Having gained an initial understanding of how World Creator manages terrains, it's time to begin with a simple terrain example. This walk-through aims to introduce filters and materials to you. The terrain created in this example is a fictional, simple terrain that isn't indicative of real-world terrains. Once you've completed this walk-through, you can download the sample project file to experiment with, but it's advisable to undertake all tutorials independently to grasp the typical World Creator workflow.
Launch World Creator and generate a new terrain by clicking on the New option in the main menu. Upon generating a new project, you will see the default terrain that World Creator creates automatically.
Go to the hierarchy list and select the Terrain element. Adjust the Seed value to 5, increase the Terrain Size to 2048 by 2048 by selecting the 2k button and set the precision to 1/2 Meter. Finally, press the F key to focus on the entire terrain. The result should resemble the image shown below.
Then, if you haven't already, expand the Terrain element along with the Biomes and Global Biome elements. The Filters and Materials element should now be visible.
Next to the Filters element is a Plus icon (the one on the far right, next to a folder icon). Click on it to open the Filters Selection Dropdown Menu.
The Filters Selection Dropdown Menu shown in the image above has a Search field at the top and a list of Filter Categories below. Use the Search field to quickly find a specific filter or filter type. Alternatively, hover over the categories to open a side menu that contains all filters belonging to the selected category.
For this example, navigate to Erosion and choose Wide Flows from the available options (the live preview for each selected filter is very useful). Now, add the same filter again since we require the erosions to be more pronounced. Your terrain should now resemble the image below.
Next, let us apply some color to our terrain. To do so, please access the Materials element. The terrain has one material by default, which is a simple white color material. Choose it and change the color value to 99672A. Simply click on the Tint settings to carry out this operation. A color selection window will appear where you have the option to change the color through sliders or by entering a hexadecimal or RGB value in the respective fields.
The color selector can also be used to choose a color from your desktop or any other application that you are running.
To do this, you only need to hover over the desired color and press the SPACE key on your keyboard. Now your terrain should resemble the image below.
Once you have set the color to the value mentioned above, your terrain should now look like the image below.
Next, click the Plus icon to add another Color Material (by default, another white color material is added, which makes your terrain appear completely white again). Set the color of the new material to CBB38B.
Now expand the new material's color to reveal the Distributions element. Click the Plus icon of the distribution element, then choose Flow. Next, set the Rain Strength value of the Flow Distribution to 0.36. By doing so, the flow distribution is applied to the new color and the flow streams shown in the image below are visible.
Add another color material. Set the color to 74924F. Add the Cavity distribution to that new color. Set the Strength value of the cavity distribution to 0.29 and the Step Size to 0.13. To create a convex terrain type, select Convex from the options. Next, add a Height distribution to the cavity distribution. This will enable you to create a custom distribution method of your own for coloring the terrain. Set the Height Range value to a range between 150.60 and 300.00 and the Smooth values (located below the height range value) to a range between 64.40 and 10.00. The terrain should now resemble the image provided below.
Congratulations, you have just created your first terrain in World Creator. We suggest you experiment a little to become more familiar with filters and materials.
For motivation, try to create the terrain shown in the image below.
This article includes two files that contain the terrain produced during this example, as well as the terrain you may have created for inspiration. The files can be downloaded below.