3.Surface Settings

The Surface section specifically shows all terrain surface related settings. Hence, this section is the primary terrain generator, responsible for the shape of the terrain surface.

This section further divides into the sub-sections Base Settings and Filters Settings:

Base Settings

Within this sub-section, you will find settings that are used to create the basic terrain surface which creates the initial elevation values for any further terrain modifications. It is important to realize, that any changes within this section changes the initial values and with that anything else with respect to the terrain surface.

Seed

The Seed value is a signed integer which is used by World Creators’ random generator to create a terrain shape based on random elevation values which are randomly created by a specific algorithm.

You will always get the same terrain shape for a given seed number. Changing this value, creates a completely new terrain shape.

The + / - buttons increment / decrement the seed value. Use them to quickly iterate through an unlimited number of possible terrain shapes. The R button creates a random seed value.

Area

With an Area set, World Creator will use its bounds to create the base shape. If the bounds do not fully cover the entire terrain, nothing is created outside the bounds, hence, these regions will become completely flat. Areas further have a so-called Blend Map which is used like a mask. Hence, an area not only covers a rectangular region but inside that region you further can use a blend map to exactly specify the locations of interest. We will take a closer look to areas in another chapter.

Terrain Size

The Terrain Width and Terrain Length can be used to create a specific terrain size, in meters. It does not have to be a power-of-two value (e.g. 512 by 512 or 2048 by 2048) but can be of any size (e.g. 2849 by 1369).

If Size Locked is checked, both, terrain width and terrain length will adapt automatically if any of both change its value.

Precision

The Precision allows you to adjust the precision, in meters, for the given terrain width and terrain length. A higher precision means a higher resolution giving you better results but also requiring a larger memory amount having an impact on performance, also.

With Soil you can turn on / off the rendering of the terrain soil underneath your terrain surface. With Depth you can adjust the soil depth It does not have an impact on the generator itself – it is meant for visual reasons only.

Custom Base Shape Properties

If Custom Base Shape is checked, and Edit Shape is pressed, you can manually adjust the elevation values at specific regions of your terrain by dragging any of the hovering spheres.

Additionally, you have three Selection Tools you can use for selecting single or multiple control points, enabling you to quickly adjust the terrain surface.

There are also four different Actions for each selection tool:

▪ With Move Up / Down you can simply drag spheres up and down (e.g. raising / lowering mountains)

▪ With Average you can raise the selected spheres to the average level of the center sphere

▪ With Flatten you can flatten the terrain along the selected spheres to the height of the center sphere

▪ With Noise you can raise / lover the terrain along the selected spheres with some additional noise

With Flatten Entire Terrain you can quickly flatten the entire terrain shape to zero and start creating your own shape from scratch.

With Reset Control Points you can reset to the original terrain shape.

With Done Editing Shape you confirm the changes

This is just one design tool inside World Creator. There are plenty of more tools available giving you even more design capabilities to create exactly the kind of terrain surface you want.

Seamless X / Z

If Seamless X and / or Seamless Z is checked, World Creator transforms the terrain into a seamless terrain along the checked selection. That means, that the terrain can be repeated along any the x and z axis without visual visible borders.

The Border Blend Range slider can be used to adjust the blending along the edges.

Inside this section you control the initial values for the base shape filter that is always the first filter in the entire generation process. That filter is used to create the base terrain shape you are looking at initially. So said, every change you perform here will also affect the generation process in total.

Noise Height Range

The Noise Height Range tells World Creator to generate the randomly created elevation values within the specified range. This does not mean that the obviously lowest and highest elevation visually seen on the terrain surface equals exactly to the values defined for the Noise Height Range.

The General Strength and Factor sliders give you control about the smoothness of the terrain surface. The lower the values the smoother the terrain result will be – the larger, the rougher the surface.

Edit Curve

With Edit Curve you can adjust the randomly generated noise values by scaling the elevation values. With this feature you can generate random maps that have a realistic mix of lower and higher areas, especially if the very first Level Strength Step values are set to 0.

With S you can smooth the curve and with F you can flatten the curve. With Reset you reset the curve to its initial values.

With Radius you can adjust the radius of your brush used to paint the curve.

