I have been looking for a specific type of terrain creation software for some time and have not been able to find anything that really fits what i am looking for.
So far i have looked at World Machine, Terragen and GeoControl2. However I am looking more for something that can be sculpted with a brush to add mountains and other features before running some more advanced erosion type things.
The issue I am running into is that something like World Machine is really great at procedural type terrains, however unless I have not found it yet there is not an easy way to make the terrain look exactly how I want.
I use GROME 3, personally. It’s a bit overkill, and takes some getting used to (learning curve is a bit high), but the end results and outright control you have is amazing! You can even place “stuff” onto your terrain (rocks, vegitation, hell, any model, really…and water). If you have a team (re: a programmer) you get the SDK with it and can write your own plug-in so you can do a lot of the level design inside GROME, export to your engine (UE4 in our case), and all the terrain, textures, objects, etc will come along for the ride. looks up dreamingly at the thought….
You can always use Zbrush, or the terrain editor in the Unreal Engine itself to define the base shapes of the terrain you want,
export out a height map and use any of the terrain generation mentioned to run advanced passes on it.
