1. For Stunt maps the height map is 513x513 pixels and the colour map is 1920x1920 pixels.  However if you make one of these and resize to the other it will not match up correctly.  Rescale the 513x513 to 1924x1924 and trim off the outside 2 pixels all round for a good fit.  Some times I make the height map first then rescale to get the position of everything in my colour map which I make by various processes from this rescaled map.  Other times I make the colour map first and then rescale and make the height map from that.  The colours can be selected so as to hold heights for surfaces such as roads that are desired to be flat.

2. Making nice shadows gives a clear 3D effect and allows people to see the bumps and contours from high in the air.  Take the height map and rescale as in 1 above then make two copies and move one copy each way by a few pixels and then take the difference (you may need to add a constant value first) and scale this up a bit.  I do this in CorelPaint and the result is that the up slopes on the sunny side are lighter and the down slopes on the shady side are darker.  Add this lightness map to your ground colouring for a good effect.
 

Fig 1. Part of a height map with white being the heighest point and black the lowest.

Fig 2. The same map after applying the technique in 2 above to give shadows as if the sun is in the NW.

Fig 3. Very simple colouring scheme.  In practice you could do something rather more elaborate.

Fig 4. The addition of some noise and some blurring.  More complicated textures can be used.

Fig 5. Adding the shadows created from the height map.  The 3D effect is quite clear.

3. Don't forget to line up with the sun direction correctly with the shadows.  Actually you have to line up 3 things - the shadows you make, the sun directiion you tell armadillo, and the actual sundirection in the sky from the particular sky you chose.

4. Make roughly correct hills in the height map first and then use blur with a large radius factor to make smooth hills.  The larger the radius factor the smoother they will be.  You can vary this over the map for smoother and rougher terrain.  I use gaussian blur in CorelPaint.  You can also use the program heightmap.exe to turn hill profiles into height maps.  I found that this program doesn't even use the 256 grey scale fully and correctly.  Recently I obtained Leveller which is a far more useful tool as it allows you to see what is happening.
 

The heightmap.exe program will convert the profile at left to the heightmap at right.  This section can be pasted into your height map at whatever orientation you want.  Good jumps can be designed in this way.

5. It helps to understand projectile paths.  In flight you will follow a parabola, the same shape as the reflector in your bikes headlight.  That means that with a hill of that shape you will follow the ground profile.  Clearly you need a deviation from this to take off from but the parabolic shape is a good one for landing on as anything from short to very long jumps can be made.

6. Before I made the map "Cruising" I designed some brushes with various shapes like a bell to keep adding to my maps to make hills with nice bases and rounded tops.  The result was a smooth flowing map that is perhaps the fastest non-flat stunt tag map.  These brushes are included for downloading at the end of this page.

7. When I have finished making the height map I use noise reduction by  the median function with a 1 or 2 pixel radius.  This removes any rogue height pixels and smooths things off while pretty much retaining any deliberate sharp edges to mountains ranges and the like.

8. Heights may be on a 256 point scale (gray) or 65536 points (using red and green scales combined).  The 256 point scale unfortunately is inadequate because it makes slightly rough surfaces which mean the bikes cannot get up to any where near 100 mph except on level surfaces.  To overcome this armadillo had a later version with smoothing in.  This greatly improves things but means that you cannot make really sharp edges if you use this feature.  Therefore if at all possible use 65536 point height maps.  In these the top 8 bits are in red and the next 8 in green but this is not supported by most graphics programs.  The program Leveller works with 65536 point height maps AND shows them in 3D as you work on them and can be DLed at xtreme gaming.

9. Many map makers avoid the outer section with the big cliffs and exploding region by using a custom wall.  Actually the wall can be made as part of the inner map avoiding the whole repeating outer part altogether.  I have made the wall as part of the map itself and incorporated regular tracks up the wall so that people can get back in if they happen to fly over.  This technique only works well if NOT using the smooth function in armadillo.  I made my own program for doing smoothing so that I can mix smoothed and sharp objects. Another way is to have a cliff all around with a high part beyond - unfortunately the later version of Armadillo forces a half height single point in between - duh!  So in maps such as Cruisinng and SimanSays I made the outer part of the central tile at height 128 and have outer tiles blank and at 128 height. Then there is no problem getting back in, its as easy as falling of a cliff.  In SimanSays I realised that there is no reason for the map to be square which I think is a useful inovation. Sometimes I just let the outer tiles be grey and flat at height zero so that people can see where to stop and come back.  In Raro I have lots of sea painted in the repeating section and if you go out there you will never find land again.
 

This is a section of the wall which I added to some of my height maps.  It is not so easy to see here, but there are two sloping ramps up the outside of each wall.  The walls are maximum height.  Usually just inside the wall is at a lower level.  I simply paste this onto my nearly finished map.

The outer wall of SimanSays is included in the map as grey 1/2 height.

Leveller has a working area like this,

and can display in wire mode,

or in shaded form as you wish.

10. Although variety of colour makes a map interesting I found that using too small a scale of speckling just makes the final map bigger and annoys people who want to download it.  This is less of a problem if the outer repeating section is not used as that reduces the map size.  So slightly larger scale colour blobs or gradations are fine except where you want some special details.  I use noise creation and then smooth the colours in to get variety in the textures.  Real digital pictures can be used too. With maps starting from Tripped I used real pictures for textures.  I made a set of 100 textures from digital photos of bricks, grass, ground, paths, pebbles, rocks, roadside, snow, water, veggies and other odd things.  These are available for download at the end of this page.

11. To smoothly join up different sections of your height map such as pieces made from the heighmap program, select the parts between the set pieces (but slightly overlapping them) and then use the blur function with a large radius.  It may take several blurs to get a smooth transition between the parts.  Because the designed pieces are not selected they will not be blurred and so will keep their correct shape.  This is easier in leveller than a graphics program.

12. I add some appropriate objects to my maps, but don't overdo it.  Fences look pretty in a map but don't really make for a good game of stunt tag unless mounds are made to allow jumping over them at strategic points.  For stunt tag the height map is the most important thing as it is what makes a map playable.  Next is the colour and texture, with good shadows providing valuable clues to those crazy flying guys and gals looking desperately for a downward slope to land on.  How you delimit the edge of your map is also worthy of careful consideration as it is almost inevitably going to be contrived.  Objects and sound can add realism.  I haven't yet learned how to add sound, that is my next lesson.

13. Have a look at maps made by the best stunt tag map makers who are Ace,Magic,High Speed Dirt, Crazy Steen, Sneer and  ApolloYYZ.  Other good map makers are Jack, Nedbaar, Azwoody, Spaceman01 and GoofyAir.  Our EiD team are relatively new at this, but it is clear that they are making leaps and strides as they learn to master this art form.  Map makers at EiD  now include aRTy, Cappy,  dlc2000,  Graphite Bull,  King,  and  Sneer.  Variety of hill profiles, textures, shapes and degree of detail in height maps makes the map interesting.

14. Have Fun.  No-one is going to pay you to do this, so it is done for the pleasure of making something satisfying for you and others to enjoy.  Happy map making!