World Machine LTE
‘Mt Rainier’ Release Candidate
Build 4011
Welcome to the third development preview for the ‘LTE’ series of World Machine! This next-generation version modernizes World Machine and migrates from its original GUI platform. Build 4011 is likely to be the last release before the LTE branch becomes the standard Release version of World Machine.
The only anticipated remaining changes are bugfixes and content.
Existing customers with a recent license can download the latest builds at the Update Center:
What’s New in LTE?
Here’s a high-level overview of what’s new:
- Progressive, high-resolution background builds
- Complete, granular edit history retained; jump into the past in your edit history to compare changes
- Edit multiple non-modal parameter dialogs at once
- Multiple, resizable viewpanes
- Retain settings ‘snapshots’ of important builds
- Devices and macros have greatly improved presentation of parameters (styling, grouping, etc)
- Full-skin darkmode UI
- Hit TAB to quick-add a device or macro from search
- Greatly improved high-resolution terrain display
- Maya-style ALT navigation in all viewports
- Tiltable orthographic layout view
There are in addition many hundreds of smaller changes and improvements beyond the above.
Changes since Build 4008
These are the changes introduced since the last dev build 4008
New Features
- Clicking on a port or wire now selects that output for viewing!
- Parameter devices now accept distance and elevation parameters. This is very useful for macro creation
- Open from Example Library now shows a 3D preview for the world being opened!
- Added (optional) automatic snapshot creation on export / tiled build
- Added tag support for devices, macros, blueprints. You can add tags to your macros and blueprints that they will match for. This will also allow for neat grouping/filtering in the future by tag.
- Macros now save their presets to the Presets folder. Macros could also still save their presets into the macro itself, which is useful for distribution. There is currently no easy way to set this.
- Added Device Version manager dialog that lets you update all devices in a world to the latest version (and see any issues involved in doing so)
- Virtually all device versions now have update warnings as appropriate.
- Explorer render extent management is much improved
- Leftside-toolbar is now a dockwidget, and can be floated out of the main viewport
- Autosave is now asynchronous, saving 15-100ms on UI thread every action
- 2D view creates output asynchronous, saving massive lag on UI thread
- Finally ironed out the correct building and viewing of devices inside a macroworld in essentially all scenarios (improved from build 3028, where sometimes devices inside a macro could not be reliably edited or viewed)
- You can now set a default output for a world or macro. This lets you do things like, for example, have a Scene View inside a macro that will show the result of a terrain+texture combo even if the macro just exports a texture.
- Filter by version now works in library dialog
- Select Wetness, Flow Restructure, and Create Water all now report progress and are cancellable. This is particularly important in LTE as a non-cancellable device causes the background preview engine to be far less responsive when the world contains one of those devices.
Devices
- Device tags added for finding “Splatmap” and “Layout Generator”
- Texture Weightmap device: Added “Material ID” mode. This assigns each point in the world a single material instead of producing weightmaps.
- Updated Create Water UI parameters to LTE
- Several new macros added showing the expanded capabilities of the LTE macro system; For example, the ‘Ambient Overlay’ macro
Features From legacy World Machine Reimplemented
- Added a * marker to the window title when project is modified
- Added tile build resolution/mem required readouts
- Macro presets are now loaded properly.
- Basic explorer view is re-implemented
- Session support re-implemented. Currently, sessions are how you can retain all of your history state, in a seperate state file. You can turn it on and off in project settings->general
Tweaks
- Asset Export dialog now enforces only a single instance at a time.
- Autosave properly shows the restored file path when loading after a crash
- River properties now has scrollbar
- Zoomed pane gets a highlighted border
- Toolbar pane toggle button now toggles mode instead of zooming pane
- Added “browse” button to Library load dialog that lets you open a world/macro/blueprint from any location, not just your library folder
- Minor improvements to preset ergonomics; the way that the "Preset* " modified naming system works on load/save/delete is improved
- Added old version importer to Displacement, Curves, improved River
- When changing device version, now always run the conversion code instead of only the first time
- Asset Export, Device Upgrade are now nonmodal dialog views that persist through multiple projects
- When you open a file using Recent or Open File, the next time you open a file you will start in that folder
- Views now release scenes when they are not visible, reducing memory usage
- Param dialogs only now doc to left/right side
- System info dialog improved
- Project Settings now has a scrollview to accommodate more settings
- Checkpoint automatic naming is improved to work like the Library Output
- Basic Perlin gradient parameter now displayed in degrees. This should not break existing worlds.
- Parameter values on mouseover in workview and param designer are more specific (elevation, rgba value, etc)
- Improved library dialog sorting
- Added logging for failure to load macros/blueprints
- Ctrl+click on a port lets you wire from it like before.
- Ctrl+drag on a render extent in explorer lets you drag the extent. Dragging was disabled by default as it often was accidental.
Bugfixes since 4008
- Curve editor keeps correct ratio
- Fixed crash while paging packets to disk
- Fixed regression where show advanced shortcut didn’t function
- Fixed crash bug in parameter dialog
- Fixed crash bug in layout view
- Fixed bug in enum param when converting from other values
- Various small exception fixes
- Fixed bug where localspace res string shows only ‘%d’
- Fixed regression where export asset dialog close button doesn’t work
- Fixed regression where device workview context menus didn’t work
- Fixed explorer view to start viewing the render extent on first load
- Fixed crash when dragging devices in workview
- Fixed a crash in threaded building of macros
- Fixed bug where distance range can’t be set
- Fixed example library browser not having lighting
- Fixed a longstanding issue where map data would be sometimes off by 1px in the viewport
- Fixed crash bug in project browser
- Fixed bug where water wasn’t updating in layout/explorer views
- Fixed several generic crash/out of synch errors
- LTE Project files now save/load their project colortable(oops)
- Fixed bug where layout shapes “invert” parameter was not being respected
- Fixed bug where copy command wasn’t working in macroworld
- Fixed bug where LTE was handling nested macro parameter packets differently than 3028
- Fixed “stuck in panning mode” if panning was set to be favored over selection in workview UI
- File output now changes extension correctly when setting filename
- File output now autodetects format from filename
- Bitmap output now changes extension correctly
- Automatic output of bitmap, hf, mesh now works correctly
- Mesh file picker works
- Fixed “project asset folder” path bug
- Fixed bug where folder picker would not allow cancelling
- Fixed crash bug when using session file
- Fixed crash bug when loading very old deprecated devices
- Fixed macro save to library path not being set correctly bug
- Fixed ‘can’t connect to parameter ports’ bug
- Fixed bug where macroworld default output was not being maintaned on load/save
- Fixed bug in gamma device where custom gamma wasn’t showing for “Remove custom” option
- Fixed bug in library where save path wasn’t getting set correctly
- Fixed bug in legacy param bank device which was creating incorrect outputs
- Fix for loading very old blur device settings
- Fixed library dialog not opening user folder correctly
- Fixed flow restructure device not accepting a heightfield option as a mask input
- Fixed parameter designer sometimes-crash when deleting a parameter
- Asynch autosave now does an atomic file update so that the autosave file doesn’t get trashed in a crash
- Fixed project browser not having asset path set properly (if the project used input files they would not be located)
- Fixed parameter reordering bug, where you the reorder destination would be off-by-one
- Create Water specified headwaters UI works again (oops)
- Fixed bug where macro presets were corrupting device IDs
- Fixed project browser view target
Known Issues / Remaining to Implement
- Modernize Tiled File Input dialog
- Layout shapes minor features (vertex welding, gridsnap)
- Error feedback messageboxes still need a scrollbar when too many to fit on a screen