Should Heightmap Resolution be one greater than Detail Resolution?

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In the Terrain examples I've found, the Heightmap/Detail Resolutions are usually 513/512 or 1025/1024.

Is there some reason they're not both regular multiples of eight, and is there any relationship between these two values that I should think about for performance or memory concerns?

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Answer by Eric5h5 · Jan 13, 2011 at 05:27 AM

Terrain heightmaps need to be power of two plus one, because they construct a mesh, which is made out of quads (two triangles), and the heights are the values at the vertices. For example, a 3x3 heightmap:

+----+----+
|    |    |
|    |    |
+----+----+
|    |    |
|    |    |
+----+----+

No resolution has any relationship to any other resolution, other than if you use a really high heightmap res and a really low detail res, it will probably look bad. The larger the values, the more memory is used.

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John 24 · Jan 14, 2011 at 04:21 AM 0

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Thank you for the detailed explanation!

yohosuff · Dec 02, 2012 at 03:02 AM 0

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Hi Eric. I was wondering if you could elaborate on why a heightmap's resolution MUST be a power of 2 plus 1. Is it because the resolution of the mesh that is constructed from the heightmap is defined in terms of the number of "squares" (ie, 4 squares as pictured in your post above), and if so, that resolution must be a power of 2?

Should Heightmap Resolution be one greater than Detail Resolution?

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