Improvements to the Terrain Editor

Other users have shared your concerns as well. We’re still looking into how we want to address both. That being said, you can adjust the numbers for the size and position directly by adjusting them in the select tool first and then going back to the import, or generate tools.

That’s not necessarily true, using an instance of some kind that contains the raw :ReadVoxels() data could be a simple, elegant way to copy paste between studio instances.

For any dev that might want to recreate “terrain from instances” without official support, you could generate a modulescript containing the table of data or convert the data to a string and store in an attribute of any object (Maybe a configuration instance)

The plugin keeps track of every inserted object (or a specific kind of object) waiting to find the TerrainVoxels Data. A more sophisticated plugin could implement a terrain-editor like drag tool to move the stored terrain around maybe even allow it to be selected like a part.

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I know this can’t be implemented at the plugin level. For this to work it would require a rejigging of how terrain works at an engine level so that multiple terrain instances can exist within the same datamodel. Combining two terrain instances together (of the same type) is something that can be done at the plugin level however.
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This is not just about easily moving terrain around. It’s a request for a more flexible terrain system.

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I Really like the the Terrain Improvements! however do my Huion Pen Tablet Compatibles with the Roblox Terrain Sensitivity? and Stylus?

So good update! You are amazing-
:smiley: Greetings from Colombia

@Veldaren @VGVC2 @Pharao13 @ByGoalZ

We’ve gone ahead and enabled some bug-fixes.

  • There was an issue with WireframeHandleAdornments where their position would be offset in strange ways, causing the terrain wireframe to not line up, this has been fixed.
  • It is no longer possible to break the plugin by making the terrain region too big, we’re still working on adjusting limits and adding better warnings and feedback for when you’re out of range. At the moment, warnings are printed to the console.
  • We have exchanged the ALT shortcut for scaling region for SHIFT to better align with the rest of Studio.

After some discussion, we’ve decided to make some UI adjustments. These aren’t out today, but we’re working on them.

  • Add textboxes for adjusting regions back into the the Generate/Import/Fill tools rather than requiring use of the select tool.
  • Bring back the scroll wheel in some capacity, though it won’t be fully the same. There will be some changes, since we also want to keep the newly introduced shortcut. As part of this, these shortcuts should be available in all tools (it was a bug that they weren’t)
  • We’ll be providing a better way to show warnings about the max region size.
  • We’re increasing the minimum opacity on the brush so it stays visible (but at a lower opacity) when drawing.
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After using this for a handful of days now, I am considering using terrain for my games again. The overall flow of using the smooth terrain tools has greatly improved.

Once region support is added it will be even greater!

Adding onto this, with GlobalWind now out, terrain is starting to look more and more viable to me.

Great job!

I liked sea level better than the current one because there was no grid snapping, now when I tried to use raise/lower water level in my game it kept snapping to around 6 studs. I had to go out of my way to disable the beta and use sea level to work around this.

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With the addition of wireframe rendering, scaling up or down the selected portion of the terrain has become so much easier! Now I can make a bunch of small mountains of varying shapes, then move them around / scale them to my liking as if they are a mesh, which allows me to quickly box out the overall direction of the landscape I am going for. Great update!

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Hello @ProtoValence - I’ve only noticed this now when showing this beta to our studio’s builder, but in the “Preview Large Operations” gif, moving the terrain doesn’t seem to move the models along with it. Is it currently possible to move both, or would you first have to move terrain and then the models? The latter would obviously be destructive to the workflow, and so I’m wondering if there are solutions provided that just weren’t shown in the gif. Thanks!

We’re working on adding this kind of functionality, unfortunately it is not yet available.

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Will keep this in mind and look into that.

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Disabling the “Ignore Parts” option shows the drawing outline correctly around parts, but drawing goes through parts to terrain anyway. (on a Team Create place)

Actually no you can’t.
I have terrain in a place that is at a certain level. When the Shorelines Beta came out I immediately enabled it, and it looks fantastic.
However the sea level tool was still available, and I set my sea level with that. However when I did that I made an error and I now have water that seems to be about .2 studs different in height in certain areas.
Now if I go back and try to use the Select tool (replacing air with water or water with air like you said) I get a 1 stud increment change no matter where I set my Select “Selection Settings”.
Since the entire place was designed specifically with a lot of Terrain and Parts items right on the shoreline it’s now impossible to use the Fill tool to fix the issue. I’ve tried fixing it with the other tools as well with no success.
In the video below I have my Select tool Selection Settings at -688 on the Y axis, with a 40 stud Y Size. At the beginning I drag the selection box up and down to show the ‘checkered’ water surface indicating where the waves are at the selection box top face. As you can see in the foreground and around the central island the checkers are there, but the rest of the water surface is just about .2 studs higher. It isn’t game breaking, but there is a noticeable bump on this water when you play and pan your camera around. If I was able to use the sea level tool to fix it that would be awesome, but I had to use @2jammers’s suggestion and remove the beta to be able to reset the entire sea level in the game to fix it.
robloxapp-20230613-0118057.wmv (1.1 MB)

Don’t get me wrong, I love the new tools, but there are some issues with them.
Another one I noticed was when I used the Select tool on a large chunk of the map that contained water and Terrain, then used the Transform tool to resize that area (I was expanding the side of one island) along the X axis (for this example anyway) the Water suddenly had a gap where I had resized the Selection. The water’s edge where the Y axis edge had ‘sheared’ had rounded top edges and a thin gap between the sections. I tried with the ‘Merge Empty’ setting on and off with no change at the water’s surface.
Anther issue is the Smooth tool actually adding material at the high edge of a stepped down section and not raising the lower edge at all, even when selecting the lower surface first and dragging to the upper surface. This was after I did the previous resize operation as well. The resized edge seems to be locked and uneditable. The Smooth tool is set for 10 studs diameter, 1 strength, Pivot Center, Snap to voxels off, plane lock off, ignore parts and water on.
robloxapp-20230613-0200071.wmv (263.2 KB)

Seems like the new tools have real issues with working around areas that have been resized with the Transform tool, as already stated in my previous posts on May 24 & 25.

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Making mountains with the new tools is rather painful, as the ability to change the brush size while building was really useful. But since the keybinds just don’t work (I pressed all the combos that were supposed to be pressed, and none on them worked). Anyways, moving the mouse to adjust the brush is super annoying, it should be optional. Same with the brush disappearing, there should at least be an outline, kind of like Unreal Engine.

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New Fill Tool:


Old Sea Level Tool:

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Fixes for the fill tool as well as adjustments related to your other post are being made. We will also be increasing size limits on the transform and fill tools to approximately 16k studs ^ 3. However, this will not work with “Live Edit” mode and will show a progress bar. It may take quite some time for the action to complete. I will elaborate further once these changes are live.

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Couple of bugs I’ve been having:

  • Flatten tool sometimes leave behind tiny bits of terrain, similar problems with smooth occasionally
  • Basesize-Height ratio lock does not function correctly with the new keyboard shortcuts - the shortcuts affect the values individually
  • Paint tool around size 2 and 3 will fill an entire ‘side face’ of the terrain, no matter the height, makes it very difficult to paint smaller detail

This is great, it allows terrain editing to be so much easier.

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Did want to check in since I’m not sure if anyone mentioned it. The selection box isn’t aligned to the voxel grid correctly, it seems to be offset by 2 studs on each axis. I can’t do per voxel edits at the moment because of this.