Height Map

The Height Map is a black-and-white image that represents the rock surface of your world. The brightness of each pixel is the relative height at that location, so the blackest regions are the ocean floor while the brightest areas are the mountain tops.

The height map is scaled to the Maximum Height value when your world is created, so the same height map will produce higher peaks if that value is larger. The height of any given peak above sea level is also affected by the Water Height setting on the Drop Dirt Panel.

The height map also contains erosion and river changes. So once you generate your height map, add erosion and rivers, you can save that to your project and will not need to perform those actions again.