Hi
I’m trying to create a rectangular terrain which I can output as a number of square tiles eg. a terrain thats 1024 x 256 that i want to output as a single row of four 256 x256 tiles.
In Project World Parameters I’ve set Render Extents to 12km by 3km which gives me the rectangular terrain fine.
In Tiled Output Setup tab I want to set Tiles per Side to 4 x 1 but I can’t do this, it only allows 2x2, 3x3 etc.
Is there any work around for this?
thanks in advance 
Sure. Change your render extents to 12 by 12, so that you’ll get a square section of which you only need the top quarter. Go to your Tiled Output Setup and uncheck ‘Always output all tiles’. Now, set the coordinates so that only the top row is selected. Do a tiled build with these settings and you should be fine.
Here’s a screenshot of how it should look in your case.
Hi
Thanks for that help
I tried that and exported the top 4 tiles as PNG’s. That works OK. There are two strange things though. The first is that comparing the PNG tiles to a PNG of the entire terrain output in Photoshop it looks like its actually exported the bottom four tiles rather than the top four. But also when I try to bring the tiles back into WM using Tiled File Input and selecting the x0,y3 PNG as the starting tile and the x3,y3 tile as the ending tile it doesn’t accept it as a valid tileset.
So I tried changing it so it exported the bottom four tiles ( x0,y0 to x3,y0 ). In this case it actually exports the top four tiles ( at least looking at the PNG exports )! But I am able to get these four back into WM using Tiled File Input. I do have to tick ‘Flip Y-orientation of tiles’ though and then they appear as the bottom 4 tiles as they should do! I’m confused myself so probably not explaining it very well, I can only suggest trying it ( if you have time and want to know what I’m rambling about lol !
The idea behind this is to make a strip of terrain that can be exported and brought into something like Z-brush where we would have more fine control over actual feature placement. Then to export out of Z-brush and back into WM to Erode the terrain. That might be used to create Lightmaps in a game. Its just a theoretical pipeline at the moment.
So I kind of have something that works, the only thing that worries me is that when the 4 tiles are input WM sticks them back into a square terrain so that they occupy the bottom 4 tiles and the remaining 12 tiles are completely flat at 0 metres. This would be a problem because when I use Erosion it erodes the top edge of the 4 tiles down to the flat area.
It may be that I have to export all 16 tiles , work just on the bottom 4 but keep the others for when I re-input the tiles.
The other thing I’ve noticed is a what looks like a slight loss of detail from when I build the Tiled File Input compared to the original terrain. Is this because 16 bitPNG is a compressed file format and therefore there is some loss? Would Tiff be a better option?
Thanks for your patience!
Trevor
Phew, quite a story. I’ll try to give a few possible solutions to some of the issues you’ve mentioned.
So I kind of have something that works, the only thing that worries me is that when the 4 tiles are input WM sticks them back into a square terrain so that they occupy the bottom 4 tiles and the remaining 12 tiles are completely flat at 0 metres. This would be a problem because when I use Erosion it erodes the top edge of the 4 tiles down to the flat area.Don't forget that you can mask the effect of pretty much any device. You can use a selector to select your actual terrain, then feed that into the mask input of your erosion. That way it won't go beyond the virtual edges of your tiles.
The other thing I've noticed is a what looks like a slight loss of detail from when I build the Tiled File Input compared to the original terrain. Is this because 16 bitPNG is a compressed file format and therefore there is some loss? Would Tiff be a better option?It depends. Probably there's no quality loss at all, but it's true that WM2 uses 32-bit calculations internally. Exporting and re-importing into WM2 with 16-bit is bound to cut the quality a bit, but it's usually not noticable at all. I say usually because it may be noticable if you're working on the edges of the heightmaps spectrum (eg, very very low heightmap or very very high heightmap). You might see some tesselation then. As for Tiff vs PNG, I really wouldn't know. The best way to find out is to just try that one :)
And no problem, ofcourse. Happy to help.
When building tiles, they overlap so the seams can later be removed. So at there might be a certain loss of detail in these areas.
Afaik PNG is a lossless format. (you CAN use it for lossy compression but I don’t think Stephen did so)
There are some problems that occur with file formats. Some formats put the first pixel from a file at the top of the image, some put them at the bottom. This is why sometimes flip y is needed and probably also lead to the phenomena you’re experiencing.
This would be a problem because when I use Erosion it erodes the top edge of the 4 tiles down to the flat area.You could temporarily fill the rest of the terrain with some data to avoid this Or you could try cutting the flat areas away by setting the world extends accordingly. I don't know how good this will work though - I'm not doing much with tiles.