Make your mark on the world, and open it to new possibilities.

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A good program balances many positives, the goal of which is to make you excel. Daylon Leveller combines the intuitive feel of a bitmap editor with the power of georeferencing to bring you a superlative terrain/heightfield/bumpmap modeler at a reasonable price.


Professional modeling
There's a reason why some of the biggest names use Leveller -- it works in a powerful way. Leveller brings you smooth interactive 3D editing, georeferencing via GDAL integration, numerous filters, full memory-efficient multiple Undo/Redo, reams of documentation, diverse import/export, 16-bit selection masking, fast rendition prototyping, and more.

Unleash the artist within
Leveller supports graphic tablets for a natural drawing feel. Apply a light touch to create subtle lifts and depressions or a heavy one to quickly push elevations around. Customize pressure sensitivity mappings individually for each tool.

A user interface you already know
If you can work a paint program, you can use Leveller. All the main tools are there: brushes to dig, raise, and level, rectangular/elliptical/arbitary selectors, linear/radial gradient ramping, text, and so on. It's not a general 3D modeler, a complex GIS system, or a high-end renderer -- nothing to learn or worry about except shaping terrain.

32-bit precision
No terracing, no unwanted steps between areas of different elevation. Create massive peaks and subtle depressions. Every pixel of your heightfield is stored in full 32-bit precision for the smoothest modeling experience. No matter what you export to, your source data will always be of the finest quality.

Great visuals
See your work the way it really looks, in both two and three dimensions. Use plentiful rendering options to boost 3D display speed across a wide variety of systems. Apply colormaps, textures and water levels. Turn on true dot-product lighting and test moveable light sources with shadows. Insert 3D reference shapes to position terrain edits precisely with other scene objects.



 
Lots of plug-ins — power galore
Over half of Leveller's code isn't even inside Leveller -- it's in plug-ins. You can quickly add needed functionality without upgrading. Plug-ins support filtering, importing, exporting, selecting, viewing, map and scene rendering, and shaders for raytracing.

Import, export, and interoperate
Leveller plays well with others.
Import and export between renderers, modelers, GIS applications and paint programs. There's even public text and binary clipboard formats for copying and pasting between spreadsheets and other applications. And if a format isn't available, there's a plug-in SDK to make it available!

Displacement mapping
Leveller lets you bend heightfields into a variety of common shapes such as cones, cylinders, spheres, etc. You can even simulate planetary curvature with sphere section mapping. The resulting meshes can be exported to POV-Ray, Renderman, VRML, DXF, and Wavefront OBJ.

Make your mark
Leveller provides markers, letting you highlight and annotate heightfield locations of interest with any amount of text. Great for team projects too.

Tons of documentation
This is no ordinary budget-friendly software. Leveller comes packed with enough HTML documentation to print over 100 pages, richly illustrated and professionally written. Megabytes of online help to get you going.

Daylon Leveller. Go pro and get your copy today!

 

 
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Changes Since Last Time

  • Leveller 2.x-to-2.6.2 update released. To get your update, just contact support@daylongraphics.com and provide your name and the email address you used when originally ordering Leveller.
     
  • 2.6.2 build 51 upgrades Texture Auto-select tool to have undoable selmask edits.
     
  • Leveller 2.6.2 released. Texture Placer tool added; lets heightfield textures be positioned and transformed visually.
     
  • User-definable keyboard shortcuts for tool selection added to Leveller 2.6.1.
     
  • Leveller 2.6.1 available. Brushable and polygonal selection tools added, several bug fixes, better memory use, and better displacement map refshapes.
     
  • Displace plug-ins introduced, which create and apply displacement maps similar to those used in Photoshop.


     

  • Cracked Cells plug-in introduced, more Second Life plug-ins added. Plug-ins for Leveller 2.6 are now provided using a self-contained installer which auto-locates the Leveller folder.


     

  • TER thumbnail generator updated to support v7 TER files (those created by Leveller 2.6). It lets you view Leveller documents and Terragen worlds directly in folder thumbnails.


     
  • A tutorial on raytracer texturing (for maps) was added.
     
  • Mauro Nenci wrote an detailed step-by-step tutorial on using Leveller to create the Beleriand region of Middle Earth, starting from topographic drawings.
     
