WORKING WITH �WORLD MACHINE

A 3D ART RESEARCH PROJECT

BY PATRICK MANN

WHAT IS WORLD MACHINE?

• World Machine is a highly advanced terrain editor with a multitude of features, all geared towards creating models and textures for realistic, highly detailed terrain.
• Allows creation of terrain with highly realistic features such as erosion - water, wind, or otherwise – with highly configurable settings every step of the way.
• Utilizes a node-based system that anyone used to blueprinting in Unreal will find familiar.

(Video taken from https://www.world-machine.com/features.php)

MY GOALS FOR WORLD MACHINE IN THIS PROJECT

• My chosen inspiration image was a castle sitting on a mountain. So, the intent was to use World Machine to create a more detailed/realistic mountain that I could on my own.
• Not necessarily aiming to recreate the mountain (or castle) directly, but to used them as visual inspiration.
• Intent was to create a small, self contained scene as a diorama, with the mountain and castle sitting on a base.
• Two main mountains – larger, flatter background mountain, and smaller, uneven mountain the castle sits on.

PROXY MODEL – THE TEMPLATE FOR MY MOUNTAINS

• Main purpose was to take this template I’ve made for myself, and recreate it in World Machine.

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GETTING STARTED WITH WORLD MACHINE

• The World Machine program has a series of highly detailed built in tutorial projects, designed to teach the user how to use the program. I used these tutorials to learn what I needed.
• Even with the help of these tutorials, a lot of my method revolved around experimentation – I had to constantly tweak a bunch of stuff to get it just the way I wanted it to, and, even as I learned the program, there was a not insignificant trial and error factor.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT

This is the layout and features of the project that would bring me my final mountain. But what does it all mean?

MY MAIN TOOL - THE SHAPES GENERATOR

• One of World Machine’s most interesting features is the “shapes” generator. This too allows you to draw various polygons to outline where terrain features are generated, with the proportions and magnitude of the features completely under your control.

MY USE OF THE SHAPES GENERATOR

• I started off the project by using the shapes tool to draw out the outline of the mountain – where the peaks and hills are, how high they are, how they transition back into lower ground. The goal of this was to adhere as close as I could to the shapes I created for my proxy mountain.

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REFINING THE SHAPES WITH COMBINER NODES

• The shaped terrain was a good start, but it looks blocky and unnatural. To amend this, I used a combiner node.
• The combiner node can be used to mix two or more different inputs together, creating an average between them. This is the main utility of the Shapes generator – to take randomly generated terrain, and made it adhere to specific shapes.
• I took some random terrain created by an Advanced Perlin generator, and combined it with the shapes.

REFINING FURTHER, TO MAKE IT LOOK NATURAL

• Combining with generated terrain was a start, but it still looks unrealistic – overly smooth, chunky, plasticky.
• It was run through two additional nodes – Curves, and Erosion.
• Curves works similar to levels adjustment in an image editor – controlling the highs, lows, and mids, but for elevation instead of saturation. I used it to make things blend together better.
• Erosion, one of World Machine’s key features helped to simulate natural wear and tear, which really amped up the realism, making it look like an actual mountain with stone and soil.

THE FINAL TOUCH – CREATING DIORAMA SHAPE

• The goal of this project was to create a little self-contained scene to serve as a diorama of sorts. Part of that entails having the whole thing fit neatly in a circular base.
• Bringing in the shapes generator one more time, I created a large circle that goes around the whole mountain scene, in the shape of the base.
• I combined this circular shape with the existing mountains to make it so that the mountains all sit inside a circular cutout, which would nestle into the diorama base.

TEXTURING THE MOUNTAINS

• World Machine has built-in texturing functions to help create textures that fit your terrain perfectly, with settings (such as moisture, emphasis of slopes, and the general color palatte) that can be configured to give the desired appearance.
• I used these features to create a texture for my mountain for later use.

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INTEGRATING THE MOUNTAINS INTO MY PROJECT

• Once you’re done making your terrain in World Machine, you can export it for use in other programs. I exported my mountain as a 3D object, and brought it into Maya. I booleaned out the unnecessary parts, and then combined it with the high res castle and base.

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INTEGRATING THE MOUNTAINS INTO MY PROJECT

• For the game resolution version of the project, I used the Quad Draw tool in Maya to retopologize it until it was at a more appropriate resolution.

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INTEGRATING THE MOUNTAINS INTO MY PROJECT

• Finally, when it came time to apply the final textures to the project, I exported the texture file from World Machine, and then brought it in to Substance Painter to apply it to the mountains.

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CONCLUSIONS

• World Machine is an extremely powerful and versatile software that easily integrates with the 3D Art pipeline. When it comes to environmental art, World Machine is the high water mark for making good looking terrain with little fuss.
• I barely scratched the surface of the software, only using a few basic, limited tools, and I still achieved great results, even as a rank amateur.

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