geoglyph 2.0
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Cirstyn Bech-yagher shares her favourite new features of Geoglyph 2.0
u sers familiar with terrain creation software World Machine (WM) know that there’s no World Machine without Geoglyph, the plug-in that extends WM’S functionality, and then some. This hasn’t changed in Geoglyph 2.0, making it the only thing in the new version that hasn’t had a revamp.
Improved Workflow
Supporting WM2 and the fledgling 3, Geoglyph 2 sports a sleek, new UI to boost your creative speed whether you work solo or in a pipeline. And its new functionality is massive. As well as the new UI, new features include new Erosion devices, Geological Effects and Geocolor, as well as the custom-developed, external engine facilitating all this, called Terrenderer. Together they kick the entire Wm/geoglyph workflow up a notch. While the seven new Erosion devices and the huge device library provide users fast and good-looking starts and tweaks to their projects, the new Geological Effects functionality is one of the major standouts. A cross between a Filter and an Erosion device, a Geological Effect added to your graph allows you to change or fine-tune your output with a simple UI, rather than extra node upon node to gain the same result. Another innovative feature is Geocolor – plugging this into your graph makes the generation of colour and detail maps for your terrain a lot easier, as it enables users to pick and use colours and patterns from a photo, and provides a better gradient editor to work with them.
going back In time
A humbler feature worth mentioning is the Build Stack. Enabled by Terrenderer, it provides you with a history of terrain builds, with build statistics and a post-build analysis, with a 3D view for each of them. This is handy when you’re working on a project and want to go back, or want to roll back to earlier settings.
All in all, Geoglyph 2 puts a lot of fun and ease back into working with WM, especially compared to World Creator, which is still heavily in beta. There are some niggles, such as the Build Stack sometimes generating over 60 message pop-ups when running, or the occasional WM crash or hang when moving around in the UI, or the example terrains from the Geoglyph main screen not loading. However, compared to the other, flawlessly working functionality, these really are small fry. If you’re going to invest in terrain generation software, it’s hard to go wrong by picking this combo.
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