  • Mound plug-in updated to version 1.4; supports merge modes and custom cross-sectioning.
     
  • Carl Lingard wrote an extensive tutorial on using Leveller for terrain editing.
     
  • Bitmap Export plug-in added. Lets one specify output span for 16- and 24-bit files.
     
  • ASC, XYZ, and UKOS DTM/DXF import plug-ins updated; Multismooth filter and DTED import plug-ins added.
     
  • USGS DEM void pixel selector plug-in released; sets the current selection mask to the region of void elevations (if any) in a USGS DEM file.
     
  • Legacy Format Export plug-in released; writes the selected part of the current heightfield to older Leveller file formats. Useful for those needing interop with older versions of Leveller (as far back as 1.4).
     
  • Leveller 2.5 build 1934 released. Fixes several minor bugs in the original 2.5 release. Difference from build 1928 is fixed 16-bit Targa elevation export. Existing 2.5 users can obtain an update by contacting Support.
     
  • Roads Import and Select Roads plug-ins updated to 1.0; fixes problem with road portion gapping.
     
  • Plot Function plug-ins upgraded; they run faster and some bugs were fixed.


     

  • DirectDraw Surface export plug-in released; lets the heightfield be exported as a normal map to a DDS texture file (with or without alpha channel).
     
  • Rhinoceros/OpenNURBS export plug-in updated to 1.4.
     
  • Document Chunk plug-ins released; these let one read/write subsections of a Leveller document, making it easier to work on large files.
     
  • Surfer Export plug-in updated to 1.3.0.1; fixes elevation span error, and export mapping no longer limited to 32,000 units.
     
  • Leveller SDK now includes the open source plug-in projects directly.
     
  • StL Export plug-in updated to 1.3; supports solid (enclosed) mesh generation.
     
  • Xpand Rally import/export plug-in released. Original code courtesy of Darren Hunt.
     
  • Deterrace plug-in fixed for Leveller 2.5. USGS DEM Import plug-in had brute-force span calculation option reinserted.
     
  • THF (MicroGDS Things) mesh import plug-in added.
     
  • ASC import plug-in updated to version 2.4; supports XYZ files. Common GIS import dialog fixed.
     
  • USGS DEM import/export plug-in updated to 1.9.0.2. Exporter writes correct B record spans when using elevation scale other than 1.0 and lets A record span be specified using floating-point values instead of integers.
     
  • Mt. Fractal plug-in fixed.
     
  • The Measure and Veg plug-ins were improved, and they've been documented along with the Contour, Imagemap and Terrain shaders.
     
  • Markers export plug-in was accidentally ommitted from the Leveller 2.4 release; this has been fixed and the plug-in has been updated to 1.3 (text format emits tab-delimited data).
     
  • Adobe Illustrator import/selector plug-ins for Leveller 2.4 fixed. Bevel plug-in uses world unit label and was documented better.
     
  • Zoltan Karpati has added Leveller shape list (LSL) file format support to his 3D Object Converter program. He's up to 370 formats and counting.
     
  • Daylon Fluid 1.0 released. A standalone Navier-Stokes fluid simulator which exports images or heightfields. Results can be copied and pasted directly into Leveller.
     
  • Daylon Waves 1.2 released. A standalone multiwave image/heightfield generator. Results can be copied and pasted directly into Leveller. Screenshots are here and here.


     
  • GeoTIFF import plug-in added. Requires Leveller 2.4.
     
  • DXF plug-in updated to 1.4; fixes import problem with DXF files that include layer/handle data inside 3DFACE entity records. Requires Leveller 2.4.
     
  • Macintosh TERDISP document viewer utility updated to 1.3. Also displays Terragen™ terrain files.
     
  • TMesh 2 plug-in released for Leveller 2.4. Uses the improved algorithm in the TER2WRL program to generate optimized meshes in VRML, DXF, or Wavefront OBJ format.
     
  • Daylon Vectre upgraded to 1.2 build 226. Imports UKOS DTM contour files.
     
  • TERDUMP utility updated. Supports copying any portion of a Leveller heightfield to a new, smaller file; useful for breaking up large documents into several smaller ones.
     
  • John Ratcliff released TER2WRL, a command-line utility that converts Leveller TER files into optimized VRML meshes. Same idea as the existing TMesh plug-in (which he also wrote), but with better results. The picture below shows a resulting VRML heightfield and a closeup of the mesh showing how small details are preserved with more triangles.


