Fractal Terrains Tutorial and Guide: Planetology 101
I am thinking of making a long and detailed guide to using Fractal Terrains as there seems to be a demand for it. It will cover planet creation, editing, and exporting. Covering topics from astrophysics, geology, hydrology, meteorology, climatology, paleoclimatology, biology, archeology, history, economics, and probably a few more.
Covering planet creation in FT3 to exporting in editing in GIMP and CC3, I will endeavor to show how to build a detailed world with minimal effort for either low fantasy, high fantasy, and science fiction.
That is if there is any interest in such a detailed thing.
Covering planet creation in FT3 to exporting in editing in GIMP and CC3, I will endeavor to show how to build a detailed world with minimal effort for either low fantasy, high fantasy, and science fiction.
That is if there is any interest in such a detailed thing.
Comments
~Dogtag
Starting Up Fractal Terrains
Welcome to the FT3 Tutorial! Here you will learn all there is to know about planets and how to make them. So much more than you have ever wanted to know. Fractal Terrains is a VERY powerful program, but clumsy. It is like giving a rocket launcher to a toddler. Sure it will be fun and sometimes you will get nice explosions, but usually it will burn down your house and leave you homeless or facing massive litigation. I will teach you how to understand, communicate to, and get the little demon spawn to do what you want.
Congrats! You have bought the Fractal Terrains version 3 from ProFantasy! Install the program and run it! You will be faced with a screen with a randomly generated planet and various buttons and bars. The manual lists all the controls so read that first or hover over them with the mouse to get a pop-up. They are very self explanatory.
Preferences
The first thing I want you to do is go to Edit > Preferences. This will bring up a window with a few options. The first four check boxes are personal preference. Make sure the fifth, Coarse initial drawing pass, is unchecked. This may get you some performance if checked but computers are fast enough I think to have it unchecked. Otherwise the terrain looks really bad and pixelated. (But not in the final product. But if it is too grainy to see what you are doing properly then it is an inconvenience.)
Max the Maximun Rendering Threads. Again computers are fast enough I think. I have mine at 5. Also max the Display Update Rate and Undo Buffer Size. Only do these if your computer can handle it. The update rate increases the passes per second after a change in the map and the Undo Buffer holds all your past changes. Come back here and lower them if the program crashes. I got frustrated with the slowness of the program and found it was the Display Update Rate which needed increasing. Now the map works just as fast as me.
Starting a New World
Now to make a new map. Go to File > New. Now we get a fun prompt and one that is the most frustrating to new users. We get a list of four types of worlds: Synthetic World, Binary File, Flat World and Planar World. Each one is completely different. Synthetic World is the one you will most likely use the most. It uses fractals and other things to make very nice maps. Binary File is where you load height maps from, Flat world is a world that is all water and a 0 altitude. You would think that this would be best for new worlds. You would be wrong. You could choose this to paint a new world but we want something quicker than that. It is the most time consuming and tedious of the options. Planar World is the same as Synthetic World but is not a globe. It is a flat plane. Like Diskworld or the world before the fall of Numenor in Lord of the Rings. You would think this would be a good place for small maps. It is not. Using tiny parts a synth world is much better.
Choose Synthetic World.
Choosing Synthetic World or Planar World brings you to the main screen for making any world. It is the most powerful and general part of the planet making process. It is also the most confusing. Here we can choose our height limits, in Highest peak and Lowest Depth, our planetary circumference or diameter, our World Seed, our Fractal Method, Roughness, Sea Percent coverage, and continental Land Size.
Highest Peak and Lowest Depth: This I actually have trouble with since the fractals are bad at putting in mountains. These put the initial limits on the extreme heights and depths and the color bounds for altitude. Fractals makes them too wide, big, and all around too much. They also appear in the center of continents and oceans respectively, which is unrealistic. (Unless it doesn't bother you. But it DOES mess with the temperatures and thus the climates.) We shall fix them later.
Planetary Circumference or Radius is simply how big do you want your planet to be? I recommend to not change it from the Earth base by too much. I will base this tutorial on an Earth copy so we do not need to change it.
World Seed: This is perhaps the MOST useful and underrated parts of the planet making processes. This number controls how your planet is laid out. You will change this number the most out of anything on this page. Why? Cause changing the next four parts may seem to have more of an effect but they move away each time from what you want. There is a randomize button to the right of the box.
Fractal Method: Choose your Method! This is Method your data is put together. You have seven choices. Leave this alone for now. We will come back to it in more detail.
Roughness: This is how detailed your surface will be and will be one of the two thing you tweak on here to get he would you want. The lower the value the smoother the surface will be, there will be less ridges, less bays and islands, less seas, less of every physical detail. But if it is too high you will have too much ridging, too many bays, your continents will be reduced to islands, and there will be no detail because there is too much detail. For fun max it out on either side. You will get a deformed cue ball with no roughness, or you will get a noise filled mess with it at max. It will look like a colorful static filled screen.
