Adding Layers and Decorations to Terrain

After defining basic terrain, you can add layers and decorations to make the world look more realistic. Layers allow you to paint textures on the terrain, and decorations allow you to add features on top of a terrain.

 

To add layers or decorations to terrain, perform the following tasks:

  1. Select Activate terrain editing () to enable terrain editing within the Design View.
  2. Within the Terrain Editor window, select the Layers tab or the Decorations tab.
  3. Click Add () to open the Create New Terrain Map dialog.
  4. Specify a name for your terrain map in the Name field. This name allows you to differentiate defined terrain maps.
  5. Specify a map mask in the Map Mask field. Click the Browse button () to open the Windows Save As dialog to specify the path and file name for the map. Click Save in the Save As dialog to specify the new map file; this file is not created until you click OK to close the Create New Terrain Map dialog.
  6. Specify a mask resolution as width and height. These values specify the granularity of the masked textures for the terrain. The mask resolution need not match the resolution that you specified for the height map.
  7. Optionally, click Import Mask to open the Windows Open dialog to specify the path and file name for an existing mask. An existing mask defines the mask resolution and layout of the mask.
  8. Optionally, you can use the Move Up or Move Down buttons from the action bar () to position the layer or decoration in an order that is appropriate for the terrain. Use the Delete button to remove a layer or decoration.
  9. Click OK to create the terrain map and close the dialog.

 

For each defined layer or decoration, you can specify associated properties. For example, for a layer, you can define the texture scale, a diffuse texture, and a normal texture; for a decoration, you can define the texture scale, the number of decorators, the line-of-sight (LOD) distance for the texture, a diffuse texture, and a normal texture.   

 

To add a layer or decoration to a specific terrain:

  1. Select Activate terrain editing () to enable terrain editing within the Design View.
  2. Within the Terrain Editor window, select the Layers tab or the Decorations tab.
  3. Select the layer or decoration that you want to add.
  4. Click the Diffuse, Normal, or Specular texture with which you want to paint to the terrain.
  5. Click Paint/Erase to enable painting of layers and decorations.
  6. To paint terrain: Within the Design View, position the cursor where you want to paint the terrain and left-click. You can also left-click and drag to paint areas of terrain.
  7. To erase terrain: Within the Design View, position the cursor where you want to erase the added layer or decoration and Control-left-click. You can also Control-left-click and drag to erase areas of terrain. To ensure that you do not make unintentional erasures, you can only erase a layer or decoration that you’ve selected from the Layers or Decorations tab.

 

You can paint textures on any terrain within the level. However, some layer or decoration properties, such as Max Slope, can restrict the painting of a layer or decoration on a particular terrain. Any layers or decorations that you paint on a terrain are additive, based on the order of the layer or decorations within the Layers or Decorations tabs, and thus allow you to create very realistic scenes.

The following figure shows mountainous terrain (based on a close up view of some of the noisy terrain from Adding Noise to Terrain, with an added rock texture) before and after painting it with a snow texture layer and with some tree and shrub decorations.