Height Map Editor

Height Map Editor is a tiny and portable software application designed to help you create, edit and save height maps, which are 2D representations of 3D terrains. It comes loaded with some handy options that should be easy to figure out.

Since there is no setup pack involved, you can save the app files to a custom location on the HDD and just click the .exe to launch Height Map Editor, provided that you have Simple DirectMedia Layer installed. Another possibility is to move it to a USB flash drive to directly run it on any other PC effortlessly.

The main advantage is that, unlike most installers, Height Map Editor doesn't modify Windows registry settings or create extra files on the disk without your permission, thus leaving it clean after removal. On the other hand, it hasn't been updated for a long time, and it may not work on some later Windows editions.

Height Map Editor is wrapped in a plain and simple interface that loads a height map by default at startup. You can draw on it using a brush, increase or decrease the brush size and customize the color, and easily navigate the map using a smaller embedded map that can be panned. It shows the map size and scale.

Moreover, the software utility features excavation and elevation tools, along with a height picker. You can make selections, replace selected heights or on a global level by color, fill in colors, zoom in an doubt, insert eternal Height Maps (.hmp) and bitmaps (.bmp), rise, sink, smoothen, rotate or flip the terrain, create a new one by specifying the size and base height, as well as generate a random terrain after establishing the seed amount. The project can be saved to file and resumed (.hmp format) or exported to an .bmp image.

Surprisingly, the program worked well in our tests, without causing the operating system to hang, crash or prompt error messages. It had a good response time to commands and left a small footprint on system resources, thanks to the fact that it needed low CPU and RAM.

You can test it for yourself to find out whether it works on your OS or not. Height Map Editor is backed by some handy settings for manipulating Height Maps.