Landscaping and Erosion

General Feedback & Requests
1

Hey guys at epic , something like that would be possible?

https://.com/watch?v=CWD3cpWTgeU

The code is on Githup (GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE), really I think and I hope you can make something amazing with this code for have a new tool to create landscapes on the editor :wink:

More info about the creator and the project:
http://codeflow.org/entries/2011/nov/10/webgl-gpu-landscaping-and-erosion/

Greetings!

2

Hi ,

Are you looking to have this at runtime or is this an in editor request?

3

No, Not at runtime (if you mean , while the game is running) , just have more tools for play when I create the terrains in the editor. Seems a fast way with good results, and well I imagine , if can run on WebGl should be possible on the editor.

No idea if will work at runtime , but would be cool!, Other options for the players can emerge.

4

If you open the landscape mode and go to sculpt mode, there is both erosion and hydroerosion tools available to utilize on landscapes.

5

Yes I know, and are cool and useful , although require some time to get the skills to do something good (at least for me) because you must paint manually.

This system seems use the “fluid” to create the erosion on landscape according to the “flow” of the “fluid” on the surface. To me seems more easy, fun and fast way to do a landscape, maybe not for something realistic like with woldmachine , but I don’t know , I suppose depend on the resolution and the settings may have a tool like this.

6

the editor has an erosion tool yes, but it’s far from ideal

the erosion tools in the editor rely on the ‘hardness’ value of every layer, but this assumes the layers are already painted (which would be backwards of the more natural workflow: sculpt and erode first, paint layers later). still erosion will work without setting any hardness, so this is hardly an issue

the more limiting factor though, is that the erosion tools utilize an internal noise texture to produce patterns to create this erosion. this produces some erosion patterns that look ok at a first glance, but aren’t really eroding the land in a natural way (i.e. it would need to actually sample height differences in the area and use a proper erosion algorithm)

in short, the tools are not bad for prototyping, but they are really far from proper erosion tools (which is why everyone, including Epic’s artists, resorts to WorldMachine to make landscapes)
the realtime fluid simulation of this WebGL demo is probably too fancy, but I would completely agree that some built-in “global” tools to just process the whole landscape with erosion/etc would be great (not real-time painting, but a more complex process with a progress bar, like WorldMachine does)

7

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your request. We will take this into consideration.