With Scale you can scale the generated area for the specified terrain mesh seen in the viewport.To edit the curve, simply use your mouse to paint directly onto the image. With Reset you reset the curve to the default curve as seen in the above image. The S button smoothest the curve and the F button flattens the curve.

With Edit Offset you can offset the noise values per level step that the generator creates along the X and Z axis. If Lock (X/Y) is enabled, you can change all level steps at once. Reset lets you reset the sliders to their default values.

Offsetting the terrain generation might be useful to find a good spot on a virtually ultra large terrain. Think of it like moving the generated values along the X and Z axis.

With Reset you reset the offset to their initial values.

Fractal Noise Level Step Per Strength

The amount of available Level Step Strength sliders depends on the height map resolution whereas the height map resolution is calculated internally by World Creator depending on terrain size and precision. Hence, the larger the terrain size or precision, the more level steps are available for which you can control the strength values.

With that, the level step strength sliders give you additional control about the smoothness per level and they do have a large effect on terrain granularity and shape.

Below you can see four different settings for the level steps strengths, each with different results. The combination possibilities are truly unlimited and open the path to an unlimited range of unique terrains, since changes on the base terrain shape affects further terrain modifications (e.g. by filters and more).

Filters

Basically, all filters are modifiers, that directly affect the base terrain shape. They can be combined with each other and further grouped into layers. Layers can be restricted to Areas, used to blend a specific region on the terrain. The filters that belong to a specific layer that have an area set up, are applied only along the areas’ blend map. Hence, you can use a combination of layers, filters and areas to create biomes (more on that later in another chapter).

Please note, that a blend map extends a mask by additional weight values per pixel. A traditional mask contains either black or white pixels whereas a blend map additionally encodes the weight for a given pixel – think of them like a gray-scale image.

General and Transform Filters

There are different kind of filters, such as direct transform filters, which will completely transform the base terrain shape into another kind of terrain type, such as Canyon, Desert, Terrace, as well as General Filters, that perform some generic operations or are used to create some additional noise or denoise.

Erosion and Sediment Filters

Another kind of filters are used to apply specific operations to an existing terrain, such as Erosion, Wind and Sedimentation. These filters can be found inside the Basic Erosion and Simulation category.

Design Filters

Also, there are so-called design filters, allowing you to create custom paths and shapes which can be used to further modify the terrain by hand.

Effect Filters

Another kind of filters that World Creator supports, are the effect filters. These kinds of filters allow you to apply special effects such as distortion, swirl, pixelate and more.

World Creator ships with tons of different filters that assist you to create unique and realistic terrain shapes for your needs.

Creating Filter Layers

To apply a filter, you first must create a layer by clicking on Add Layer. You can add as many layers as you want. With Remove All you remove all available layers.

Layers can be enabled, disabled, re-arranged, and, removed.

Each layer has a Name, an Area and a list of Filters. Naming a layer might be of interest if you plan a large and complex terrain. An area is used to specify a specific region using a blend map which is used to apply the filters of this layer to specific regions and with specific weights on the terrain.

Please note, that Layers in combination with Areas take an important role when it comes to create biomes. We suggest you take a close look at our tutorial videos which will show the creation of biomes step-by-step (see our web-site).

Adding Filters

Click on Add inside a selected layer, to open the Filter Library:

Each filter you select previews the result in real-time on the terrain. You may change the filter settings to see how it affects the terrain.

To add a filter, you either press Add or Add & Close. Add will just add the selected filter to the specified layer without closing the Filter Library. That way, you can keep on adding more and more filters. Add & Close will add the selected filter to the specified layer and close the Filter Library.

You can add as many filters as you want. But please keep in mind, the more filters you add, the more does World Creator have to compute to create the final terrain. Hence, you might experience a performance impact, if too many filters have been added.

Enabling and Re-Arranging Filters

Each filter can be enabled, disabled and re-arranged in its order. You may also Remove the filter entirely from the list. With Remove All you can remove all filters of the selected layer.

Change lets you exchange the selected filter to another that you can choose from the Filter Library.

Duplicate duplicates the selected filter.

Filter Properties

The filter properties are used to describe how a filter is applied to the terrain. Each filter has its own specific properties. The image below shows the properties of the Canyon filter.

