 Howdy guys, IndiePixel here. Alright, so in this video what I wanted to do was go over how I did the terrain. One of the subscribers on IndiePixel wanted to know how I built the terrain here. So what I wanted to do was do a quick little walkthrough of exactly how I did that inside of Houdini. So once I take off here, let's actually switch over into Houdini and take a look at how the graph was set up for this particular terrain that you can see here that we've been looking at for a couple weeks now. So there we go. Let's go and flip over into Houdini and take a look at how the graph was set up. So here we are in Houdini over here and you can see I have the terrain over here and so basically the way I started out was I just imported the really rough kind of templated terrain that I built inside of Unity and these days, you know, I'm using a ProBuilder a lot more since it comes with Unity and stuff like that. And so I'm actually updating the whole workflow to work with ProBuilder meshes and getting a little bit more detailed with it. So this is just kind of a preview into how I'd made that this first terrain. Okay. So I imported all the template geo and this was just the size of the grid that I liked and that just kind of gave me an overall idea of how large, you know, the terrain needed to be, even though it needs to be a little bit bigger, but you know for the course and for, you know, just testing out your physics, this felt like a good size terrain. And so then I also imported the rough airport that I built and then I used that inside of the the terrain graph over here. So let's walk through the individual steps. So the first thing I did is I decided on building a radius around the airport that we have inside of the the demo scene here. Okay. So what I wanted to do, so I imported all the airport geometry and I said, okay, I want to build a radius around this. Like I created a circle that was roughly, you know, the size a little bit bigger than the airport. I then went and created normals so that I could then perturb this. So if you want to look at the setup for the note here, one nice thing about the circle and having the airport at the center of the world is that I can easily generate normals that are pointing outward, you know, from the center just using this point expression here and typing in at P. And that will give me these great normals and I can use those then inside of a mountain node. And that allowed me then to create, you know, a more natural radius around the the terrain. Okay, I didn't want to just have a circle that masked out where all the mountains went because you know, you don't necessarily see, you know, perfect circles and in real terrain stuff like that. So that's why I went and did that first. So I created this object that I could use as a mask for the height field. And so then that leads me into talking about the height field here. And so I created a height field that matched the grid that I had set up in Unity and I just exported the grid from Unity into Houdini here. So I knew how big I needed to make my terrain and that turned out to be, you know, 3,000 by 3,000. And then the current resolution that I have it set at is 2.5. Obviously, you can go up or down as needed. All right. So from there, I did a height field masked by object. This allows you to mask a height field with actual geometry, which is super awesome. Comes in handy so many times. All right, so height field masked by object and just basically left it at the the defaults because that generated the initial circle mask for the entire terrain. So the airport fits inside of this area. And that's why, you know, inside of Unity it works really well, you know, that particular area. And, you know, I added some noise later on, which is why, you know, we're getting these kind of deals. Um, I'm still obviously working on it. So uh, let's go back to Houdini. All right. So then basically I used that mask and I added some really rough noise. So I just did a height field noise. All right. And I set it to sparse convolution and just messed around the values until I got something that I liked. And I really kind of wanted to go for this plateaued you know, high plains kind of desert. Look, I don't want to go full desert. You know, it's kind of a mix of, you know, high plains and grassy plains with plateaued desert. You know, it's, it's a little bit fantasy, a little bit realistic kind of thing. So anyways, those are the settings that I use right there for the, for the noise. All right. So then I remapped that. So I did a remap. And the other reason why I did a remap is so I could adjust the height. You know, once I get a nice noise, I like to go and remap the heights because um, you don't want to have to, or at least I found that inside of the height field noise. There are a lot of times where I can get the, the noise to look pretty cool, but I needed it just a little bit higher, a little bit lower. So it's a good idea to remap it. And that'll just kind of intensify the noise a little bit more. And then I distorted it. And this technique is great for just adding, you know, a lot more detail. So I just use the curl noise type. And then these are all the settings for it. I don't want to, you know, change any of this stuff just yet. I did, I just want to walk through and just show you guys how the graph is all set up. I'll post this to you up on Gumroad for you guys so you can