Issue
As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to create an true alien environment using the available terrain textures. Currently, the terrain generator within the terrain editor is geared to creating Earth-like terrestrial environments only. This feature request isn’t asking for the ability to change of the textures of existing terrain materials, but allowing a developer the ability to add terrain materials with their own textures, and configuring the biomes in the terrain generator to use those new materials.
Use Cases
All of the use cases that I have involve creating alien worlds that are not like Earth. Take my current use case for instance. It involves creating a lunar surface. The only real option is to use the dunes biome and color it. The other biomes use materials such as grass that do not appear on the moon. The moon is desolate and very dry with no atmosphere. I can replace materials that the terrain generator uses with other materials, but the textures are off and it does not look very good. Sand can substitute for lunar regolith, but the moon has other features as well such as plains, hills, mountains, valleys, canyons, and seas of basalt. A number of the materials, even colored, do not look right for a lunar environment.
The planet Mars has similar requirements that the moon does, but the only real difference is that everything is a shade of red.
Conclusion
If this issue is addressed, it would improve my development experience because I would not have to rely on the built in materials and biomes to generate non-Earth-like terrestrial environments which will allow for the creation of a more realistic and immersive environment.
9 Likes
I think the most notable change that needs to be made to the terrain generators is surface craters. However, they can also be generated by using the Explosion instance.
The lack of procedural terrain generation is really holding us back from features like this.
3 Likes
Someone else pointed out that the erode tool can be used to make craters as well. The thing is though is that this request is specifically asking for the ability to add custom textures for terrain and the ability to modify/add biomes to use those textures.
1 Like
That is true. Custom materials are necessary for space-like environments or anything that is not on Earth.
The material replace tool has to suffice (for now) until this feature request is addressed. However, I do believe that if procedural generation ever becomes a thing, it will allow users to create biomes that are not part of presets.
1 Like
Actually, procedural generation of terrain is possible.
Terrain:WriteVoxels()
Unless I am not understanding what you are getting at. There are methods of changing the material colors via script too. The only thing that you cannot do by script is turn the decorations on or off.
1 Like
While it is somewhat possible using a script, no such implementation for procedural terrain was hinted at by Roblox and the terrain generator tool. If not, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The issue with using external tools is that they are sometimes not as efficient or have QoL issues. Sometimes, presets are also helpful in terrain generation.
I already use this plugin to generate procedural terrain, but only if necessary:
I believe you could create custom biomes with this as well, but then again, there is a reason for this feature request.
1 Like
The feature request as I see it:
Definable regions where terrain colors and decorations can be customized independently.
That would be fantastic! I have several procedural terrain projects and this would definitely be useful for biomes. It would also be useful for more granular case of wanting different terrain decorations on different regions of a hand crafted map.
You know, that’s actually a good idea. I recently learned that you can use the Material Overrides in MaterialService to change the textures of built-in materials. But what I want is a way to add custom materials to terrain in addition to the built in ones. Some of the materials such as Rock and Basalt are fractal in nature, so that should be something to consider with materials as well.
1 Like