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- Stottys
Terragen Tutorial
- Utilising
World Machine output to texture your terrains
-
User Level - Intermediate.
-
Introduction and Requirements
So you have your awesome terrain, you have some spectacular lighting,
and you have some textures, ahh yes, those textures, bit obvious
they are Terragen textures, not quite following the rules of nature
huh? Well, hows about livening your scenes up a little. Have you
ever wanted to create a snowscape where the snow looks like it
has settled into those ridges, or how to place a lava flow down
a mountainside, even simple sand in a dried out riverbed, not
too tricky to do any of that if your terrain is flat, but what
about positional texturing on the side of a mountain...
Here
is where World Machine can help us.
Before
we get going, Please make sure you have all of the following
Here's
how to do it :)
- Start
with World Machine first
Open
up World machine and delete the default devices that appear (click
to select the devices and press delete) so we have nothing there.
- Loading
a terrain into World Machine
Add
a file-input device (click the icon and click on the blank canvas)
as shown below:
Load
your terrain file by double clicking this new File
Input device you just added, click the [set] button
in the next window that pops up, point to your terrain file, then
click [OK]. Click [OK] again to exit the dialog box.
- Configure
the terrain output size
Click
on the world size icon ..
and ensure the total size = 512 pixels. You need to do this regardless
of your original terrain file. This defines the output size.
Now
that we have our terrain to work with, we need to do something
which allows use to position our textures. The device I used to
highlight the valleys in the scene was the erosion device. When
you add this device, World Machine will work out where the erosion
effect of rivers would be and erode your land accordingly. A great
side effect of this is the ability to capture the specific areas
of erosion and save it to a bmp file.
Add
an erosion device to the canvas as follows
Select
the rain and river erosion device icon
 , then click
on your canvas.
You
will need to specify the type of erosion required, use these settings
as an example, but you are strongly encouraged to experiment with
this. Double click the Erosion device
to bring up the properties box.
Now create a flow line from the File Input
device to the Erosion device as shown
in the screenshot below.
- Define
Your Output
Two further devices are needed now to complete the task...Add
2 File Output devices 
to your canvas and link them to the Erosion
device as shown below.
The
top File Output device is the actual terrain with added erosion.
This is actually an optional step, but to ensure your textures
in Terragen lie correctly, it is advisable to create a new terragen
terrain file with this erosion added. (Hopefully this will become
clearer in the next step). To create a Terragen .ter file with
this new erosion, double click the File Output
device to bring up the following dialog box..
Select
'Terragen Format' as your output type, then click the [set] button
and specify your filename. Also in the dialog box, it is helpful
to check the save after every build box to ensure your file is
updated each time you make a change.
Now
for the reason you are reading this tutorial :) - the second file
output added allows you to capture some filtered
information from the erosion device.
The first of the brown boxes on the device indicates this is going
to output the Flow Map, this is information which the erosion
determines is the actual flow of the river which would perform
this type of erosion. We can store this information in a BMP file
for later use in Terragen. Double click the second file
output device, select 'Windows BMP' as your output
type, check the box to save after every build and select the destination
of your file via the [set] button as shown below.
NOW
BUILD YOUR WORLD by clicking the green button 
- The
bit before Terragen
Before
we take our World Machine output into Terragen, we need to tweak
the BMP file which shows our flow map. Load up your favourite
graphics application, load in the BMP file and increase the
contrast of the image by 100% so it looks like this example.
Now
resave your bmp file and ensure it remains a 24 bit Windows
BMP File format and remains square.
- Now
the bit you've been waiting for - The Terragen Bit
Fire
up Terragen and load the new terrain file (The one created In
World Machine in the first of the 2 File Output
devices)
Set
up your camera and lighting as required, then go to the Texture
part of the Landscape dialog. I find when doing snow scenes,
the darker the rock the better, so make your base texture really
dark (red=1,green=1,blue=1) or values close to it.
Add
a child texture.
Double
click the new child texture and select the Advanced tab. The
important settings which need changing are highlighted below.
Texture
colour and bumpiness
- I
am going to make the texture a nice bluey white given I am
doing a snow scene, so change the primary texture colour to
what your creative inner self requires
- For
Snow, bumpiness not too much on this
- Again,
snow looks great in the valleys when this setting is reduced
- Scale/Bump,
up this to the max again for Snow - good in small doses for
grass too
Texture
Distribution
- When
making these adjustments, this image will show zero coverage,
don't worry at this stage, things will get clearer
- When
using external distribution masks, always set this to Zero
coverage. The coverage is implied through the use of the bmp
file we have waiting to load.
- Ensure
this is set to the min value when using masks too to ensure
correct coverage.
- No
need to specify any Altitude or slope contraints here either,
as said in step 6, the coverage has already been deterimed
as we will see now.
- The
Texture Distribution button (see below)
- Using
the SO Pack Overlay Distribution plugin
You
will have noticed there are two 'TEX' buttons in the texture
editor within Terragen, the top button allows you to modify
the look of the texture you apply to your scene, the bottom
button (I have highlighted it in the above screenie - number
9)
When
you select this bottom TEX button, a dialog will appear to allow
you to select a plugin. Click the '+' key to display a menu
of available plugins. The one we need to select now is the 'Surface
Distrib. Version'
This
allows us to supply a BMP file which has information about where
to place our textures. The white areas in the image will be
the texture, the black denotes no coverage.
In
the next dialog box, we need to tell the plugin that the method
to use is transparent, This means your textures will not be
covered if the area in the bmp file is blank. set the tile size
to equal the terrain size and the number of tiles equals 1.
Click
the OK button and select your World Machine BMP file which you
upped the contrast on. This will be loaded into Terragen. Wait
for the message saying how much memory it will use, OK that
and OK out of the plugin selection window.
Once
back into the texture window, you will notice the little B&W
image which shows coverage has changed, this should now match
your BMP file.
- RENDER
YOUR SCENE - You've finished :)
Further
Reading:
There is a more advanced Tutorial which explores Erosion masks
in much more detail on the World Machine Website here,
if you feel happy enough with the one you just read, I strongly
recommend you take a peek.
Tutorial written by Graham Stott © 2003 - Please do not reproduce
without written consent. If you found this useful and would like
other Tutorials, please contact me either through
Stotty at DeviantArt or Email Stotty.
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