download it. It's not like this is like super secret confidential terrain stuff here. All right. So, um, moving on after the distort here, I did a mask by feature. And this one I just did by height. Right. Because what I wanted to do is take these particular portions of the mountains here and actually just terrace them so we get that, you know, plateaued looking type of desert terrain, you know. And so I masked it out. Not basically, you know, showed me where I'm going to have my plateaus or my terraces. All right. And then I ran that through a terrace and just created three terraces. And unfortunately, you know, it always leaves like some little tiny spire that you have to take care of. And so that's why I added this clip and I just clipped off that tall piece, you know, because it makes the geometry look super obvious like that it's a hike field type of terrain. Okay. And then I just did a clear. Got rid of all the the masking information and I ended up with my basic terrain. So these are all like the large formations. So that leads into the second area of the graph here. Okay. So I needed, now that I had all my large formations, I need something down below where the more grasslands type of terrain is. And so I definitely encourage you, you know, to start gathering lots of reference of types of terrains because you can mix and match these. And whenever I approach a terrain I am always thinking about, okay, what types of terrain do I want to have, you know, in these certain areas? And so in this case, you know, it's I want some erosion down, you know, kind of at the lower end and then I want to have these grassy, you know high plains type of thing and then I want to have those plateaued spires that you see, you know, I think it's in Utah. Anyways, out in the desert. All right. So moving on We I went and then blurred the height mask here. So we're going to get into the the grassland areas that I did So I went and blurred that height mask or the height field And I added some noise and for this noise I used an add and a whirley And this gave me kind of a nice just kind of puffy, you know, pillow look to the whole thing And I really liked how it looked because it made it feel like You know, it's been eroded enough that it's just kind of turned into this lumpy Kind of dirt and there's these little rivers in between all of these guys. So And the rivers don't really know where to go They all just kind of end up in these little pits and stuff like that. I don't know the effect was cool. So I I left it, you know Um, I did then another distort and it's good to do those distorts because It breaks up the noise. You could see that this looks really cellular, right? Uh and by adding that distort It just kind of gets rid of that and it really does make it feel a little bit more realistic. So I definitely Take some time and get used to You know missing around with the noises really for me. That's what I found works really well You just go in and just do lots of experiments of what the different types of noises do and You play around with all the values and you start to understand what they're going to do, you know And you get more comfortable with it. So then it goes faster and faster as you start building more trains you can start to you know See the noises in your head and and you know just execute on it and execute on it instead of just Um having to constantly experiment All right, so then I cleared the mask, right? So that kind of left me where the airport is and Then I did a remap and that just kind of intensified it, right? So I used the remaps to Take the current pattern of the noise and just give it a little bit more edge And so here what I'm doing on blurring and then I did another blur and that just blurred it out even more so that this remap Basically was remapped over a larger gradient From that center. So then I have another height field remap over here and this basically is acting on that mask So it allows me to change the mask as well. So you don't have to just work on height stuff Or height information. You could also do that that remap with the mask. You just got to change the the layer to remap All right, then finally I took those two types of terrains and just mixed them together So I just used an add And then just messed around with the sliders. It looks like all the stuff is pretty default But I just added those on and I got you know pretty cool looking terrain And that's why I'm saying, you know when you start mixing and matching types of terrains that you like You can make some pretty cool terrains That's usually how I approach it Alrighty So then I did another noise and that this is kind of a global noise so you can see the shift here So if I go to this layer where I'm blending my two types of terrain So my plateaus and my grasslands, right? um I want to actually shift it even more just to make it look like there's these big, you know like Uh, undulations in the terrain, you know caused by rippling and like tectonic plates and stuff like that So you want to kind of think of also like that larger scale because if you leave it as just like a Height map straight up You know overall it just feels kind of flat when you do the when you take the height field noise to the whole global terrain and make the noise relatively large In this case, I'm using sparse convolution again, but the the element size is really large The amplitude is relatively