Ability to use an image/overlay as a "template"?

Bug Reports
#1

Hello,

I’m asking this question because I’ve looked around for the answer and couldn’t find one, and am not certain if this can be done or not.

At some point, either in a video I was watching, or in some information about World Machine, I saw it mentioned that you can use image overlays to create your map/world against.

This is exactly what I’m looking to do, as I have the basic world map already drawn out and would like to use that to shape the overall world (a big continent, really) and then use WM’s various devices and such to fill it out… I think the layout shapes will prove particularly helpful in that area.

Thing is, I can’t find any where to make that work. I’ve been able to import it into one of the views in WM, though I can’t remember which one. All I know is I wasn’t able to add or edit shapes in that view, which makes it kind of useless to me there.

Is there any other way to do this?

Thanks!

#2

Not sure if this will help, but you may want to check out foregroundReferenceUtility here:

#3

Oh that would be very helpful! Thanks!

Edit:

Originally, I had gone on to ask about the practicality of using WM to create a large continent using the shapes in the Layout Editor.

It turns out the answer is a very definite Yes.

I did some experimenting, watched a few tutorial vids and poked around some more inside the program. Funny how you’ll look at the same things several times, and then suddenly something just “clicks” with you that you hadn’t considered or noticed before…

Anyway, I found that I could actually load my world map into the Layout Editor by creating a Device to load the image as RGB. This places it as an overlay in the Layout view. I can then trace over it to my heart’s content to create the basic shape for my continent. I’m thinking, however, that I’m going to approach it with multiple pieces, rather than one large piece. Since my continent goes through various elevation changes and such, I’m going to create a “land chunk” for each major area, and then work within those.

This way, perhaps, I can keep each major section of the continent map in its own separate “layout” file and edit them individually rather than having a huge mess of shapes all in one layout. If I’m understanding the process correctly, I think that should be fine. I’ll have to check into this another time as I’m about to crash for the evening.

In any case, major progress for me tonight and I’m quite pleased :).

If there’s anything I said that raised any red flags, if anyone has words of caution or suggestion to offer… please do share. I appreciate any feedback and/or assistance those with more experience may have to offer.

Thanks!

#4