WorldMachine for gameplay terrain

armagon

So, i've been working with WorldMachine for a while and i'm quite happy with the results. The terrains are beautiful and realistic, and you don't have to be a guru to create something nice on it. However, i find that most terrains end up having too much detail and cripple gameplay.

I've been solving this by manually tweaking the terrain with the built-in engine tools, by smoothing and levelling some parts of the terrain in order to create a good gameplay flow. This, unfortunately, ends up being very time consuming. And if i want to change something in the WM source file, boom, i have to do everything again.

Do you guys face this problem too? How do you approach this problem?

Stranger

gameplay >/< beautiful and realistic, gota pick one. though if you have a sculpting app you can edit the terrain manually.

armagon

I am, inside the engine. That's the problem. Everytime i want to change something in my procedural ruleset inside WM, i have to re-sculpt and optimize everything again.

Eric Chadwick

To get around this, most games separate the gameplay terrain (sculpted in-engine, path-able) from the detailed World Machine style terrain (only for backgrounds, doesn't need to change).

Or you could automate the erosion-baking process with some scripting. Save your game level, run a batch, and the erosion is automatically updated.

armagon

Eric, do you still use World Machine for the gameplay terrain, or do you use something else, like L3DT?

Steppenwolf

You have some control to level your gameplay areas in World Machine with different shapes and splines. It's a bit fiddly and clunky but doable. So you don't have to do that step inside the engine necessarely.

But as Eric said if you want to iterate on the terrain a lot while you are already in the middle of development then you have to seperate the backdrop. You can import multiple terrains in engines like Unreal. Or you create some meshes for backdrop mountains.

Eric Chadwick

Currently I'm working on a painterly style game, so nope, not using World Machine. Making terrains using Unity's system, plus a custom shader made with Shader Forge. Can't show anything yet though.

Last big terrain game, I used a custom in-house tool. Pretty much like Unreal and Unity's terrain systems. Though we added custom alpha brushes, so we could quickly lay down gullies with pre-created erosion already in them. A lot like Zbrushing, but very limited resolution. You can see some pics here.

cupsster

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Last big terrain game, I used a custom in-house tool. Pretty much like Unreal and Unity's terrain systems. Though we added custom alpha brushes, so we could quickly lay down gullies with pre-created erosion already in them. A lot like Zbrushing, but very limited resolution. You can see some pics here.

Nice upgrade! I like how you did that lighting. Clever.

Sean VanGorder

Our designers will use the in-engine terrain tools to paint a color layer masking off the gameplay space that they don't want changed. We can then export that mask as a bitmap and use it in World Machine to mask out the effects. It takes some fiddling with the mask and nodes to blend between the nice, processed terrain and the gameplay area but it seems to do the trick.

cupsster

I think you can load up text data to WM as well (I do not remember if that includes some masking shapes) but you can't go wrong with texture mask for sure.

CheeseOnToast

Another, similar alternative. Sculpt your initial terrain using in zbrush, using y direction only for your brushes. Include all the flattened gameplay areas. Polypaint a black and white mask for the areas you don't want to change. From a top view with perspective off, grabdoc an alpha for the heightmap, and with a flat colour material grab the mask. That'll help preserve the pathable stuff in WM.

armagon

@CheeseOnToast, that's interesting. It's similar to this approach: http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.php/An_Advanced_Terrain_and_Megatexture

Do you usually "rock" sculpt stuff in this phase, adding detail, or just layout a rough guide for WM? On WM, you just erode and apply some soft noise?

CheeseOnToast

Just a rough guide, although you could get as detailed as you like. I've made paths etc on a simple sculpted plane in Maya before as well. That lets you be a bit more precise than in Zbrush, since you can measure the height more easily. You can always then bring that plane into zbrush for further detailing.

noosence

So IDK if you have ever seen this before, but this guy uses world machine to create alphas that he then uses in mudbox. It gives a little more control over an area if needed, but still allows you to create some nice procedural organic shapes. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40glxZCyPeY&quot;]guy[/ame]

Lamont

@armagon - I do the playable areas in ZB, then bring into WM using the tools to place the playable area within certain bounds, and the rest is procedural or real-world data (if real world data, I sometimes import the playable area into ZB to fix things). I use the errossion tools to get the look that I want.

Larger rocks and boulders I do seperate as WM can't do caves or rock placement. Canyons are in WM.