A request to provide images of Stonehenge with the Cursus barrow group in the background had me pondering the limitations of my Ordnance Survey based terrain model, which of course includes no such details. In the absence of lidar terrain data for the study area (unless of course English Heritage would like to hand some over) I've come up with an inexact compromise.
Using the Ordnance Survey mapping, which shows barrow locations, I've created a binary mask in ArcGIS in which the earthworks of barrows are shown in solid black.
Imported into CryEngine as a texture mask, and with a suitably garish texture, this serves as a visual guide for manually tweaking the terrain with Sandbox's terrain modification tools, in effect painting the barrows on to the landscape. With sensible textures restored things begin to look reasonable.
The results are not so bad, with correctly located barrows that, with care, can be sculpted into approximately the right size and profile. Better of course to begin with accurate survey data, but for now at least this meets the requested need.
