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This height map we've been working on is replicated in other places. What's that breakup like? How many different patches are there on a planet, and how do you keep these things from being too repetitious?

TL;DRPlanets use a library of height maps in 15 slots per planet, and any patch can be swapped for a different height map from that library.

Patrick GladysEnvironment Artist

The power of DevTools. You can see that what we have been adjusting and modifying right now is index or patch number three. We tweaked patch number three. Right next to us is patch number zero. And let me show you something. We have a list in our planet editor tools. This is something that we don't show off quite frequently, but you can see that we have our ecosystems, and what we call those ecosystems are all the height maps. This is the list of all the height maps that we use on all our planets. We have hills, we have ice dunes, we have the mining pits. You have a preview of all of it here. You have the mining pits, you have mountains, eroded, and all of that stuff. So it's a huge library of height maps, all kinds of flatlands, beaches and so on. So what I can do is simply select that patch and, for instance, fill it with something entirely different, which is Mountain Billowy 02. See, these are the Billowy Mountains, and you can see that the data already adjusted. But if I go back and put in something entirely new, see, everything moved with it. Let's take a height map that you guys have never seen before. It's not on any of the current planets yet. See, I can just go through this library and decide, okay, what mountains could fit best. And you see these funky colors, right? It's 0 to 15, so we have 15 patches, 15 slots that we can fill. So I can decide on a lineup of 15 different height maps.

Star Citizen Live›Making Mountains·
Published on this date.2 Oct 2020