Landscape Architect

[Ali_Akbar]

@ShadeFlea;665507

When is the release and what kind of price tag are you placing on it?

[MENTION=456551]Mike Norton[/MENTION], @0mnipotent, @ Thank you!
@ShadeFlea I’m aiming for mid April. I haven’t decided on the price yet

[Ali_Akbar]

@Hevedy;666161

This is nice but got a question, is possible to edit the terrain like the normal landscape in editor ? I would like to see if this can store the info in the map and save it and edit and that like the sculpt tools of the landscape brushes and working in the 3 axis ?

Sure, it should be possible but I haven’t gotten to that yet

[Ali_Akbar]

@ioFlow Studios;666278

It’s an interesting topic, how much editing you can do in editor and how much you do at runtime, especially with procedural stuff.

If you think about it though, editing in game can be a workable solution as long as the changes are saved persistently to some sort of db.

That way when you return to the editor, you just have to tell the terrain to update from the db?

How does your voxel stuff work ali?

The tools will work on both runtime and in editor. The changes you make can be saved to disk in a binary file. I have it working on runtime now. For editor a bit more work is needed, as that binary data needs to go in a uasset file so it can be cooked

As for the save system itself, it is fast enough (Loading: O(1); Saving: O(N) in worst case and O(1) in best case, where N is no. of existing chunks saved in disk).

[Ali_Akbar]

@Xodroc;666393

Was following this earlier and wow, lots of progress. Next thing we know you’ll have a solution to create a massive Star Citizen style universe!

A few questions, though I’m almost afraid to ask them as I wouldn’t want to cause a “just one more feature” delay.

Are you able to “bake” a heightmap based terrain into Voxels or use them together seamlessly? For example to create an underground voxel cave system beneath a heightmap? Being able to create terrain “stamps” would be awesome for both heightmap and voxel projects. The default landscape editor lets you copy/paste areas I know, but I’m thinking in terms of building a library of stamps.

That is an useful scenario. The voxel landscape can be recreated with height data (Heightmap node). As a side note, I have an experimental optimization where if your starting procedural landscape model would not generate any caves or overhangs (i.e. has as heightmap like starting world) the voxel density generation can be made much faster for each chunk (Calculate only NxN, instead of NxNxN making it ~10-100x faster for generating your starting world). The videos I posted earlier don’t use this optimization

I noticed multiplayer is on your roadmap, how is that coming along? It would be awesome to have EverQuest Landmark(or better) style multiplayer Voxel worlds. In 4.14 There is an experimental Multiplayer World Origin Rebasing feature thanks to nkey.

I haven’t gotten to that yet. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have a look

I don’t know if I’ll even be worried about it, but is there a way to export a section of heightmap to work on in an external app and easily reimport it while still being able to “stitch” terrains back together?

I don’t plan on exporting voxel 3D data but the heightmap based LA edtior uses Unreal’s Landscape actor so you can do this from the Landscape editor mode itself

I know you can import external heightmaps, what about importing splat maps used to define where different materials should be, as well as maps defining where procedural foliage/rocks should spawn?

You will be able to do this (haven’t started work on it yet). There will be no maps. Instead the blend data from the brushes would be baked into the vertex themselves

That hover-bike video gave me flashbacks to Star Wars Galaxies. With that in mind, would it be possible to have a building/object placement system that will automatically flatten and raise/lower terrain to match the object being placed? I know that goes a little beyond terrain building.

That is planned exposed through blueprints so you can modify them from your BP. Like throwing a grenade on the ground and having your BP create a crater or spawn spikes etc

Would love it if we could build/paint Voxel worlds while in VR. That would be like a game in itself.

It should work on runtime on VR. I need to get my hands on a VR headset. Vive / Occulus don’t sell in India. I’ll probably buy a Samsung Gear VR

Keep up the good work, can’t wait to see this.

Thank you!

[iniside]

Did you think about hm… guided procedural generation ? I mean you can paint on terrain where particular noise generator will work (ie, mountains, plateau, hills, etc). It could use low res masks. This way we could have more fina grained control over types of terrain bioms.

[Ali_Akbar]

I abstracted the meshing part. This lets you use different meshing strageties. Right now two implementations are supported, Marching cube for smooth meshes and blocky meshing for minecraft like games

Tooling works on top of it regardless of the mesh type

[VariableArgument]

How easy will it be to spawn a floating island, and to edit this in game?

Edit: Nevermind, thought I was at the last page but wasn’t

[xShadeFleax]

@;666399

[MENTION=456551]Mike Norton[/MENTION], @0mnipotent, @ Thank you!
@ShadeFlea I’m aiming for mid April. I haven’t decided on the price yet

Awesome! I will be out of state working til the end of March or early April, then leaving again later April. Good timing if you can do it.

[Mike_Norton]

@;666399

[MENTION=456551]Mike Norton[/MENTION], @0mnipotent, @ Thank you!
@ShadeFlea I’m aiming for mid April. I haven’t decided on the price yet

Awesome! I will be working on getting all my other game systems in place and look forward to your asset!

[apoisonedgift]

Dayum… this looks incredible 0.o

[motorsep]

[MENTION=28980][/MENTION]

Sorry, not to disrupt this awesomeness, but I posted something for you in DA forum :o

[anonymous_user_20f08193]

Hey Ali, you have blown my mind, and maybe I missed this from skimming the thread, but about how long have you been working on this project?? It’s incredible! Recently I’ve begun an open-world project and I’m just curious as to how easy it would be to merge different biomes / landscapes. Sorry if I’m repeating any questions from before.

[rYuxq]

Can this tool work on any kind of landscape?

I mean, if I had a terrain already, textured and populated with objects. Could this tool take it as it easy and then still modify it in the future?
Or is it a requirement that the landscape has been generated with this tool?

[NightroGames]

@rYuxq;667394

Can this tool work on any kind of landscape?

I mean, if I had a terrain already, textured and populated with objects. Could this tool take it as it easy and then still modify it in the future?
Or is it a requirement that the landscape has been generated with this tool?

I would like to know as well. Like if I already ported one over from World Machine and then would like to continue editing it in the future when this is out. Or would it require a new landscape?

Really looking forward to that rocky erosion style you used on your snow map that wasn’t messed up upon editing. And easy caves and cliffs sticking outwards without the need of mesh objects. That stamp support also sounds really great!

[PDubulous]

Well done. That looks awesome.

[robob3ar]

looks awesome, will you be in need for some beta testers

[Hyncharas (RushboardUK)]

I really am hoping this plugin will enter a Beta soon - right now I’m using World Machine, but it isn’t as friendly when I’ve come from sculpting in CryEngine.

[Ryukra]

Could you fit the voxels into a existing model like this flying island generated in houdini?

[anonymous_user_949e8276]

omg, very cool, but how you did it? I haven’t problems with landscape, how you change landscape in game?

[Ali_Akbar]

@HRLDStudios;666859

Hey Ali, you have blown my mind, and maybe I missed this from skimming the thread, but about how long have you been working on this project?? It’s incredible! Recently I’ve begun an open-world project and I’m just curious as to how easy it would be to merge different biomes / landscapes. Sorry if I’m repeating any questions from before.

@HRLDStudios I’ve been on this for a while. Did bulk of the work past two months mostly on the voxel side