Frequently Asked Questions

I need help.

Registered users can get support during normal Pacific Time business hours by contacting us.

If you're having a problem with Leveller, you can also check its Change Log for fixes, improvements, etc.

I placed an order but haven't received an email.

Orders are filled within 24 hours. Please check your other email folders to see if your service provider routed the message to one of them.

If your PayPal transaction hasn't been tagged as "Shipped", it means your order is still being processed.

If you ordered through Stripe, orders do not have status so you'll need to contact us.

How do I get an update?

Major updates (e.g. version 3.x to 4.x) are treated as new sales, so you can just use the regular Order page.

Minor updates (e.g., version 4.x to 4.3) are free. Contact us via email. In the message body, provide your name and the email address you used when ordering Leveller. If your email address has changed, your new one will be used to update our customer database. Your licence code may be requested.

How many pixels can my heightfields have?

A reasonable upper limit is about 6,000 x 6,000 pixels. Some users have gone up to 9,000 x 9,000. As you can imagine, this takes a lot of RAM and it helps to have the fastest hardware possible and to delve more into Leveller's render settings.

Multiplying the heightfield's dimensions by four bytes per pixel won't give you a RAM requirement, because Leveller must maintain Undo buffers, selection masks, normal maps, various caches, etc.

Why does text in some dialogs appear clipped or look strange?

Older versions of Leveller (4.2 and earlier) did not support the Windows HighDPI feature (display scaling). Using a display scale other than 100% would make Windows scale dialog boxes, but any such dialog boxes that Leveller was populating or resizing procedurally would have its layout clipped or garbled. Other UI elements such as toolbars would appear small. It was recommended to configure Leveller to be non-HighDPI-aware (see the Properties windows below).

As of June 7/2024, Leveller 4.3 is HighDPI aware, and ships with it enabled. Some graphics (e.g. bitmap elements) may appear blurry because high-resolution versions haven't been made yet, but they will be the correct size.

You can revert to the non-HighDPI-aware behavior by doing this:

Is Leveller multithreaded?

Yes. In particular, these operations are multithreaded:

Does having a more powerful GPU help Leveller?

In general, GPUs with good CPU-to-GPU bandwidth help, because Leveller has to frequently modify the heightfield mesh and upload new vertex data. Premium GPUs can also deliver a more responsive experience when using the Blur tool and custom brushes, because those tools have the GPU doing most of their work. For most workflows however, even 2010-era GPUs should be fine.

Why do exported images look weird?

You've exported the heightfield file using more than eight bits per pixel to a bitmap format such as BMP or TGA. Since the document is a heightfield, Leveller assumes that you want to export elevation data. The pixels, when interpreted as colors, look like the picture on the right:

This is normal. POV-Ray's red/green color channel interpretation is used to store elevations, since there is no standard grayscale format for pixel depths over eight bits per pixel. If you're in a hurry and just want to get a traditional 8-bpp grayscale image, extract the image's red channel.

If you want to export how the displayed heightfield looks on the screen (i.e., the picture on the left) use the "Map to Bitmap" or "Scene to Bitmap" export commands.

Is Landshaper Golf still supported?

To simplify maintenance, Landshaper Golf has been superceded by Leveller. The fairway/hole routing feature is available there and Leveller will open Landshaper Golf documents.

Why not just use something from all the free stuff available?

It's possible to cobble together some kind of solution from the vast amount of free stuff out there, but Leveller provides a lot of it under one consistent, well-developed, and easy-to-use roof.

Unlike most freeware, Leveller's user interface is an integral component and has been carefully implemented for strong ease of use. We don't write mostly engine-level code and put it up for people to wrangle with -- we provide a more complete solution that is based on user input, installs easily, is tested and well documented, and gets you quickly moving forward.

And as a registered user, you'll enjoy vendor-level support, update benefits, fast issue resolution, not being told to RTFM, and the confidence of using something that is actively maintained. If you're serious about terrain/heightfield modeling, then Leveller is a good investment.

Are there student discounts, corporate, multi-user and/or site licences available?

We don't have a specific student discount plan, but we do provide site licencing using a discount rate of five percent per unit.

To arrange a bulk order, please contact us.

Can I licence or update without a credit card?

Yes. Mail a money order, bank draft, or certified cheque to:

Daylon Graphics Ltd.
P.O. Box 33586, Central City PO
Surrey, B.C., Canada V3T 5R5

Please include your name, return address, e-mail address, and computer name. You can also include your organization and department name if you want them to appear in Leveller's splash screen. If ordering multiple licenses or upgrades, you are eligible for a discount. Product shipping is done via HTTP download.

I need to install Leveller on a different computer, but the installer won't run.

Leveller is tied to a computer by its machine name. If you need to move your licence, please contact us to get a PDF form acknowledging destruction of the old licence and send $20 USD to sales@daylongraphics.com via PayPal to cover provisioning a new licence and installer.

Can I drape textures over heightfields?

Yes. Use the Edit, Texture... command, or drag a picture file and drop it onto the 3D scene pane. Textures can be offset, scaled, rotated, and tiled, or auto-placed if they and your heightfield are georeferenced. The texture can be blended with the underlying colormap. The water level's finite plane can also be textured.

Texture data is exported (as much as possible) to POV-Ray, RIB/BMRT, VRML and Polyray.

Alpha channels are supported, and textures are bilinearly filtered. If a texture bitmap does not have color data, its data bands can be mapped to color channels to visualize temperatures, gravimetrics, etc.

If you want to use multiple transformed textures (i.e., texture splats), add images to the Image Library, then add imagemap textures to the Texture library that use the images, and apply said textures to vector shapes.

Can I place 3D objects onto my heightfields?

Yes. Leveller can import Autodesk FBX scene files and the meshes will be visible during modeling, helping position heightfield edits. You can move, cut, copy, and paste meshes as well. Meshes are limited to 65,535 vertices and polygons are limited to four vertices.

For the raytracer, you can add entries to the Filler library, and then apply fillers to vector shapes. You can also use reference shapes, but they're limited to simpler billboards.

Can I use a graphics tablet or a Tablet PC with Leveller?

Yes. Our programs support any digitizing device that supports the WinTab standard (e.g., Wacom Intuos).

If your Tablet PC is not recognized as a tablet device but uses a Wacom digitizer, you can try installing the Wacom Pen driver for Tablet PC. This will make your Tablet PC offer WinTab interfaces to applications and also forwards pressure sensitivity data.

Also supported are stylus eraser and pressure sensitivity. Stylus tilt is not used but the data is forwarded to tool plug-ins.

Can I use shapefiles?

Yes. Our programs can import shapefiles supported by the GDAL OGR library, such as ESRI shapefile, DXF, etc. There's also a built-in Adobe Illustrator import and SVG import which works with Inkscape files (simple paths only; gray fills are mapped to elevations). Exports to shapefiles include DXF, Illustrator, and SVG.

What is XaoS?

Daylon XaoS is our Leveller-friendly fractal imaging program, based on the Win32 port of the open source XaoS project. It is a free download from our Resources page.