Using World Machine generated height map in C4

[fyuryu]

I'm trying out the Basic version of World Machine to generate a tarrain.

I already found this topic, which talks about how to actually get the high precision height map into C4 (short version: open it in Photoshop and save it).

But the actual height map ends up being rather bland: all the erosion effects are gone, terrain is a lot flatter than in WM.

If anybody used World Machine with C4, I'd like to hear any tips/gotchas.

[Jesse Meyer]

It depends on the scale of your terrain; the larger the represented landmass the less information is represented in your export. Any small details will not transfer to even a reasonably sized heightmap. I've been playing with different workflows lately but haven't found any silver bullet. Often times my approach is radically different depending on what type of terrain I'm working with.

Sometimes I export a high resolution heightmap, slap it in blender, separate the mesh into subdivisions and use that mesh for my terrain instead, and use the voxel technology when it makes sense (caves, overhangs, etc). To texture, I export a full selection of maps from WM like mud, water flow, different height scales, etc and use those to compose my base texture. Very ad-hoc and has a ton of disadvantages (manual LOD creation and texture fidelity near the camera come to mind).

At this point, it really requires a lot of experimentation.

Hope that helps!

[Eric Lengyel]

Be sure to use version 2.8 of C4. It imports height maps better than previous versions.

[fyuryu]

I haven't downloaded the 2.8 beta yet, will probably get around to it next week (it might not be a beta anymore by then).

One thing I found with World Machine: exporting the height map from WM as anything else than RAW (but still 16 bit) gives me the results I want.