Creating Heightmaps with World Machine [Quality Custom Terrain]

How to make the Height Map, Tree Map, Biome Map, etc. for Medieval Engineers

Links

This is a guide on how to create the necessary maps needed to import to Medieval Engineers

If you do not already know the basics, visit the Official Guide first.

Software needed for this tutorial:

1. World Machine[http//World+Machine]
   
2. A DDS converter: The ME Modding Tools (available in the tools section of the steam library)

Optional:

1. My Macro[forum.keenswh.com] (makes things easier)

Example Files:

• World Machine World[dl.dropboxusercontent.com]
  
• Custom Worlds O' Mine

Video Tutorials:

WM -> ME Tutorial

How to use WM

World Creation

Create Your World

Open up World Machine. You may be quickly confused, BUT DO NOT WORRY! You seriously don't need much to create a good world. In fact you will be geeted with a simple world, containing an Advanced Perlin (generated terrain), a terrace filter (creates terrain), and an output. Now experiment! I suggest watching the second video to get basic knowledge of WM.

Creating Connections

Grab 1 Height Output and 3 Bitmap Outputs.

Now what you do next depends on your preference, create this:
Or get my macro and do this:
Your choice ^.^
Anyways if you chose to get my macro, you will have to make some connections, first off, I highly recommend using Erosion on your terrain as it makes your terrain more realistic (make sure you do it last!).
Now for the eight connections:

1. Connect the height output from the erosion (or from the last device used) to the first connection on my macro
   
2. Connect the flow map (second input) from the erosion device to the second input on the macro OR if you didn't use erosion, connect an empty Layout Generator to it.
   
3. Get 2 Layout generators and connect them to the last 2 inputs of the macro. The first input is to creat a path (make a thin line in the layout generator), and the second is for a tree mask (create a shape where you don't want trees). Its ok to leave these empty.
   
4. Now line up your outputs with the height output first.

There are two optional brown outputs which you can connect to an overlay view to easily view what your terrain is (roughly) going to look like.

Output and Import

Output/Export

After you have your four outputs, Height, Biome, Tree Mask and Tree map, connected to bitmap outputs, you will need to set their name.

The only requirement for naming is that you need to include an underscore '_' anywhere in the name. I recommend using SomeName_Height to help keep track of your map files.

You will need to set the file format for the maps as a .tif file, the height file should be set to 16 bit for best quality, the other three files can be set to 8 bit as the game is only uses these maps as 8 bit.

Next open the Medieval Engineers Mod SDK, open Tools then TextureTool. In there you will see a file called covnert_all, this will let you convert your .tif files to .dds files, but first you will need to download the newest version of Python.

After your have Python, create two new folders in the TextureTool folder named Source and DDS, you can rename these files but you will need to edit the SOURCE_DIR and DESTINATION_DIR in the convert_all script.

Place your exported .tif maps in the Source folder and run convert all, the command prompt will open, process the files and place the converted .dds files in the DDS folder

Using shortcuts to convert_all, Source folder and DDS folder is recommended

Finally...

Put the four dds files in the Medieval Engineers directory, Steam\steamapps\common\MedievalEngineers\Content\Scenarios, go in-game, load a new world and when you load, press Shift-F10 and select the files you created and load the world!

Congrats!

[Seagypsy]

oof, and steam is also saying world machine is malicious and won't open the url.

[Seagypsy]

Hi , I know this is really old and you may have lost interest at this point, but I just discovered this game and want to make my own map. Unfortunately, your guide references another to get just the basics, which i need. but that guide no longer exists. Any advice on how to proceed?

[onos_devour]

Yeah my bad, I found that and it works, thanks.

[Bonesaw]

*sigh* https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98759904/thestuff.zip

[onos_devour]

The sdk didn't come with TextureTool now either...

[onos_devour]

Hm it doesn't really matter anyways, I took the part that creates it from the macro and output the RGB layers anyways. Thanks for the macro, it's really awesome.

[Bonesaw]

I don't know about that. You may be missing a required input or something :/

[onos_devour]

The tree map doesn't want to bake, gives the error 'Device built but no buffer contents found'.

[Protocore]

so,i think my problem is resolved...but another things,texture tools don't appear in my sdk mod , anyone have this data?

[Protocore]

hello,i have a problem,whith world machine.
When i try to join the heightmap output's macro to the primary input bitmap,the plug disapear,and just metadata input appear,could you help me?