beach slopes HEEELLLLLPPPPP!!!!!

General Discussion
#1

hi. I’m new to this forum and pretty new to World Machine. I’m an evironment artists and have been assigned a job of making terrains using WM and L3DT to create basic heightmaps to go into WM. I’m making a group of 5 tropical islands. I’m having a lot of trouble with the beaches, specifically the slope of them. I want almost flat beaches but end up with a slope thats not realistic. Is there any way to flatten out sections of a terrain in WM? Or a way to control their slopes?

Would love some help on this I only have a week left till the deadline.

Thanks

Garth

#2

You can use a layout generator with some perlin and or breakup to make the islands and then use different erosions for the beach areas using more layout generators or masks to define where you want the erosion to be. With the “Sediment Carry Amount” for example it is possible to make nice beaches.

What are you using to create the Islands, what size are the beaches? Pictures if not confidential?

#3

Hi there,

Have you tried using the Coastal Erosion device? This is exactly the problem it was designed to solve. Simply drop it onto your terrain and set the water level (easiest is to check the global waterlevel box and then it will auto-set to whatever water level you’ve set on the left side preview bar).

What you should get is the areas of terrain near the water will have beaches – you can use the mask input to preserve rocky outcropped areas as well if you wish.

#4

Thats even better :stuck_out_tongue:

#5

Also using a select height node to mask a clamp can get your terrain and flatten it out quite well without adding too much to your render time or changing your height map too much.

#6

wow. thanks so much for the quick replies
I’ve added a wip image of what I am trying to achieve. It’s going in engine (Unity) and I am doing materials in photoshop (aka Wenda tutorial).
I’ve created the height map in L3DT. And I am using a macro created by Buzzcore for colour.
This is a paint over of fixes. I’ve also got a problem with erosion on the shore line. I need the shoreline to be softer.

This is my node setup for the wip image

I’ll give your suggestions a try. I am not sure of where or what to plug into the coastal erosion mask to stop it from changing anything above the beach. Anyone nice enough to whack a node setup together showing me how it’s done:)

Cheers guys/girls

Garth

#7

Hi there,

I would first try simply adding a Coastal Erosion device between the Erosion and your macro on the Primary Heightfield wire. (And again, make sure to enable the coastal device’s water level to be the global one) This should take care of the erosion crags on the beach as well as flattening the slope of the coast near the waterline. It also will soften the erosion crags under the water.

Based on trying that, I might then adjust further with a mask – but it might not be needed at all. Give it a try and report back!

Cheers

#8

Ok I used the coastal erosion like you said and also used a mask.

Here’s what I ended up with

It’s a 64 square kilometer map so it’s really big. I played it in engine and the beaches turned out really nice. Everyones happy with this result for now. Time to do the textures:) Thanks heaps for your help.

#9

I’ll also make changes in engine to add walk able ramps and some dune definition.

#10

Ok it’s starting to get a bit more fun to play but had to make changes, which caused problems…Damn, is it just me, or is this the hardest thing to achieve in all of 3d. A good, sculpted, accurate terrain with nice erosion and beaches. It’s not easy.

Anyone know of how I can manually paint over parts of the colour map before exporting? There’s rocks in places I don’t want rocks.

Also, where I have made the red shades, how, for the life of me, do I lower this terrain so it does the fjords like I sculpted in l3dt. I lowered it to -100m and world machine still flattened it out to above ground.

Cheers again

Garth

#11

Hi there,

What you want to do is use a Layout Generator to create a custom mask.

Click on your coastal erosion device and then go into layout view (overview). Then on the layout view menu, click “Attach new layout as mask input”. It will create a new layout generator and attach it as a mask to your coastal device, and preset inverted drawing mode (so that undrawn areas are white = full strength effect).

Now pan and zoom the view to the area you want to control and add some shapes (lines) much like you’ve shown on your image. You can adjust the strength and size of the lines by double clicking on it. This will restrict the coastal erosion device to not flattening your steep fjord area.

#12

so after spending another 2 days trying to work the masks in world machine I decided to get rid of the fjords because I was wasting too much time trying to get them right. I’m gonna use rocksa and engine scuplt tools to get it right. I’ve got this far and am happy with the colour map before tweaking. This is protov1.0 though so it’s a decent start. Cheers for the help.

#13