Tiled Seams - Do I need Pro?

Bug Reports
#1

Hi guys-

I’ve created a 3.072km x 3.072km terrain, which I’ve broken down into 9 tiles of 1.024x1.024km.

As you can see here, when I build and export the tiles individually, there are dramatic discrepancies between them, leading to massive gaps in unity.

The discrepancies don’t seem to be only in vertical height either- edges of plateaus aren’t lined up, roads are misaligned, etc.

I just wanted to confirm- World Machine Pro’s “Tiled Export” feature will resolve these problems, and output tiles that blend smoothly into each other?

#2

Yes – Tiled Terrains are the response to exactly such difficulties.

I will point out though, that tiled terrains, although they will always be smooth across the boundary, work best with a source world that is as close to well behaved without any special blending as you can make it. In the case of your world here, I suspect you’re seeing the massive height differences because of normalization of heightfields – look for a clamp device with normalize input checked. If any of your devices show a red ! mark in the device world, they will produce anomalous results in tiled builds that take a large blending factor to correct.

#3

Ah! Thanks very much, Remnant. Looks like every Expander has the ! you mention. All my clamps are just fine.

Is Expander just a dangerous tool to use in this circumstance then? I tried (I think) all the various parameters, but I couldn’t ever get the ! to go away.

Should I look for another solution in these situations?

#4

Usually Expanders are OK – the ! means its potentially problematic but unless the radius is very large its usually not a problem in an actual tiled build. I still suspect that something is causing height differences other than the expander – by any chance are you using the simple perlin noise device with “stabilized noise” unchecked? If so that will cause the noise to be normalized – and thus cause problems.

#5

Hmm… Nope, all my Perlin Noise devices have “Use Stabilized Noise” checked! Thanks very much for your help so far. If you want to look at my setup, I’ve attached the .tmd - I’m currently running 2.3.4.1 Basic 32 bit. I’ll definitely be upgrading in the near future, I’m just looking to see if there’s a solution in the mean time.

Much appreciated!

#6

I believe it is indeed the expanders causing your problem – that and trying to do tiled terrains manually, of course.

The Professional Edition was more or less designed for this situation. You can manually simulate what it does by rendering out oversized tiles (say, 25% overlap), and then manually blending the edge areas in photoshop. Pain in the ass, but possible.

#7

Great. Thanks for your help Remnant! I look forward to grabbing the pro edition soon, and in the meantime I’ll see if I can’t try bypassing the expanders or going the photoshop route.

Cheers!

#8