FT: (a) broke my 'smoother" tool and (b) can't seem to flatten terrain
Bought FT yesterday, loving it! Have a better draft of my world in a few hours in FT than I've been able to cook up over years of stop-start p&p sketching. But I've encountered a couple of speed-bumps ...
1) I seen to have broken my 'rougher' and 'smoother' tools. When ever I use them now they instantly create huge divots in my world, like they are in 'super-scooper' mode or something. What are the typical setting for these tools?
2) I can't seem to flatten a selected area to a specific altitude. I want to make an uplands area (approx 200 m) a big flat marshland. The area is currently a bit rough and nothing I'm doing (Tools > Global Set > Altitude Value, etc) will flatten the thing. I think I need some insight into understanding the settings required in order to do this.
I openly admit, I'm a noobie and don't really know what I am doing. But I have looked on the forums and through the documentation I could find and found no leads as to what the heck went wrong. So ... please help. And thanks for reading.
1) I seen to have broken my 'rougher' and 'smoother' tools. When ever I use them now they instantly create huge divots in my world, like they are in 'super-scooper' mode or something. What are the typical setting for these tools?
2) I can't seem to flatten a selected area to a specific altitude. I want to make an uplands area (approx 200 m) a big flat marshland. The area is currently a bit rough and nothing I'm doing (Tools > Global Set > Altitude Value, etc) will flatten the thing. I think I need some insight into understanding the settings required in order to do this.
I openly admit, I'm a noobie and don't really know what I am doing. But I have looked on the forums and through the documentation I could find and found no leads as to what the heck went wrong. So ... please help. And thanks for reading.
Comments
Second, I recommend reading http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/index.html to get a better idea of how some of the tools can be used.
Large modifications with the rougher and smoother tools are most likely due to a large value on the tool operation. Alternatively, it may be due to having raised an area of the world from beneath the sea. "Rougher" and "Smoother" apply a multiplicative factor to the base fractal function. I tend not to use that tool much because it depends on the original altitude of the world at that point.
The way that FT calculates the world depends heavily on the editing resolution. It has a very limited number of data points that you can edit. You can adjust the surface size. A larger surface size gets you closer to flat when setting the altitude. If you absolutely need a perfectly flat area you can get that by selecting your area of interest and using Tools>>GLobal Set>>Land Roughness Edit with a value of 0. The unfortunate part of this technique is that you're now discarding the fractal part of the surface equation and are wholly limited by the surface resolution.
1) in World Setting set the Editing Size to Custom and use something like 4096. (this is the key, makes all the difference in the world .. no pun intended.
2) select the area to be flattened with one of the selection tools.
3) use Tools > Global Set > Altitude and set the altitude to the desired elevation. Not sure what the 'Samples per cell' setting does.
4) click 'OK', wait for the processing and bang! The area is flattened to the specified elevation.
I'll try the Land Roughness Edit too to see how that works.
That tutorial is gold! A 'must read' for FTPro noobies.