Import a heightmap

Creator reads a raw 16-bit heightmap (.raw), the interchange format World Machine, Gaea, World Creator, Photoshop and Crucible Heightmap all write. It brings in the shape of the land and nothing else: no biomes, no topology, no ground textures, no prefabs. Those you generate or paint afterwards.

If you are coming from Crucible Heightmap, export a .map instead and you keep all of those layers. See From Crucible Heightmap to Creator.

To get the layers of a map out as files, every one of them and exactly, use Layer files. The .raw file on this page is for bringing a terrain in from another program.

Import it

1. Open a map, or press CREATE BLANK on the start screen at the size you want. The heightmap lands on the terrain that is already there, so the map has to exist first.
2. Choose the Sculpt tool.
3. Open Advanced Options in its panel.
4. Set Bit Depth to match your file. 16 is almost always right.
5. Leave Byte Order on Detect from the file. Creator reads both ways and keeps the one whose heights are smooth, which a real terrain always is. A file it cannot tell (a flat file, one that stays within a very narrow band of heights, or noise) is refused with a message that says so; then set PC (little-endian) for a file written on Windows or Mac (big-endian) for the other convention, and import again. If you pick an order yourself, the toast says when the file reads smoother the other way.
6. Optional: turn on Import into a height range and set Lowest (m) and Highest (m), and set Smoothing passes. Both are described below.
7. Press Import Raw Heightmap and pick the file.

The toast tells you what it read: the source resolution, the resolution it resampled to when the two differ, and the byte order it detected. It is one undo step, so Ctrl+Z puts the old terrain back. The live paths and ramps that shape the height are baked first, in the same step, and the toast says how many. A live path whose live height is off stays live.

Where the file’s heights land, and smoothing

A .raw holds values from its lowest to its highest and no meters. Left alone, Creator spreads that whole range over the whole height a Rust map can hold, 500 meters below the sea to 500 above it, so a file whose lowest value is its sea floor comes in very deep and very tall.

Import into a height range fixes that at import time. With it on, the file’s lowest value lands at Lowest (m) and its highest at Highest (m), in meters with sea level at 0. The two start at -50 and 250: open water around the land, and hills worth climbing. Anything in between scales evenly.

Smoothing passes, 0 to 10, softens the imported terrain: each pass replaces every point with the average of itself and its neighbors, which takes the stair steps off an 8 bit file and the noise off a rough export. 0 imports the file exactly as it is. The passes run after the file has been fitted to your map’s resolution, so a pass softens the same amount whatever size the file was.

Both belong to this import button and to FILE > Import Heightmap (.raw)…, and the toast says when they were used. The import in Creator Mode’s LAND section does not use them, because a generation setup records only the file, its bit depth and its byte order.

The import replaces the whole heightmap, not part of it. There is no blending and no region. If you want part of another terrain, that is a stamp, not an import.

Sizes and resolutions

Two different numbers matter and it is easy to confuse them.

Number	What it is
Map size	How many meters the map spans along one edge, 1000 to 6000. This is what you set when you generate or create the map.
Terrain resolution	How many height samples the map stores along one edge. More samples means finer detail at the same size, and a bigger file.

Your .raw file carries no size; the map you import into decides the size.

If the file’s grid is a different side length from the open map’s terrain, Creator scales it to fit. To choose the resolution deliberately instead, set it before you import: TOOLS > Map Tools: Rotate, Resize, Merge…, the RESOLUTION (resample detail, same size) section, which offers 1025, 2049 and 4097.

Drizzza’s map sizes and resolutions is the reference for which combinations are worth using, and it applies whichever tool exported the file.

A file Creator cannot read for certain is refused, not guessed at

If the import is refused, the message says why: a file that is not a square grid means Bit Depth is wrong, and a file whose byte order cannot be told needs Byte Order set by hand.

What to do once it is in

The terrain is there and everything else is empty. In build order:

1. Fly it once and fix what the import brought in: a plateau where you wanted a peak, a ridge in the wrong place. That is sculpting.
2. Generate everything else on it in Creator Mode. Open TOOLS > Procedural Generation… and switch to CREATOR MODE (the panel is already there, with a line saying why, when your land is not shaped like Rust’s own island), and This map’s terrain is already picked in the LAND section. Creator measures the land before anything runs and shows what it found. Three findings come up often with an exported heightmap, and each has a one-click fix that is one undo step:
   • Almost all land. A file whose sea sits at its lowest value comes in as one big continent. SET SEA LEVEL picks the height that becomes the shoreline and moves the terrain to match, with a preview of the new coastline.
   • Land at the map edge. Rust needs open water around the map. SINK THE MAP EDGE lowers the outer margin smoothly to the seabed.
   • Hollows inland below sea level. A pit lower than the sea that the sea cannot reach holds water of its own. FILL THE HOLLOWS raises the ground in each one to 1 m above sea level. Leave it alone if a hollow is a lake you want. The card lists the largest hollows with their size and depth, numbered as on the land picture, and GO TO beside each one closes the panel and shows it to you.
3. Choose your monuments, and, if the land is a group of islands, the bridges and roads between them, then press >> RUN IN CREATOR MODE <<. The biomes, topology, ground textures, monuments, roads, rivers and rail are all worked out from your shape. The whole flow is on Procedural generation. If you would rather lay the layers down by hand, paint them yourself.
4. Then paths and dressing, as in the build order.

You can also skip the Sculpt tool entirely: Creator Mode’s LAND section has its own Import a heightmap (.raw) choice, with the same Bit Depth and Byte Order, and picks This map’s terrain once the file is in.

Bare terrain spawns nothing. Rust decides what trees, ore and animals appear from the biome and topology layers, so an imported heightmap with no layers on it comes up as empty ground in game. Drizzza’s Rust biomes and topology explained is the page on why.

Exporting a heightmap back out

The same panel writes one: Save Raw Heightmap… exports the open map’s terrain as a .raw at the current terrain resolution, using the same Bit Depth and Byte Order you set above (with Detect from the file chosen, it writes PC order). It opens a save dialog in the open map’s folder with a name that says what the file contains, for example heightmap_2049x2049_16bit_pc.raw, so the file name carries the settings another tool needs. Keep the name or pick your own; a toast names the file once it is written.

That is the route for taking a shape into a terrain tool and back. It carries the shape only, in both directions.