Noises
Overview
This article provides a brief overview of World Creator's extensive noise functionality. The system is available in several different parts of World Creator (Base Shapes, Filters, Distributions), so the overall structure and all the options related to noise are explained in detail in this article to avoid overlapping information in each of the respective areas.
Applications in World Creator
There are currently three areas of the World Creator where noise is used:
The landscape layers offers a Noise option to create the base of your terrain with the noise generator.
The filters in the Noise category offer you the typical blend modes such as addition and multiplication, as well as distortion and directional distortion while also giving you control over the level step at which they are applied.
In addition to basic shapes and filters, you can also find the noises in distributions, which can be used for masking filters or other elements in the initial terrain creation step, as well as for materials during the texturing process.
Available Noises
World Creator offers a variety of different noises, each of which can add a great deal of detail to your terrains. The different types are all listed below
In the distributions you'll also find Worley noise, which is a legacy version of the new Voronoi noise. It's not listed below because it's not available in filters and base shapes.
Billow Noise
Gabor Noise
Perlin Noise
Phasor Noise
Ridged Noise
Simplex Noise
Value Noise
Voronoi Noise
Wave Noise
White Noise
Parameters
Placement
These parameters allow you to position the noise on the terrain.
Offset X/Z Offsets the noise in the X & Z direction.
Anchor X/Z Defines an anchor point used for rotation and scaling.
Rotation Rotates the noise around the anchor position.
Noise
These parameters control the noise generator. Some noise types may have additional parameters.
Seed The seed of the noise.
Amplitude Controls the strength (up scale) of the noise.
Frequency Controls the scale of the uvs used for the noise.
Fractal Type
The fractal type combines multiple octaves of noise at different frequencies and amplitudes to create a more detailed and refined overall result.
To explain octaves real quick: When fbm is enabled, a base noise is generated using the default settings. For each octave, the uv frequency is multiplied by the lacunarity value and the amplitude by the gain parameter, and the result is added to the previous layers. As the lacunarity and gain work recursively, the frequency and amplitude get smaller or larger with each successive step, adding finer detail at higher octaves. Ridge mode works in a similar way, although the combination of a current noise octave with the previous result is a different operation.
Parameters
Octaves The number of octaves.
Lacunarity Increases/Decreases the frequency with each new octave.
Gain Reduces/increases the amplitude of each new octave.
Fine Detail (Ridged only) Adds in smaller scale detail.
Domain Warping
Domain Warping offsets the UVs used for noise generation with an additional noise, creating a warped pattern with stretching. The noise used for offsetting is a Perlin noise with multiple octaves depending on the warp mode, behaving similarly to fbm.
Parameters
Warp Mode
Allows you to switch between no warping, recursive or fixed domain warping. Recursive domain warping (as opposed to fixed) applies the domain warping offset to its own generation UVs, creating a more broken up offset with each octave.
Octaves
The number of octaves.
Amplitude
The strength of the warp.
Frequency
The frequency of the warp.
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