You can click on the symbol to get a brief description of the current section. Every section inside World Creator has such a quick help button, serving you with a short documentation about the specific section.

With you can reset the settings of the specified section to the initial values. Almost every section has this option available.

Filter Distribution Properties

The filter distribution properties define at what specific locations the filter is applied. If an area is used, these properties only affect those locations that are covered by the blend map of the area. Else, the entire terrain is affected.

Operation

The Operation (Addition, Subtraction, Min and Max) lets you define how this filter is combined with the previous filter in the list. By default, Addition is selected.

Cavity

The Cavity is used to apply a filter either along the peaks (convexity) or along the carves (concavity).

Noise Select

If Noise Select is enabled, a Perlin Noise map is generated by the specified values. This map is then used to indicate at which locations the filter should be applied.

Height Select

With Height Select enabled, you can specify within what Height Range the filter is applied on the terrain, in meters

With Relative to Ocean, you can also offset the height range relative to the ocean height level (mean sea level). In a later chapter, you will see how to adjust the ocean height level.

Use the Height Smoothness values to adjust how softly or rapidly the filter’s effect is blended into the terrain at the lowest and highest values.

Slope Select

With Slope Select enabled, you also have the option to take the Slope Range and Slope Smoothness into account. With that, the selected filter will only be applied within the specified slope range, in degrees.

Angle Select

With Angle Select enabled, you also have the option to apply the filter along a specific Angle in degrees. Use the Angle Width and Angle Smoothness sliders to adjust the generation depending on the Angle.

Filter Level Step Strengths

The amount of available Level Step Strength sliders depends on the set resolution whereas the resolution is automatically calculated by World Creator depending on terrain size and precision. Hence, the larger the terrain size or precision, the more level steps are available for which you can control the strength values.

With that, the Level Step Strength sliders give you additional control about the smoothness per level and they do have a large effect on terrain granularity and shape, per filter.

Special: The Path Filter

The Path filter can be understood as a vector tool to create roads, streets, rivers, mountains or any other kind of form you can create with vectors.

A single Path filter can store an unlimited range of paths. Once the Path filter is applied, you need to click on Add Path to add a path.

If you want to name your path, simply enter a name in the Name field.

The Height Offset value can be used to offset the height of the entire path. You could use this to easily create rivers. Strength determines how strongly the path affects the surrounding terrain.

Width determines the width of your path, and Smoothness lets you smooth the path along its borders. With Segment Offset you can specify the number of segments used to create the path – the more segments you have, the more accurate it will be.

The Noise Scale can be used to change the noise values created along the path borders and the Noise Factor increases the noise weight – which is good when you are creating dirt tracks (e.g. Western style).

With Closed, you tell World Creator to close the path (connect first with last control point).

With Level Step you can control how accurate the path should be interpreted by World Creator. The higher the value, the more accurate it will be but the less options World Creator will have to mix its random content with the path. We suggest you quickly change the value in real-time mode to see the effect.

If Use Level Step is un-checked, you can control the strength per level. You will have more control on the mixing behavior as described above.

Each control point you add, can be scaled and moved on the terrain to design a path.

If Has Mesh is enabled, World Creator additionally creates a path mesh that can be either textured (Material = Standard) or it can be used as a water mesh (Material = Water).

This is only for visuals inside World Creator since you cannot export that mesh but export the paths’ blend map

There is an unlimited range of possibilities since Path filter is a multi-functional design tool. It is still under development and will be improved further, over time.

Special: The Shape Filter

Like the Path filter, the Shape filter allows you to create custom shapes instead of paths. With this filter you can create nice lakes, mountains, plateaus and more

As you can see, the available settings are very similar to the Path filter, except a few that are not available since they make no sense for the Shape filter (like Width and Segment Offset).

Once you click on Edit Shape, World Creator displays a default shape at the center of your terrain. You can add additional points to the shape by clicking on the dark grey spheres. With that you can create any kind of shape.

Move the shape by dragging it over the terrain and rotate a shape by pressing the right-mouse button outside the shape and moving your cursor.

You can remove points by holding down the Left-Shift and Left-CTRL keys on your keyboard and clicking on the sphere you want to remove.

There is an unlimited range of possibilities since Shape filter is a multi-functional design tool. It is still under development and will be improved over time.