low It makes it feel like, you know, these large slabs of dirt are just being manipulated by You know massive tectonic plates Anyways, that's a little too philosophical for right now. Anyways So that's what I did and then we're going to get into Masking by feature. So this one I masked by slope Uh, because I want to erode, you know, the slope areas and start to drop some dirt Down into these areas. So you want to pull, you know information from the The high angled slopes here, right and then run it through and erode And I'll actually just leave these settings up here I'll just tab through all these settings here. So these are my settings And I I think they're pretty default I think the most I changed was the precipitation that you really can make a large amount of changes when you change These values And debris in the bedrock these things control The look of it as well, but I usually mess around with the erosion at least right now You know, I'm still getting used to it myself. So I'm still learning all this stuff myself is because it's still relatively new but I've been messing around with these these guys and Then finally I didn't actually use the visualization here. So that basically gave me all of my dirt, you know that It's piled up and and I didn't want to go super heavy on the erosion, right? And I find that a lot of people end up doing doing those high erosion That's not even the right way to say that just highly eroded terrains, you know, because it looks pretty from a distance Uh, when you start making for game levels, you really want to identify, you know, these like large areas You know, because we're we're going to be walking around at this scale, basically So anyways, I mean it really it really comes down to the style game that you want to make but Uh, that's what I was thinking when I went and made this particular terrain I'm trying to think about how it's going to look, you know from a realistic standpoint Um, all right And then I remapped it Over here, and I think I just did Oh, I just remapped the flow areas that way it could just affect the depth of those flow areas I think super subtle And then it cleared out the mask and that left me with the Pretty much the terrain that you saw In the video, so again, I'm making this for one of the subscribers that Asked me a question about how I put together the terrain for the aircraft physics course Or at least a couple versions ago And then so here I'm masking by feature And this particular mask, so let's actually select this is used to place where the grass goes All right, so I just did mask by slope 0 to 20 right because the grass is going to kind of grow in those flatter areas And then you could also you know subtract out the height too just to get it lower here But I kind of liked having a little bit of grass on top Uh, so you can see I also turned on the Mask by height so those two are blending together basically All right And then I blurred the mask Just to make it feel a little more organic and then I added a noise to the mask that way it didn't feel so uniform Across right so it's you know, it's grass So you're gonna have grass that's a little more green and then grass that's a little more brown or you know Not growing as densely in certain areas So that's why I'm doing this height field Mask noise just do the multiply And then finally I dropped out a height field visualize and this is where I set up All the color so I just did the actual terrain color in the height ramp and then I did a color for the flow That's all the erosion stuff and then I did a color for the grass, which is Called mask. I should have just called the grass, but I was getting lazy by that I think All right, and so uh, basically at that point um I split up the height fields into quads because I didn't want to have a massive Piece of geometry inside of unity. This is good for you know, things like occlusion calling or streaming large worlds So you want to create these quadrants basically And that's I just use the height field tile split And then I convert the height field and make sure I have big big point colors turned on And that turns it into geometry And then I just added some normals I think I did this because unity was complaining there for a second that there are no normals When I was doing the light bakes All right, but when I merge it all together, let's turn off our normals. That is the terrain all right So hopefully that helps out. I'll post this so I'm going to save this out And I'll post it up on go road so you guys can Look through it even more like I said, it's not super secret or classified And there's there's definitely a lot of information about using the height field nodes instead of Houdini now The thing that I want to try to do is you know try to cover Making larger worlds, you know using streaming and stuff like that and You're loading up the quadrants at right times Things like that you know putting Detail to this how do you texture something like this really quickly? How do you you know put detail really onto it really quickly? And you know, yeah, I'm gonna do a course on You know the basics of terrain and stuff like that, but I just don't I don't want to repeat You know stuff that's already out there. I want to try to you know show stuff that Is good for production and is relatively new so That is how I did that particular graph. Let me know if you guys have any questions. Thanks so much