How to fix tiled build incompatibilities

[xrattus]

Hey guys,

I’m not sure if this was posted here already, but I have been fighting for a long time with tiled builds generating wrong results (especially with the incompatible devices such as Create Water, Expander, River etc). When you use those devices, the heightmaps and masks almost never come out right, and I found this solution that is so deceptively simple that I thought I’d share, in case someone comes here through Google.

Just don’t set any outputs on your project. Instead of setting heightmaps or bitmap outputs, put everything going into a single Library Output device, and then build your project as a normal build, in the highest resolution you possibly can. This will generate a Library file with all the inputs you provided to it.

THEN, you create another project in another .tmd file, and load the previously generated file using a Library Input device, and from that second project you set up your outputs: heightmaps, bitmaps, you name it, and run tiled builds with however many tiles you want.

100% of the time the tiled builds generated this way come out 100% correct! Including stuff created by Create Water, Expander and all the other incompatible devices. I was so shocked by that I thought I’d share

[WFab]

Glad to know that someone uses library I/O besides me lol! I did post about Libraries some time back, though not in a “tiling” context. Your method where you split one graph into two, is also a great memory optimization method. I’ve been using it to split my projects into “stages” for years! There’s a lot to be said about complex graph management here, but I’ll link the original thread here instead. May help someone just starting out with libraries.

Tutorial Project: Caching your terrain to disk using Libraries

Since people keep asking about implementing a Caching device in world machine, I decided to make a demonstration of an alternative using Library i/o devices. The tutorial project works in the latest release build “Artist-Point Build 4031” Use this thread to ask questions, if you have any. I’ll be editing the project itself to include this forum topic later on. Library Caching Demo (WFab).zip (52.0 KB) [Graph 8k]

[blattacker]

Just out of curiosity, what is the benefit of doing tiled builds in this way, rather than just saving the outputs at the end of the main build? Is this a method that is specific to video game workflows?

[xrattus]

Unreal 5 only allows terrains larger than 8161px if they are imported as tiled builds.

Also, as I mentioned, usually when you do a tiled build from the original project the tiles come out all wrong especially if they use water devices. This workflow avoids that.

[blattacker]

Ah, okay, I was just wondering because I’m using World Machine primarily for use in programs like Terragen that don’t have that limitation. I was wondering if the library input method somehow was saving the “math” of the results rather than the results themselves, allowing for tiled builds of a library device to be built at a higher resolution than the library device itself, which would have been a gamechanger for me ahaha!

[WFab]

@blattacker Libraries are a baked dump at fixed resolution. If you want to save the math though, macros perform that exact function.

[blattacker]

That’s what I had assumed was happening with them. Without knowing that some game engines require tiled builds, though, I thought there might have been a possibility that my assumption was wrong.

[P_B]

My workflow is:
first time when I’m creating game level in UE I use tiled import, but nex import of heightmap is not tiled!!! (“You just have to use the landscape res. same in wm and UE”)Because of the nodes in WM that are not supporting tield export and make your landscape looking diferent in WM and UE!!