B. Using the Floor Lofter

You view 1 row of heights at a time

So you can choose which row you want to adjust the heights for. By default of course, your terrain is completely flat. When you push the RENDER button, the red brush is rendered to the terrain you have created.

Flat terrain brush

Making terrain is simple. Just choose which row you want to adjust, and drag each point to the height that it should be at.

Row 1

Editing Row 1

Rendered terrain w/1st row edited

Above I chose the 1st row, set the heights, then hit the render button.

Row 3

Editing Row 3

Rendered Terrain w/1st and 3rd rows edited

Then I switched over to the 3rd row and set some heights there. After rendering it again, I decide to use my creation.

The Floor lofter doesn't have to be used for just floors. For example you could turn it and use it for bumpy walls, like in a cave. Or you could subtract it, and your terrain would be in the ceiling. That is what I did with this terrain.

My neat cave

I just subtracted by brush and it made a cool cave ceiling. If you did want to use this terrain as a floor, you would create the room first, then ADD your loft brush on the floor.

Getting your terrain the correct size

This is an area where the lofter seems to be broken, or incomplete in design. The "Terra Grid __ x __" field in the lofter is useless. You are limited to making 4 x 4 grid terrains since no matter what you enter into these fields, it won't change anything, and you are limited to 4 x 4.

But you want a bigger terrain? What I do is just combine 4 x 4 grids. Like if I want an 8 x 8 terrain, it will take me 4 lofter creations to piece it together. The problem here is the common sides of the 4 terrains. To get them to match, I have to write down what I want to make, so I can match the heights of the sides in the lofter. This works quite well, but it takes me a long time between writing it on paper and entering it all into the lofter.

You want to make the terrain a different size? The default cell size is 64 units, each square of terrain is 64x64 units that is. If you enter a different value into the Cell Size field, it also fails to do anything, so you are pretty much stuck. However there is the Render Scale field. This can possibly solve your problem. If you enter a scale of 2, your cell size would change to 128 units. Your cell size is always 64 X Render scale. However, the render scale does not take decimals, only whole numbers. The problem in this is that you might want an increment between whole numbers, OR, you might want a cell size smaller than 64 units. There is nothing you can do here, because it won't take your decimal numbers like 0.25, so no luck. You just have to manually scale the brush after it is rendered. Just hope you get it right, as precision can be important in level design.

The Advanced Button

This button only presents you with one more option. When you press the Advanced button, 4 check boxes appear for each terrain square on the row you are editing.

The check boxes appear

When checked, the square which the check box represents will be divided from the opposite direction than it would normally be divided by. I suppose this could be useful somehow, but I have never needed to use this feature.

Reverse Sliced squares

The picture should describe it better than I can, it just reverses the way that square is "folded" when the terrain is rendered.

And now I am finished. That is how to use the Floor Lofter, applications of it can include putting bumpy terrains on walls, ceilings, and floors. I use it in backdrops a lot, as it is an easy way to create scenes that look natural, without a lot of work.

My neato backdrop

This tutorial is complete.

This tutorial is complete.  Perhaps you want to see more about Level Design.

This tutorial contains the following sections