Complete Beginner Needs Help!

Bug Reports
#1

Hi there,

I need help! I plummed for the pro version looking at the screenshots and a reccommendation but I have no clue what I’m doing. I’ve read the tutorial and worked a few things out but the one thing I’m after I can’t seem to work out.

I create an island using the Layout Gen then all I want to do is add a few mountains in a certain part of the island but every time I add Perilin Noise it puts it on the whole island and I can’t see to work out how to assign it to just portions of the island.

I know it’s a simple task but can’t figure how how.

Can someone do a mini step by step or maybe a sample project which does what I’m after so I can take it apart and have a look.

Regards,

Dave

#2

Hi Dave,

I believe what you’re after is how to use a combiner and masks.

I’ve included an annotated example world here that shows you how the principle works. Note that with any complex system there are many ways to achieve the same result; this is simply one of them.

In short, you draw a layout that shows World Machine which terrain type goes where; then you draw another layout that cuts out the terrain into the shape of an island.

The crucial step is that you use these masks by way of Combiners and Choosers, which along with the mask inputs at the bottom of many devices are the blending operators in World Machine. The Chooser chooses between two terrain inputs based upon a mask input (which is what we need to choose the terrain type) and the Combiner performs a multiply between the resulting terrain and the island shape (which, much like the Multiply layer operation in photoshop, cuts out the shape of the mask)

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#3

Can someone take a look at my first attempt and possibly guide me on my way to some height lol. I have got the island shape and the mountains in the right place etc but can’t see to get much height on the mountains, they’re more like a snowy hill at the moment.

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#4

Dave,

That’s a good start. I think the height issue actually a matter of scale more than anything.

The island shapes you’ve created are hundreds of kilometers across in size. With that kind of breadth, the slopes are quite mild and the even a vertical scale of 5000m looks wimpy. For reference, for example, the big island of Hawaii is around 50km across with a vertical elevation of 4,200m – giving much steeper relief than what you have now.

You could try simply increasing the vertical scale, but a better approach is scaling down your island shapes.

I’ve included an example of doing this here. I’ve simply gone into Layout View,selected the shapes, hit ‘s’ for scale, then adjusted until they were about half or less of their previous size. The falloff amount also needs adjusting after that.

One other trick: For precise control of heights, the “Clamp” device is very useful. It allows you to control the exact highest and lowest points in a particular heightfield. You can see I’ve added one after your lowlands generator to make sure that the lowlands, stay low.

I’ve also changed the Chooser from “Choose between” to “Add to” mode, so that the mountains get built atop the lowland areas rather than directly replacing them.

Check out what I’ve attached and see if it makes sense what I’ve changed!

#5