Simone Huisman

For my study at BUAS, I've been working on a terrain generator using the Project Pegasus pipeline for a few weeks now. However, I've never been a huge fan of the Heightfield Erode node in Houdini, so I decided to instead use Gaea to erode and add detail to the terrain.


note: The Range node at the start is just for editing purposes, and should be replaced with the File node before saving.
note2: You should always export the Mask layer even if you're not storing anything useful in it, otherwise Heightfield Masking nodes downstream in Houdini will break.




Advantages of this approach:
- Nicer looking erosion.
- More control over the erosion simulation.
- More options for detailing. All of my terrain detailing in this landscape is done in Gaea, Houdini is only used to create an ID map, color map, and generate foliage placements.

Drawbacks of this approach:
- Requires far more time to set up. You're essentially building a version of the Heightfield Erode node by hand, so even if you're experienced with Gaea, even a very simple setup takes far longer to build, test, and implement.
- Harder to use collaboratively. I'm working with another person who couldn't get the Gaea node to work on their device, so any edits to the terrain generation have to be made by me (though they can grab and use the heightfield itself via the file cache).
- The Gaea Import node isn't the easiest to set up, and the documentation on it is incomplete.




Here is the processed terrain in Unreal Engine, fully textured with and without (placeholder) foliage. It's obviously far from finished, so if you want to follow my progress, I am posting weekly updates on my LinkedIn (link in my profile).

(EDIT: fixed images)