Terraforming

You've already seen in Chapter 12 how to create a terrain using height maps. Torque also has a built-in Terrain Editor that you can use to manually modify the terrain height map and square properties.

Terrain editing is done using a Terrain brush. The brush is a selection of terrain points centered on the mouse cursor in either a circular or square configuration of different selectable sizes, as you can see in Figure 18.18.

Figure 18.18: Terrain brush.

The brush can also be either a hard brush that has a uniform effect across the surface of the brush or a soft brush whose influence on terrain diminishes toward the edges of the brush. You can adjust the soft brush fall-off rate in the Terrain Editor Settings dialog box, found under the menu Edit, Terrain Editor Settings.

1. Run your sample game, and when you have spawned into the game, press F8 to switch to fly mode.

2. Fly up a fair bit to get a good overview of the surrounding terrain.

3. Press F11 to switch to the Editor GUI.

4. Choose Window, Terrain Editor.

5. Wave your cursor over the terrain, and notice the Terrain brush marked on the terrain.

6. Drag your mouse up and down after clicking over some area of terrain. You will see your terrain change to conform.

7. Experiment with using different actions to see how the Terrain Editor works.

   Tip

   Every now and then while in the Terrain Editor, press Alt+L to redo the lighting. The cursor will freeze for a few moments while the lighting is done.This will cause the new terrain changes you've made to properly generate shadows.

8. Every now and then remember to save your work.

Table 18.3 describes the Terrain Editor functions that are available in the Action menu.

Table 18.3: Terrain Editor Functions

Function	Description
Select	Selects grid points that will be painted with the brush.
Adjust Selection	Raises or lowers the currently selected grid points as a group.
Add Dirt	Adds "dirt" to the center of the brush.
Excavate	Removes "dirt" from the center of the brush.
Adjust Height	Drags the brush selection to raise or lower it.
Flatten	Sets the area bounded by the brush surface to be a flat plane.
Smooth	Smoothes, within the bounds of the brush, rough areas of varying terrain height.
Set Height	Sets the terrain within the brush to a constant height as specified in the Terrain Editor settings.
Set Empty	Converts the squares covered by the brush into holes in the terrain.
Clear Empty	Makes the squares covered by the brush solid.
Paint Material	Paints the current terrain texture material with the brush.

Table 18.4 describes the functions of the Terrain Terraform Editor (see also Figure 18.19), the one we used in Chapter 12 dealing with height maps.

Table 18.4: Terrain Terraform Editor Functions

Function	Description
fBm Fractal	Creates bumpy hills.
Rigid Multifractal	Creates ridges and sweeping valleys.
Canyon Fractal	Creates vertical canyon ridges.
Sinus	Creates overlapping sine wave patterns with different frequencies useful for making rolling hills.
Bitmap	Imports an existing 256 by 256 bitmap as a heightfield.
Turbulence	Perturbs another operation on the stack.
Smoothing	Smoothes another operation on the stack.
Smooth Water	Smoothes water.
Smooth Ridges/Valleys	Smoothes an existing operation on edge boundaries.
Filter	Filters an existing operation based on a curve.
Thermal Erosion	Erodes an existing operation using a thermal erosion algorithm.
Hydraulic Erosion	Erodes an existing operation using a hydraulic erosion algorithm.
Blend	Blends two existing operations according to a scale factor and mathematical operator.
Terrain File	Loads an existing terrain file onto the stack.

Figure 18.19: Terrain Terraform Editor.