hftools Page

hftools Page - Landscape Utilities for Unix

last modified: 1998-11-18

hftools is a distribution of useful tools for creation, manipulation, and rendering of virtual landscapes. The programs contained within have been built on Linux and SGI workstations and should work on HP and Sun machines, too. The distribution makes use of several other software packages:

NetPBM - mandatory Unix image toolkit, make sure build this one with PGMBIGGRAYS enabled!
fips123 - a USGS toolkit that allows conversion of SDTS digital elevation model files
er1u - John Beale's erosion tools
scape - PGM to TIN surface simplification tool
Radiance - excellent radiosity raytracing package

All software available from this page not written or copyrighted by another author is Copyright 1998 Mark J. Stock. This code is not guaranteed or warranteed, and I ask you, in good faith, not to sue me (or any other author), or hold me responsible for any damages caused by using this software. If you copy this software, you must keep the original headers. Refer to the Gnu General Public License for details.

This software should compile correctly under Linux (I tested them on Red Hat Linux 5.1) and SGI IRIX (I use 6.3). If you have any problems compiling any code, please e-mail me.

Packages available for download

hftools
hftools is the basic distribution of Unix utilities for creation and manipulation of landscape data.
Download hftools.tar.gz_1998-09-24

What hftools contains (some may still be under development):

gtop2pgm - converts a GTOPO30 DEM file to 16-bit ASCII PGM
dem2pgm - converts a USGS DEM (7.5' and 1-degree, inc. Alaska) to a 16-bit ASCII PGM
sdts2pgm - converts a USGS DEM in SDTS format to 16-bit ASCII PGM; requires fips123 library; code included now
hfscale - interpolates values to allow upscaling of a 16-bit ASCII PGM
hfcolor - creates 24-bit PPM imagemap given elevation, river, lake, and glacier maps; there is one important unfixed bug in this one
pgmblob - coagulates values on any PGM (creates blobs using a morphogenetic algorithm)
pgmglacier - creates glacier paths through PGM terrain
hf2rad - converts 16-bit ASCII PGM to Radiance input file
pgm2stm - converts 16-bit ASCII PGM to 16-bit binart STM, used by scape, the surface simplification program
tinfile - reports data on a TIN (triangle) file, ouput by scape
tinscale - scales a TIN file
tinsmooth - calculates shared normals for a triangular mesh and outputs a Wavefront .obj file; use obj2rad (in Radiance package) to convert to Radiance input; this one is still in the works
tin2rad - converts a TIN file to Radiance input file

Radiance Links

Radiance homepage
My Radiance image gallery
My Radiance animation gallery
My Radiance Miscellany page
If you want some other goofball programs, check out my World Builder page

Other Terrain/Topography/Landscape Sites

Captain Barcode's War Room, an excellent site for World Builders
USGS Geo Data main page, has links to all types of Digital Elevation Model (DEM and SDTS) and Digital Line Graph (DLG) data
Graphical index of 1-degree USGS DEMs (1201x1201 data points)
7.5' DEMs from Xerox
Many 7.5' DEMs of CA

Most recent developments (1998-09-24):

hftools_1998-09-24 pgmglacier is better, bug fixes in tinsmooth, Makefile is cleaner
hftools_1998-09-15 contains dem2pgm, pgmglacier, and tinsmooth; but they're not that great yet

Mark J. Stock, Graduate, Aerospace Engineering, The University of Michigan