Lake

Cut Out Offset

Vary the margin of what is considered "underneath" to ensure some faces aren't removed that are partially not underneath.

Use Depth

Add walls to the water mesh where the terrain ends.

Position Type

Regardless of type the Z value of the loction will be used as the height of the lake.

• Position - The position coordinates relative to the position of the terrain object where the lake should be. If water is a separate object this functions more as of an offset from the object's location of the lake.
• Object - Use an object's location as the location of the lake. This is not relative to the terrain's position and if you move the terrain the lake will stay where the object is.

Add Empty for Lake

This button creates an empty and sets it as the Object for the lake's position.

This is only visible when Position Type is set to Object

Terrain Deformation

These settings will deform the underlying terrain geometry.

Only works with water layers. Water objects will not see these settings

Lake Depth

Depth

How deep the lake should deform the underlying terrain.

Randomize Depth

Lake Radius

Radius

The distance from center of the lake to its shore.

Randomize Radius

Shoreline

Sometimes the lake "spills" over past its radius due to one area of the terrain being significantly lower than the rest in that area. These settings help contain the lake within its radius.

Amount

Overall amount slider to vary the other settings.

Height

How high to raise the shoreline.

Width

How wide the shoreline should be at the Height settings

Falloff Amount

How far out from the end of the Width setting to fade out the Height setting.

Ocean

Use Cut Out

Remove faces that are underneath the mesh.

Cut Out Offset

Vary the margin of what is considered "underneath" to ensure some faces aren't removed that are partially not underneath.

Use Depth

Add walls to the water mesh where the terrain ends.

Height

The height of the surface of the ocean relative to the position of the terrain object.

Not visible if water is a separate object. The z value of the position of the ocean's object is used as the height.

River

Curve Object

The curve the river should follow.

Draw Curve

This button creates and sets as the active Curve Object a new bezier curve and puts you in a mode where you can draw out a line on the terrain and a curve will be created that fits that line.

Width

The distance from one bank of the river to the opposite side.

Density

How many vertices per blender unit to pack into the river's mesh.

Meander

Expand the curve in realistic ways to make your rivers extra curvy! If a curve gets so curvy it intersects with itself it will remove the bit of the curve that is inbetween the two intersecting points and rejoin up at the intersection as rivers do in nature.

Iterations

The amount of times to progress the curviness simulation.

Amount

How much per iteration to extend the river around its curves.

Flow Factor

How much the direction of the curve influences the push of the curve.

Advanced Settings

Reverse

Reverse the direction the river should flow.

Flatten Splines

Ignore any up and down movement in the curve object and instead set the entire curve to the average height of the curve.

Ensure Downhill

Do not let the curve ever be higher than a previous position. This is respective to direction of the curve and the Reverse setting.

Flatten Splines will override this setting

Cut Out Offset

Extend the river into the terrain more so as to ensure it is always covering the entirity of it's area.

Resolution Length

Increases the smoothness of the river mesh. Does not affect the resolution of the river mesh.

Terrain Deformation

River Depth

How deep the river should be at it's middle.

Bank

Height Offset

How much taller than the river the banks should be.

Width

How wide the terrain should be at the Bank Height Offset setting.

Split Width

Cliffs often look better with a shorter bank width whereas banks that are more downhill need a larger one to look realistic.

Downhill Width (Split)

The width of the bank where the terrain is lower than the bank height.

Cliff Width (Split)

The width of the bank where the terrain is height than the bank height.

Falloff

The distance after the bank width to fade back into the surrounding terrain.

Split Falloff

Cliffs often look better with a sharper falloff to make it look like a cliff, whereas banks that are more downhill need a larger one to look realistic.

Downhill Falloff (Split)

The falloff distance of the bank where the terrain is lower than the bank height.

Cliff Falloff (Split)

The falloff distance of the bank where the terrain is higher than the bank height.

Simulation

This is not a full water simulator, and built only for adding water to terrains.

Use Depth

Add walls to the water mesh where the terrain ends.

