Reply With QuoteYou have probably already tried this, but go to world settings, primary, and alter the 'roughness' slider to low? I'm new to the program so can't be of too much help unfortunately...
Fractal Terrains 3 - Losing My Sanity
Example-Map.JPG
Okay... maybe the gurus of mapping can help me here. I have tried everything I can think of inside the confines of the included sparsely informative manual. I created my world from scratch pretty much using a hand drawn overlay for the coast lines and painted in the land masses using a Waccom tablet. I got the entire world looking beautiful, shape wise but the fine interior details of the land are... ugly, way to rugged and porous and no matter what tool I use or how many times I run Global smooths the land is ALWAYS bumpy like a 14 year old acne infested teen's face. What am I missing here? Why can't I smooth this terrain out effectively? I have been working on this for a week and I just want to scrap the entire project at this point and take up knitting. Any suggestions? Fixes? How-To-Do's? Any help would be appreciated.
Attached is a zoomed portion of my world. I am using a Custom scale of 4096 because I was following the really good tutorial I located here on using Frac Terrains 3, Wilbur and Photoshop to make a detailed map. So far... can't get out of the first part of the Fractal Terrains 3 part of the tutorial as the land is just way to harsh to bring into Wilbur as is.
You have probably already tried this, but go to world settings, primary, and alter the 'roughness' slider to low? I'm new to the program so can't be of too much help unfortunately...
What you're seeing is about as good as FT can do for level terrain areas. FT uses a resolution-independent fractal function combined with fixed-resolution editing channels. The final altitude is calculated approximately as
altitude = (fractalfunction + prescale) * roughness + offset
The fractal function wiggles at a much higher frequency than the editing data. When you try to do things such as filling basins or setting altitudes, the system computes the altitude value as above for each editing location and then adjusts the offset value by the amount needed to make the final altitude output equal to the specified value from the fill operation.
The lack of smoothness stems from the fact that the fractal function is still wiggling around between the editing points. So even though the editing points will be at the specified value, the places in between the editing points will still be trying to do what it originally did, resulting in the bumps.
It is possible to force FT to eliminate the fractal function by evaluating the altitude once, setting that altitude into the offset channel, and setting the roughness to zero. This operation is performed via the Tools>>Actions>>Burn In To Surface. However, your surface will then be fixed in resolution whatever your specified editing resolution is. You can do fills, basin fills, and other operations just as with Wilbur and without trying to fight the fractal function contribution.