     
  • DEMDUMP utility available. This is a Windows command-line program that lists the contents of USGS ASCII DEM files.
     
  • Leveller Import and Export plug-ins for Okino PolyTrans/NuGraf added. Lets these programs obtain depthmaps from 3D scene geometry and save them as Leveller heightfield documents, and bring in Leveller heightfields and convert them to polygon meshes.
     
  • Global Mapper Software has added Leveller TER file export to their Global Mapper GIS program.
     
  • TER format patch for POV-Ray released. Lets you use TER files (Leveller and Terragen) directly in POV-Ray scenes without conversion.
     
  • Terragen plug-in updated to export spans correctly, and to include world scaling if using Leveller 2.2 or higher. Until Leveller is updated, the plug-in also imports Terragen terrains.
     
  • DXF and Wavefront OBJ plug-ins updated to export displacement-mapped meshes if using Leveller 2.3.
     
  • Daylon XaoS 1.0 relisted as freeware. It's our version of the open source XaoS fractal viewer that features clipboard integration with Leveller.
     
  • Daylon Life 1.1 released. A cute cellular automata generator that makes organic-looking heightfields. You can interactively evolve the heightfield you want, and then just copy and paste it directly into Leveller.
     
  • Raw Binary plug-in updated to version 1.4. Importer supports pixel gapping and scanline padding.
     
  • Binary Terrain import/export plug-in updated to 1.5. Fixes UTM extents export bug.
     
  • VistaPro DEM Import plug-in available.
     
  • Mandelbrot plug-in upgraded to 1.5. Smoother colors, aspect ratio stays 1:1 while zooming, and better elevation output.
     
  • World Construction Set import/export plug-in upgraded to 1.3. Fixes read errors on newer ELEV files.
     
  • PowerLine plug-in now available. Requires Leveller 2.1.
     
  • Core shaders plug-in had the Snow colorizer added.
     
  • USGS SDTS plug-in updated to 1.1, ASC plug-in added.
     
  • A tutorial on basic heightfield modeling was added.
     
  • Mt. Fractal plug-in now has random seed field.
     
  • A tutorial on how to merge DEMs was added.
     
  • DEM plug-in upgraded to 1.7. Fixes parser overflow bug when non-standard files begin with five-digit negative elevations.
     
  • Mapping Function plug-in available. Lets heightfields be filtered with arbitrary input-output elevation mappings. Do glaciations, smoothed clampings, and more.
     
  • Alessandro Falappa does it again. He's updated his plug-in suite for Leveller 2.0, concentrating on its fractal noise capabilities, a small sample of which are shown below. He provides the source code as well.


     

  • Erode plug-in upgraded to 1.3. More options; runs 200% - 250% faster.
     
  • HF-Lab plug-in updated to version 1.3.
     
  • GridMaker utility released. This makes it easy to build grid objects that can be imported into Leveller as reference shapes.
     
  • MSH (Carrara Mesh) import/export plug-in released.
     
  • PGM (Portable Graymap) import/export plug-in upgraded to 1.1.
     
  • GTOPO30 import plug-in updated to 1.2
     
  • Common GIS plug-in upgraded to 1.7. Handles premature EOF and initial negative elevation data cases properly.
     
  • Level Connector plug-in updated to version 1.1. Supports deterracing of contoured terrains.
     
  • STM import/export plug-in upgraded to 1.2.
     
  • The Leveller ANSI C Library was made available. It's compatible with Edmond Breen's free EiC C interpreter.
     
  • TMesh plug-in written by John W. Ratcliff. It exports the current heightfield to an optimized mesh using the TopoVista right triangle method.
     
  • Contour and Imagemapper shaders available for Leveller's raytracer.
     
  • Perlin4 plug-in written by John W. Ratcliff. It uses a multilayering system to generate very nice terrains very easily.
     
  • NTF plug-in upgraded to version 1.3.
     
  • StL (StereoLithography) available.
     
  • Perlin Noise plug-in available. Lars Hamre had developed this last year for the original freeware version of Leveller, so we upgraded it to use the latest Leveller plug-in API.
     

 


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Daylon Leveller is powered in part by the OpenGL® API.