Influence Noise to flow in general direction

GHawkins · January 6, 2025, 8:47pm

Hello there,

I recently took the plunge with getting World Machine, haven’t been regretting it so far. It’s a very interesting journey to discover more and more.

I’m working on a continent size map, scaled with a factor of 10. World Machine didn’t appear to really like my import at true scale, so I’m making it work.

I created a mountain ridge and I’ve been working out the plateau behind it. I’ve been getting consistently great results with Delta_Research’s Branchify macro (my thanks for which should you ever read this), but I’m now stuck on what I’d like to influence this macro.

This is what I currently have (heavy WIP). But as you can see, the underlying Perlin is being a Perlin and there’s no actual rime or reason to the structure.

Is there a way to influence a Perlin to flow in a particular direction. Edit: Realized I forgot to mention the Great Basin is the inspiration for this, if that helps convey my idea.

I’ve tried distrotion and got some good results for the mountain range with the Distrotion Folding, but it doesn’t make the Perlin’s higher areas actually follow it.

I’ve tried using gradients on mirror repeat with certain widths, combiners and perlins, but the structure of the gradient always shines through too much. It’s always as if someone came through it with a comb.

Does anyone perhaps have any idea on how to make a Perlin or something similar flow more in a certain direction without being as rigid as the gradient and without having to use the shape generator since I’d like to do this procedurally.

Stephen · January 6, 2025, 9:56pm

Procedurally control of continent-level features is a pretty challenging thing!

I’m guessing what you’re looking for here is to make something that looks like the tectonically-compressed folds that become mountain ranges on the edges of continents.

If you can deal with having only a single direction that the noise is folded in, you can use a Placement device and turn up the anisotropy to create directional noise:

In Build 4044, out imminently, the Scatter device gains the ability to control the heading of each instance, which allows you to something much more flexible:

Once that build is out I will post the example file above.

Tomatiy · January 17, 2025, 2:40pm

example file? EHEH

bigyihsuan · January 19, 2025, 4:21am

Do you have the example file anywhere? This would be excellent to make Appalachian-style “ridge-and-valley” sort of terrain.

Tomatiy · January 19, 2025, 4:41am

all waiting for publishing, eheh

Stephen · January 20, 2025, 7:48pm

Here is the example file mentioned above:

WM4044_Scatter_exaple.tmd (267.2 KB)

It will likely be included as an example file with 4045 as well.

GHawkins · February 25, 2025, 8:04pm

It took some time before I could sit down and really bite into the instance scatterer. And then it took me quite some time before I really understood some of the mechanics and how to influence them… But I got there.