What is Crucible Heightmap?

Crucible Heightmap is a Rust map generator for Windows, the first of its kind built for Rust map makers and made specifically for generating custom island terrain. It generates true 16-bit island heightmaps that you import straight into RustEdit, the community map editor for Rust, so you can build a custom map in minutes instead of hand sculpting terrain for hours. Purpose-built for Rust server admins, it’s far simpler than professional game dev tools, with intuitive controls and no programming or 3D modeling skills required.

What it does

• Generates procedural custom island terrain tuned for Rust’s own proc gen, so beaches, slopes and cliffs feel natural in game.
• Combines multiple island seeds into one complex map.
• Includes raise, lower, flatten and smooth brushes for sculpting by hand, with full undo and redo.
• Shows a live 2D and 3D preview as you shape your terrain.
• Overlays a Rust-cell grid and a slope view to check spacing and steepness before you export.
• Lets you set the sun angle to preview how slopes and cliffs shade in game.
• Exports 16-bit grayscale RAW for RustEdit, plus PNG for previews and sharing.
• Saves projects and shareable .hmseed seed files.
• Autosaves as you work, so you never lose a map.

How it fits the map making workflow

A heightmap is the terrain skeleton of a Rust map: a grayscale image where brightness equals elevation. The pipeline is:

1. Generate terrain in Crucible Heightmap.
2. Export it as 16-bit RAW.
3. Import that into RustEdit as your terrain.
4. Run RustEdit’s procedural generation tool to quickly add cliffs, topology, biomes and ground textures.
5. Place monuments, roads and prefabs on top, by hand or procedurally, to finish the map.

Map sizes

Crucible matches RustEdit’s heightmap resolutions exactly: 513, 1025, 2049 and 4097. The map size you pick sets the export resolution.

Get the Heightmap App

Download and pricing are on the Crucible Heightmap page.