Percent Sea: This controls how much sea there is. Pretty self explanatory. Leave it at 70. Unless you want to change it. I will cover different sea changes in the hydrological part later.
Land Size: This is the other major part. Like roughness it is other part you will tweak to get the planet you want. Large the number the less continents you will get, the smaller the number the more continents and sub-continents.
Click next and get to the next little description page and then hit next again. Congrats you made you new world! What you only changed the limits and played around with the Seed a bit? That is fine. That page is bland anyway. Go to Map > World Settings in the menu bar. Yes I know I just described a page only to take you out of it. But that is ok! The World Settings give you much more control over your planet. And that is what we want. Pure total control! MWAHAHA!! Ok ok enough god talk. Well that is partly why we like creating worlds right? And why you got this program in the first place?
(Comments and questions are welcomed!)
(Updated Heights and Depths)
1) Coarse Initial Drawing Pass doesn't affect the final result, it simply affects visually how the repeated "drawing passes" are done when you change your view on the map. With it off, it does unscaled dots and slowly fills in the black area of the view. With it on, it upscales (temporarily) the dots on the early passes and then adds smaller dots to produce the exact same result as with the setting off. Likewise, the update rate only affects the visual feedback - a higher update rate makes it seem more responsive, but the amount of time needed to see the final result is completely unchanged - 0.2 seconds at 10 updates per second will produce the exact same visual result as 0.2 seconds at 5 updates per second.
2) The Highest Peak and Lowest Depth settings will affect the altitude scaling but not the colors on that scale. Keep that in mind since it will still appear that you have mountains if you don't adjust the coloring for the altitude scale (this is located under Lighting and Color, on the Altitude tab. The Select Coloring Scheme in the same window can be used to find a quick close color set which can be tweaked from the altitude tab.)
3) If you are using the default fractal function ("Ridged Multifractal") and start noticing an unwanted "tire track" sort of pattern on the maps, I would suggest switching over to the "Wilbur Ridged Multifractal" (which a lot of people recommend as an alternative to said default). You may find the results more to your taste. This is mostly just personal preference.
World Settings
This box is the control panel for your planet. There are two rows of tabs. If you haven't opened it before it will start on the Selection tab, otherwise the last tab you opened. Row one has: Selection, Primary, Secondary, and Editing. Row two has: Fractal Function, Temperature, and Rainfall. Here you will find the same controls from the Synthetic World screen and a lot more.
Selection Tab
Here you will find pre-saved world types and settings. You can also save your current settings if you like them. Can also Delete, Load, and Update a profile.
Primary Tab
This is the same screen of the Synthetic World screen. Got your Peaks, and Depths, Diameter/Circumference, World Seed, Roughness, Percent Sea, and Land Size. The thing you should note here is the "Apply to current world". This should be checked to allow you to update and work on the settings of the world on your map.
Secondary Tab
Here are some extra fun features.
The Raw Height Field removes all fractal and roughness to show only the offset channel. Not sure why you would want that.....
Metric Units: For all you metric lovers out there. Makes everything Metric.... of course.
Continental Shelves: puts in smooth continental shelves and smooths the land and lowers it a bit. Can specify what depth to put them at. Lower they go the more you will have, the Higher you go the less shelves you will have.
North Pole position: Here you can push the continents around to you desired location. The global latitude and longitude don't change, but you get a neat effect of moving continents. Note: the relative positions don't change only their position on the globe.
Editing Tab
Here you choose your editing resolution from Small (256: 157.2mi per pixel, 768KB), Medium (512: 78.6mi, 3.0MB), Large (1024: 39.3mi, 12MB), and Custom. Keep an eye in the memory size.
Custom options:
2048: 19.6mi, 48.0MB
4096: 9.8mi, 192.0MB
8190: 4.9mi, 767.6MB <----- This is the maximum number.
Allow Prescale Offset Editing: This allows you to edit the texture the map is made from before anything has been done to it. Opens up the Prescale Land Offset brushes in the Tools menu.
Do you intend to talk also about starting with a binary map which is the only way to to edit worlds where you have already decided about the general shape and the defining features (mountains, rivers) on paper before loading it in FT3 ?
Dead: Editing will be covered later with the parts that will be edited.
Very good start!
If you could get all this formatted in a eBook or PDF with some pictures and advanced explanations about astrophysics, geology, hydrology, meteorology, climatology, I could pay for it!!!
Hope to get news soon!
Paul
Note that I'm raised from the dead too: it's been 6-8 years since I did not write a message here
But I can pray for him to receive a notification that could motivate him to continue
Ok, ok. I go back to my tomb...
Regards,
Monsen has a pretty good tutorial on using Fractal Terrains in the Tomb of Ultimate Mapping as well.