Need Help Raising/Lowering Terrain

Hi everyone ... I am a complete noob to cartography here, so bear with me. When I use the "lower" paintbrush to lower some land (turn it into sea), it lowers the part inside the paintbrush area but raises the area just outside of it. Is there a way to just get rid of the land without having to keep brushing over the land raised by using the "lower" tool? Thank you in advance.

Comments

  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    I'll assume that you're talking about Fractal Terrains here. The little bits of land that get pushed up (and down) around the edge of the brushed area are an artifact that occurs due to the way that FT interpolates data (it's ringing on a Catmull-Rom spline if you're interested in the gory technical details). It is very roughly 10% of the altitude that you're using for your brush. The simplest way to avoid this effect is to simply push the entire world down from zero when doing the brushing (Tools>>Global Lower>>Land Offset with 100 or 1000 is usually sufficient).

    A way to prevent this effect from having much in the way of visual impact is to use a higher editing resolution (Map>>World Settings, click the Editing tab; click the Custom radio button and enter a value like 4000, followed by Apply). With a higher editing resolution, the little bits of land that might stick up will be possibly too small to notice on a reasonably-sized land.

    I recommend taking a look at http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/index.html for a few tips on getting good results from FT. Exactly replicating a world that you already have done somewhere can be tricky, as can painting a world from scratch (I'm not saying that it's impossible, but it takes a whole lot of effort). It is often easier to find a world that's very broadly similar to what you're after and work from that where possible.

    Instead of brushing, consider using the selection tools and Tools>>Global Set>>Land Offset Edit to rough out areas that you're trying to fill in. It's often a good deal easier than brushing.
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