I made a thread on “Smooth terrain layers” in December of 2016 and it did get a decent share of support, but there’s a few issues with the idea that I really feel I didn’t cover. The thread also never really got much staff attention.
You can see the old thread here. So to revamp the idea? Here’s the new one:
Smooth Terrain Layers - The main focus
I feel that the idea in general would have little appeal. The one thing that would really have big appeal would be the water fix. My #1 issue with smooth terrain is how water bends to meet the edges of other materials.
In no way is this realistic. I feel that the “slopes” caused by the way occupancy is handled between materials should be altered so that water is ignored by all materials except for water itself.
What’s the probability of a rework like this coming up?
I agree. Terrain water is really pretty, but it’s probably nicer to make water out of parts just to combat this problem (also, terrain water doesn’t make sense for streams).
Another approach that could be taken is to just modify how the blending occurs. If it were to connect to adjacent land on a flat, horizontal plane, you’d probably fix 95% of problem cases by this.
Although the function of water sloping up to other terrain voxels (seen below) is supposed to happen, it represents a problem with how developers can interact with these new and advanced roblox features. It proves that the current terrain creation functionality is too linear to support customization of how terrain features interact. If we could layer voxel grids and edit voxel grids, we could customize how/if terrain should interact with each other as well as layer terrain to create a more dynamic landscape.
Regardless of how far ROBLOX is willing to give access to customization of terrain, this feature alone should be addressed, as it is a very off-putting component of this new and advanced tool for modeling worlds.
Hello fellow roblox devforum members,
As some of you may know, roblox uses the same voxel grid for both water and hard terrain. Now at first glance there may be no issue as to both of these materials sharing the same voxel grid, however as soon as you look into creating shorelines or coastal areas that utilize primarily smooth terrain it becomes apparent that the water behaves to say the least undesireably.
On the image above you can see the water slightly popping out compared to the water level further out. It is as if the water is part of the hard terrain and it is just bothersome to look at.
I personally have no experience how this system functions, it looks great however this has became my big pet peeve when it comes to using water and terrain together as these weird anomalies appear. From my knowledge it works with voxels, having a way to create “groups” that ignore each other’s collision and go through each other could prove useful in over forms and practices over this small issue.
I understand that this may be a miniscule feature and not that important, but might as well pitch it in.
