I’m wondering which colorizer has this author used to create this WM terrain?
It doesn’t seem like “Basic Coverage” due to the high amount of detail. As for the shape, seems like Advanced Perlin Noise + Erosion + Thermal Weathering.
I’m gonna go ahead and guess that this either wasn’t colored in World Machine, or, if it was, it was enhanced later in a different program. I say this because of those sheer faces towards the middle of the image. At least in my own experience, sheer faces like that don’t get that level of detail in World Machine, at best what you’d see would be the different bands. Although, looking closer, those might have been added in later.
If you’re talking purely about the background mountains and stuff that look like they could have been colored in World Machine, I’d say it’s probably a custom one. Going by the other threads you’ve posted, and the fact that you got your account today, I’m going to guess that you’re fairly new at this? If it were colored in World Machine, it’s probably a bunch of layered colorizers with masks. For example, the flow lines probably have a sand colored texture, the rest probably has just a simple red rock coolorizer on it, and then they took the flow lines from the erosion node and sent that as a mask for the combiner on the two colorizers. Just a guess, but you can get pretty decent results that way.
I didn’t know you could use diffuse textures within World Machine. That’s interesting. Do they have to be grey, so WM merges that detail texture with the color chosen by the Basic Coverage macro?
I’m new with WM and i’m trying to learn more about how to create beautiful terrains like these. I mean, by terrains look good topologically, but the final texture always sucks.
I’ve never used the basic coverage macro, so I loaded it up to help me write this better. From my first impression of the thing, it seems like it could be useful, but it is underpowered for what you’re trying to do. I’m sure you could probably rig something up with multiple basic coverage macros and combiners to make something nice, and if you throw a lightmap maker in the chain with an RGB color map, and mix that with the final result with a combiner set to multiply, you can come up with some nice results, but for the incredibly detailed textures that you seem to be trying to do, I’d say you have two options:
Option 1) If you want to work within World Machine completely for the colors, I’d say ditch the basic coverage macro, and start working with colorizer nodes instead. Colorizers are pretty simple, they have a gradient on them. Far left is your lowest heights, far right is your highest heights. You can set as many colors in between those two as you want, and you can set those two to any color. I saw in another thread that you have the community version of GeoGlyph. That actually has you pretty well set up there, because if you load a colorizer node and then change the mode to “import by color table” they have a bunch of preset color tables that you can use for really good results. For better options and realism, what you’ll probably want to do is have several different colorizers for different types of terrain (for an example, have a colorizer with some sand colors, have another different one with vegetation, possibly a third for dirt, and a fourth for rocky areas, that’s my basic setup), and then mix them together with combiners, using masks to mask out where you want the different colorizers to work (again, for example, have the flow data from an erosion node be a mask for the sandy texture, the deposition data for the dirt texture, and then select height for both the vegetation and rocky areas, is my basic setup). Finally, once all the colorizers have been combined in a way that you’re happy with, to see how it looks, just route the heightmap and the final combiner output to an Overlay View node, and build to see full detail. If you want, I can send you an older project file of mine with a setup like this, if you learn better by seeing than by hearing it explained.
Option 2) What I generally do is build out the landscape in World Machine, and then put a basic colorizer on it to get a sense of what I want it to look like in the final version, but then bring it into a program like Vue (which is what I personally use) or Terragen, or even a full fledged 3D program. The benefit to programs like Vue and Terragen is that they include, not just the landscape itself, but you can also include atmosphere, clouds, different kinds of lighting (for example, having more than one sun, or even doing night scenes), and a much more powerful texturing process, where you can get subtle variations that look more realistic, as well as completely getting rid of the banding issue I personally have in World Machine (If you have a sheer face, one that is completely vertical you’ll see exactly where the height changes the color, and there’s not much I’ve been able to find that lets you get around that). For example, I’ve included two screenshots, one of the final texture I created of a landscape in World Machine, and the second being the result of bringing it into Vue and texturing it there. I think you’ll be able to see what I mean from that.
All that being said, I’m still fairly new at World Machine myself, so if anyone knows a better way to go about this, feel free to chime in. Also, this is just how I personally work, so as with any advice on the Internet, your mileage may vary. Let me know if you want me to send you the project file with my method of coloring in World Machine.
btw: the mountains in foreground are 3D models, not generated in WM, but scupted…
Thanks a lot for the help! I’ll try to work with colorizers and see what i can come up with. 
Just a quick question: how do you combine colorizers into a single texture? Combiner with multiply?
multiply makes texture darker and darker, the more you use this…
maybe try other modes, like Screen/overlay or ad (which makes things more bright)
I´ve found out, that combining with chooser, instead of combiner is more ofter the better choice
Yeah, honestly, I just today started using the chooser, since it’s basically what I was doing anyway. I’d create a mask for the combiner, then set it to average, and just max it out, so that the areas that were masked out were one colorizer, and the other areas were the other one. The chooser is a much simpler way of doing that, as it turns out. I’d just gotten used to using combiners for everything, haha.
Anytime you see overhanging rocks (look at the right wall of cliffs) you can be certain it wasn’t generated (solely) in World Machine. This is a fundamental limitation of height-maps.
Someone may have started that in WM and then taken the height maps to something like Terragen for additional work, of course.
Good catch! I hadn’t even noticed the overhang because I was too focused on how different the texturing looked on the fairly blockish looking rocks compared to the surrounding terrain.