moment until I get a cahnce to document it properly - Works in either PS or GIMP)

1. Posterize your image (number of levels determines how many contour lines you want) - You can create/duplicate new layers etc here as you wish.
2a. In Gimp Filter > Edge-Detect > Edge (then you can play about with the setting until it looks ok.
2b. In Photoshop Filter > Stylize > Find Edges

Then you can mess with the contour line layer, stroke or blend it with another layer to get your desired effect. You do get double lines where it detects the lower and upper edges. I imagine there are ways around it, and a more adept PS person may be able to help out here. Personally I liked the GIMP effort myself.

As I say, I will try and get a more detailed tutorial here soon.

[MitchPjm]

Since I have just been playing with Wilbur, I subsequently found that it has the ability to generate a contour map of a height map/greyscale image. This can then be saved as an image, loaded into your drawing tool as an image and blended onto the map.