I only have the standard edition of World Machine, so that means I can’t do tiled world builds. Or does it?
I can instead do one massive 16k x 16k build, but Unreal won’t import that. You have to slice the heightmap by hand. Except by hand I mean by script.
Usage
- Export your heightmap from World Machine as “.r16” format.
- In Photoshop click File -> Open As.
- Change the format in the bottom right to “Raw”.
- Open your .r16 file.
- Enter the dimensions, change the channels to 1 and set the byte-order to IBM PC.
- Change the background colour to black (this is going to be the height of the overflow at the edges).
- Go to File → Scripts → Browse… and select the MakeTiles script.
- Choose an appropriate tile size. Larger tile sizes export faster.
- Choose your destination folder.
Then go through the normal tiled build workflow in Unreal. Setting X and Y to 100 should give you a 20km x 20km landscape.