Hi all. So I have arrived at a noise recipe that I want to use for all the terrain in my game. See image. However, when I apply it to heightfields that I generate from game mesh, I get way to much topology change to the base mesh. So essentially, I cant use the WM output mesh in the game because it will have too much impact on the playable space and it alters composition too much. I have tried for hours getting crisp detail in my terrain without altering the underlying topology too much.
I wish there was a noise function that essentially “spray paints” noise on the terrain as opposed to changing topology drastically. I just cant replicate the look shown in my image to game mesh I am required to use. Any thoughts?
If you use erosion, it’s bound to change the topology of your original terrain. Please share your world machine graph and before and after screens, so we can advice you if anything can be done.
Hello, thanks for the reply. The erosion is not too much of an issue. It’s the application of combined fractal noise on top of a height map that I grab in Zbrush. This is where I struggle with maintaining the overall original topology. And I don’t need a perfect match, just close. Geocontrol (which I rarely use) has a feature where you can “protect” a heightmap’s original shape to varying degrees. Essentially, you can exclude very large noise deformations and just layer in the higher frequency stuff thereby protecting the overall broad form of the heightmap. Something like this would be nice.
I will send you my graph later in the day. I would appreciate it greatly.
If you’re using WM 3.0.dev1, I have a simple (4 device) macro that will easily let you fade any sequence of filters by scale (so that you can preserve gross terrain features of the original).
It can be done in 2.x by the same principles, but the new Combiner modes introduced in 3.x make the device graph easier to create. I’ve attached the 3.0 macro to this message
how it works:
In essence, what we’re doing is breaking each input (the unaffected and filtered terrains) into a low and high frequency part, with the crossover point at your chosen feature scale. We then add the high frequencies of the filtered terrain onto the low frequencies of your unaffected terrain. Choose the crossover frequency to preserve whatever size of features you need to preserve.