Hi there,
Let me break down your question a bit to make sure I"m addressing what you need properly.
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What is the best workflow for large open worlds with different terrain characters.
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How do I combine multiple sections of terrain
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How do I export it
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For workflow, it really depends on where you are most comfortable working to design the initial layout – you can do all the layout purely in WM which makes the rest of this post have no meaning – you would just use layout generators and different chains of generators and filters to produce different terrain character. There is actually a device in the shortly upcoming WM 2.3 that really helps out with this! And doing so means you have fewer things to worry about with transitions between different terrain types.
However, it is absolutely no issue to do the initial work in mudbox and import it. Doing so just leads to a few further questions…
If you don’t want or can’t put everything on a single heightfield, then consider how these regions are separated – are all of each terrain zone neatly packed into a compact region, or is it sprinkled in several places throughout the map? If the former it might be quite feasible to make each in a separate height field, whereas in the latter case you might be better off making one giant map.
- There is one basic question when it comes to importing multiple heightfields:
“Are my multiple input files arranged strictly in a grid, or do I want to scatter an irregular number around at different locations?”
YES) If you have multiple input files, and they fit neatly onto a grid, you can use a Tiled File Input device to bring the entire set of heightfields into World Machine in one swoop. They just need a naming structure something like this: mytile_x0_y0, tile_1,4, etc. Where the first and second numbers are X and Y grid coordinates of the heightfield. This works great for sliced terrain datasets, but if you want to have more loosly-defined locations (perhaps with overlap) then you will need to do something else…
NO) This is probably the option you wanted. You can use multiple File Input devices and adjust the world placement values so that the heightfield only covers a certain region of your world. Then take all the outputs and run them through a chain of Chooser devices to combine them together. The attached graphic shows how this is done – the key here is that each File Input also provides a mask that shows where it has valid data, and that mask can even be automatically softened for your convenience (and you can of course further muss it up as you wish). You can have your regions overlap each other to provide a transition area between the terrain types.
- If what you need to do is export a single heightfield, then this one is easy – just build and export like normal from WM. The above has taken care of all the other issues.