WorldMachine?

[helvene]

If you've never heard of it yet, WorldMachine is a tool for the creation of 3D terrain with realistic geological effects utilizing block schemes and quite a number of math functions.

I've been working a lot with it lately, and I find this piece of software fascinatingly versatile and flexible. I am yet to try and use it for 2D-mapping, which just has to be possible, since it's allows to export both heightmaps and splatmaps.

And here comes the question: would anyone be interested in a basic tutorial, explaining the options and benefits of using this tool?

[syris]

Never even heard of it, but certainly sounds intriguing...

[Vellum]

post up a like to the program you're talking about so folks here can get an idea of what it is.

[su_liam]

Check it out here.

Pretty nice, but not cheap. If I had the money, I'd probably have this, Leveller, L3DT, FractalTerrains and GeoControl on my computer. As it is, I rely on Wilbur, QGIS, GRASS, Photoshop, Image Magick, GDAL and Inkscape. Photoshop is expensive(as hell), but I already had a cheap copy from my school daze.

For the most part, the GIS tools aren't well designed for generation of imaginary geography, but with a little skill, a bit of imagination and a huge willingness to bend the analysis tools in ways they were never intended you can do wonders.

[Chashio]

I just saw someone post something beautiful over on deviantArt that wasn't made exclusively with World Machine but it piqued my interest. It's out of my price range right at the moment, but I'd love to see a general tutorial for it to help decide if it would be worth adding to my workflow. But have you checked if there isn't already one floating around somewhere that focuses on what you were thinking of putting in the tutorial?

[helvene]

Have you checked if there isn't already one floating around somewhere that focuses on what you were thinking of putting in the tutorial?

To be honest, now, and also I should be ashamed for abandoning my own suggestion for that long. I came up with it, when I was working on a 3D map, and at one point I thought "Well, why not turn the same thing into a corresponding 2D map as well?"

This piece of software is rarely used on it's own due to it's certain limitations. As an example, I can a work of mine created solely using WorldMachine:
Crater W.I.P. - WorldMachine inner renderer
Same crater, final version - Unity renderer

[Deadshade]

For me World Machine 2 is the best and most flexible tool to generate worlds. It feels atually more like a programming language with huge possibilities than like a graphic tool.
Now doing 2D maps with it (even if it is possible yet not perfect) would be killing a fly with a hammer.
Unfortunately I can't recommend it to everybody because 100$ for the standard edition (don't mention the Professional one) is boxing in an upper category.

So when I am dabbling with cartography I use simpler Tools better adapted to the task to draw maps.

As for tutorials, there are many on youtube and the user's manual with its 82 pages is pretty comprehensive too.

[Arkaidyn]

If you've never heard of it yet, WorldMachine is a tool for the creation of 3D terrain with realistic geological effects utilizing block schemes and quite a number of math functions.

I've been working a lot with it lately, and I find this piece of software fascinatingly versatile and flexible. I am yet to try and use it for 2D-mapping, which just has to be possible, since it's allows to export both heightmaps and splatmaps.

And here comes the question: would anyone be interested in a basic tutorial, explaining the options and benefits of using this tool?

I looked it up on YouTube and found this video. It looks like the way he is using it is by importing an image of a height map that he made in some other software and just going through & creating the terrain features individually. I could be wrong though.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QymKnkR15o

The software looks really cool, I'd love someone to make a tutorial for this, it would be amazing to create a 3D map of my D&D world to show the players.