So worldmachine randomly generates holes… I am not sure why but in 3d view it is like someone carved random stuff out of the terrain. It is a royal pain in the butt.
I am not sure what causes it but I just bought 2.0(I guess 2.1), has anyone else experienced or conquered this oddity? It is most annoying.
on the heightfield they show up as a black hole. here is an example:
I have never seen anything like this - does this happen with specific devices or a specific kind of input?
I have never seen it before I got this version either I am not sure what causes it. It can go from bad to worse with large tears in the terrain, it is unpredicable and inconsistent. as in the holes move around. I have had it happen on a few other terrains…
I’ll post a few images…
is my pipeline.
the preview:
after I compile:
Those are images from inside WM… do these artifacts also appear if you open the resulting heightfield with some other application?
the height field and texture have black blobs where the holes are. If it was only the preview, I wouldn’t care.
I may have found something!
if I disable the first of the two layout generators the holes go away…
this is troublesome, the layout generators are why I bought the new version. :\
http://smoth.net/home/wm/forest.7z
Here is the file along with the base height field.
Please take a look and see if you can replicate it. I am going to work around it for this map but this will cause serious issues for me. Is there a possibility that Stephen has already addressed this issue?
I get the exact same results. I’m currently trying to find out more about this.
Thanks! 
For now I guess you could just delete the layout and draw a new one if you haven’t already.
Did you create that file with WM 2.1 from the beginning or is the layout device used actually from a different version of WM? (Professional or Basic, 2.0 or 2.1 …)
I created this one in 1.2 but I have had the issue in maps created entirely in world machine 2.1 pro.
You have this freak bug on a regular basis?! :shock:
Ok, I’ll put it on the bug tracker.
well, I have made 4 maps with this tool, 2 of them have had this holes thing.
I noticed that changing the falloff distance to something else than 0.250 fixes this problem. Can you confirm this? What is that value in your other problematic files?
edit: By the way here is something you could try to improve the look of the terrain: Blur your bitmap until the steps disappear and then insert and advanced perlin afterwards - it can add structure to an existing terrain. Erosion works better when it has some structure to work with. (You might want to mask the advanced perlin so you still have some flat areas where the player can actually build something.)
My apologies for not getting back to you yet, I am trying to ready a release and I haven’t the time to look into this issue, I will, rest assured look into it though.
Hey there,
I’m fairly new at using WM2, but I already love how fast, powerful and dynamic it can be.
However I’ve been having -major- issues with the whole hole thing.
On a simple terrain 9/10 times there is no issue. (however i’ve had holes in a simple perlin noise device that i haven’t even edited yet.)
When I have a terrain that’s a bit more complex: http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/9818/screenshot1mcg.png
It is nearly impossible to get a full working render, and boy it’s unbelievably frustrating, because these holes disappear and appear randomly when you modify the device where they originate.
for example:
The above terrain renders perfectly fine in the preview. however when I build it it ends up like this: http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/4574/screenshot2ijh.png
looking back I can tell that it started with this:
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8752/screenshot3r.png
the result of the erosion device.
When I then change any of the sliders just a tick and build it all again, the final build I end up with is this:
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2852/screenshot4rsm.png
and when I change it back it looks different still. it’s almost impossible for me to debug whatever might be messing it up, because there is no clear pattern at all.
It gets worse when I try to have snow in there as well.
Here is another version of the above terrain, this time trying to include snow: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8541/screenshot9z.png
After much ‘jiggling the wire’ so to speak; messing around randomly to try and get it to work I manage to have a working preview with snow:
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/64/screenshot5gaq.png
You’d think I was home free right?
Well, I press Build, waiting 2 minutes for snow to finish building http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9348/screenshot6x.png
and then I get this: http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/3529/screenshot7spp.png the same is mirrored in the output files:
texture: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8418/screenshot10o.png
heightmap: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/7861/screenshot11zjv.png
Depending on how much I mess with it it will render more or less, but because it takes 2 minutes each time I have yet to figure out a way to render this completely without any artifacts.
Looking at the erosion device if that build, it didn’t fail nearly as bad as it did in the first example, but there are still a few small holes: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/6545/screenshot8i.png
And this is only at 512x512 by the way. I’m using the free version.
Why is this happening?
I’m personally guessing it has something to do with the graphics card, or at least something hardware related, since many people aren’t having these issues.
Here are my specs if you’re curious (although I’m aware that given the system/version I have they’re not being used to their full potential):
Windows XP,
2.63 GHz Intel Core2 Duo,
Nvidia 9600M GT with 512 Vram,
4GB ram
However the key question is not why it’s happening, but rather how can I prevent it from happening, or at the very least is there any kind of workaround where I can force it to render more accurately. i’d be willing to give up the preview and have it take longer if at the very least it would render error free.
Please feel free to try the file out yourself. It should be attached.
Do you have fall-off distance = .250 (or the equivalent in meters) in any of your layout generators? If so: change it to 0.248 (for example).
Erosion isn’t the cause. The layout generator will sometimes produce invalid pixels - erosion then propagates this error throughout the terrain.
no, not as far as I can tell.
You could just download the above file to see what’s wrong with it. What does it look like for you when you build it?
Oddly enough, I was able to get a perfect render when I rendered first thing when I started up my computer, and immediately started WM2. Took barely 14 seconds to render too:
Colormap: http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/2196/colormap1.png
Heightmap: http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/7026/heightmap1.png
Then rendering 5 minutes later I got this: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/449/screenshot12t.png
and then it was back to only seeing a sliver of the final terrain.
Could Perhaps the limited RAM usage of the basic version have to do with it?
Oops… yeah, sorry.
It actually looks fine to me. There are no errors at all.
That’s what I was suspecting. I’m guessing that you have the full version?
Do you think the limitations of the basic version might have something to do with it?
If any of the devs are reading this, is there any system information that you might like me to post, since this might be hardware related?
