11.Post Operations

Within this tab you will currently find the Simulation Sandbox available, only. This tab will cover all further post operations that are applied after you have finished your terrains’ base shape.

Simulation

The Simulation is a completely new feature inside World Creator. It enables you to apply multiple sediment layers - each with different behavior – and simulate rain, water flow, rivers and lakes and sediment transport, in real time.

Player Controls

Before you start a simulation, you need to Reset it with the Reset icon to the top (beside the Play icon). You need to do this every time you change your terrain in some other way (Filters, Areas).

If you hit Play, World Creator will immediately start the simulation. You can Pause anytime.

General Settings

With Show Water you can toggle water rendering on / off. Height Blend lets you control the water blending and with Steps per Frame you control the simulation speed – the higher the value, the larger the performance impact – use it with caution.

Fluid

With Viscosity you control the viscosity of the water. Evaporation lets you define the evaporation for the water.

Clouds

Here you can adjust the general settings of the clouds and the rain strength.

Springs

To create spring, you need to create an Area first and use the Areas blend-map to define the spring location. Simply draw the location of your spring on the blend-map and apply the Area to the Area setting inside the Cloud Properties.

Sediment Layers

Currently you have four sediment layers available for the Simulation Sandbox. Each sediment layer has options such as Height, Erosion Range, Ground Water and more.

The Height lets you define the surface height in meters. Understand it as the thickness of the sediment layer. The height values accumulate with each sediment layer. The thicker a layer is, the different the behavior with respect to erosion and sediment transport.

The Erosion Range tells World Creator how strength the specified sediment layer will be eroded (affected by water). Please be aware that if one surface has set this value to 0, the underlying surface will not erode at all since the above surface does not erode (natural and realistic behavior).

The higher the range, the more the effect of erosion.

Each surface that is eroded, will be transported along the terrain and will create stunning and realistic results. Think of Sand that is transported down a mountain to the valley.

The Ground Water settings are used to define the behavior of the surface if water touches it. The Capacity indicates the maximum amount of water that surface is capable of absorb before it is rejecting any further water. The Evaporation indicates how fast water, that is absorbed by the surface, evaporates inside the surface. The Absorption indicates how fast water is absorbed by the surface.

Each of these three settings have a high impact on the creation of rivers and lakes and of course on erosion and sediment transport. It takes some time of experimentation until you fully figured out how the system works.

Bucket Properties

Additionally, you can drop water and sediment on top of your terrain by either using the Water Bucket Tool or the Surface Bucket tool.

With the Water Bucket you can create large lakes and rivers quickly – but also remove water manually (hold left SHIFT down while clicking on the terrain) – same for the Surface Bucket tool.

Each Sediment Layer may also have an area applied. The areas blend-map defines the locations of the sediment surface. With that you easily can create more natural biomes and mix them up as you wish.