Height Map and World Machine

genwu

Hello all - Hoping to get some feedback from all the talent out there. It's my first time using World Machine and first time trying out terrains of any sort.

To follow along with ze little graphic provided - I've attached the test sculpt from zbrush > displacement map from maya and my plane > and the strange stepping effect I'm getting from my world machine builds.

Am I missing some option in world machine to smooth that stepping out? Or is my Height map just incorrect?

Any feedback or help is much appreciated!

Santewi

Use 16-bit images. 8-bit images can have only 256 different values per channel, and because heightmaps are in grayscale that leaves you with only 256 different possible height values.

genwu

Hey Santewi, Thank you for the reply. I have imported it as a 16-bit tiff and unfortunately still get that strange stepping effect. Any ideas?

CheeseOnToast

Why generate the map in Maya? Zbrush does a great job of generating artifact-free 16-bit displacements like this. I've used them in World Machine with no problems. Make sure perspective is off, make sure your camera is snapped to look straight down at the terrain and have a document size that matches the resolution of the heightmap you want. Hit the "frame" button to fill the document with the tool. Then in the alpha palette, hit the "grabdoc" button for an instant heightmap. Make sure you export it in a 16-bit format, such as .tif.

genwu

@CheeseOnToast Thank you! Worked like a charm and WAY easier than what I was trying. I'm very new to zbrush and wasn't having any luck on rendering out displacement maps to use as my height map.

Thanks again!

wichenroder

Note that in ZBrush you can constrain brushes to a single axis via Transform > Modifiers if you want to sculpt only in the up axis for heightmaps. Though it doesn't matter a great deal if you have a little overhang by not doing this.

genwu

@wichenroder Thank you so much! I was wondering how to do that but could never figure it out! (seriously lol) Much appreciated advice!

EarthQuake

I've been messing with world machine a bit recently myself. I'm curious about your workflow here.

Are you starting with a sculpt in Z to get more control over your initial shape?
Do you plan on adding other layers/effects/etc with WM then, like erosion and the typical stuff there?

It would be great to see your final result. I played around with trying to paint a simple height map in photoshop first to get my initial shape, but I've had better luck doing everything directly in world machine, even if it is a bit random and counter intuitive to get something you want at times. I guess it sort of depends on if you're trying to get something very specific, or if you're willing to mess around with it long enough until you get something nice by chance.

CheeseOnToast

Yeah EQ, the sculpt gets your main terrain shapes (don't go too detailed here, BTW). That way you can have a level layout already made, with buildings, paths etc and conform the terrain to match it. It's worth saving out a heightmap "mask" of the terrain you don't want to change so that WM doesn't erode away the parts you want to keep. You can actually do this in WM itself, but it's a bit clunky.

genwu

Just a quick progress shot



World Machine is pretty awesome so far!

@EQ process thus far has been sculpting just kind of basic shapes to bring into World Machine from Zbrush. I had heard that you could do it all from WM, but that's a bit beyond me at this point :P

WM has been awesome so far, I've literally been just going through different effects like erosion and going through each option just to see what it does. (Ha, unfortunately that's the only way I learn - trial & error ftw!)

I've never tried painting directly into Photoshop for my Height Map, I imagine I'd just be faster at sculpting xD (plus it's more fun!) Would you recommend doing that as a usual workflow?

I hope I can keep up some decent work! This is all brand new territory for me - so I'll definitely be updating!

@CheeseOnToast Thanks for the tip on saving out a mask for the heightmap - Definitely will be putting that to the test!

I stumbled on these awesome tutorials from fellow polycounter choco http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88933. Ha I wish I saw those before I wasted a ton of time doing things my way by trial & error, but from what I've glanced at thus far theres some awesome information!

Always so appreciative of you guys who spend the time on making tutorials and sharing the knowledge

/endrant!

CheeseOnToast

Yeah, Choco's vids are great, that's where I started too. Grab some of the macros from the WM site and try to reverse engineer them...it's really helpful to see what you can do with it.

EarthQuake

genwu wrote: »

I've never tried painting directly into Photoshop for my Height Map, I imagine I'd just be faster at sculpting xD (plus it's more fun!) Would you recommend doing that as a usual workflow?

No, I was doing it on my laptop(don't have a sculpting app on it) so I just tried it out on PS. I wouldn't really recommend it as I didn't get very good results myself! Sculpting seems to make a lot of sense though.

Trial and error is how I've been learning WM here too, I'm getting some decent results doing everything in WM but I think it involves a lot of luck(or I need to learn the app a lot better). The main thing I would say so far with doing it all in WM: don't be afraid to scrap it and start over entirely.

Here was my first try at making an island shaped thing: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/499159/wb01.jpg

And a mountain ridge that I exported height/normals maps for and loaded up into toolbag as a displacement test: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/499159/worldmachinetb01.jpg - a lot more happy with this one.