Simulation Process Type

• Iterative - See the final result of the simulation. Result is based upon the Iterations setting
• Simulation - Watch the simulation run and cache by hitting play in the Timeline

Bake

Store the results of the simulation so as not to have to waste time calculating the simulation each frame or when editing other layers or sections.

Will not affect wave simulation

Delete Bake

Delete the stored results.

Iterations

How many times to run the water simulation.

Only available when Simulation Process Type is set to Iterative

Rain Rate

The amount of water that will be added to the simulation each frame/iteration of the simulation.

Initial Water

How much water should exist already on the terrain.

Drain at Edge

Allow water to disappear off the edge of the terrain. If disabled all water will stay in the simulation as though there were walls at the edge of the terrain.

Remove Smaller Waters Threshold

Remove sections of the simulated water whose area is smaller than the threshold value.

Remove Smaller Islands Toggle

Enable removing ares of the simulation disconnected from the main section.

Advanced

These settings aren't really needed to get nice results but are here for your experimenting anyways.

Delta Time

The amount of time between each iteration.

Evaporation Rate

How much water should be removed each iteration. Usually the same as rain rate (though I never touch this even if I increase rain rate).

Gravity

How fast water falls. 9.81m/s is the default.

Pipe Area

Basically this is how much water can travel from one vertex to the next each iteration.

This does mean that the higher resolution your water mesh is the slower your water travels each iteration.

Water Mesh

These settings regard the mesh that is generated showing you the results of the simulation.

Water Threshold

How much water must exist at a vertex before it is made visible.

Blur Iterations

The water mesh starts in the shape of the terrain. Blur it can give nicer results especially at resolutions higher than the terrain.

Resolution

See Above Section

Source

This area contains the settings of limiting where water (rain) is added each iteration.

Whole Terrain

The whole terrain will receive the Rain Rate each iteration.

Random

Randomly place "springs" across the terrain.

Density

How many springs per blender unit

Location Seed

Randomize up the location of springs

__Spot Sizing__

Vary the size of each spring

Min

The smallest radius a spring can have

Max

The largest radius a spring can have

Seed

Randomize the sizing of each spring

__Mask by Height__

Limit the location of each spring by the height of the terrain.

Height Minimum

The lowest height a spring can be generated at

Use Height Minimum

Use the lowest point of the mesh as the minimum.

Height Maximum

The height height a spring can be generated at

Use Height Maximum

Use the highest point of the mesh as the maximum.

Collection

Use the location of objects in a collection to decide where rain should fall. The size of each object dictates the size of the spring on the terrian. Duplicating any of the objects will keep the object in the collection allowing for easy creation of new springs.

Add Collection

Creates a collection and set it as the Collection and add in an empty object to start using it.

Attribute

Use an attribute to choose where the rain should fall.

Resolution Options

Resolution: Fixed

Use Proxy Resolution

Choose a lower resolution for the viewport than when rendering.

Split Resolution

Choose a different number of vertices in each axis of the grid.

Vertices

The number of the vertices. This number will be squared if Split Resolution is disabled.

Resoultion: Density

Use Proxy Resolution

Allows for choosing a lower density for the viewport than when rendering.

Split Density

Allows for having a different density in each axis

Density

How many vertices per Blender unit the mesh should have.
So on a grid with dimensions 100 units x 100 units (X and Y axis respectively) a density of 1 would put 100 vertices in both the X and Y axis resulting in 100x100 vertices or 10,000 vertices.
Same grid but with a density of 1.5 results in 150x150 vertices or 22,500 vertices.
A density of 0.5 would result in 1 vertex every 2 units resulting in 50x50 or 2500 vertices.

Resoultion: Adaptive

Adaptive resolution creates a grid of tiles (planes) and then subdivides those tiles respective to their distance from the camera.

Base Resolution

This is the largest a tile can be. Larger tiles results in faster subdivision (less tiles to subdivide). Smaller values, though, result in more accurate and smoother LOD-ing and camera culling.

Dicing Rate (Viewport/Render)

Size of micropolygon per pixel. Lower values result in higher resolution.
Dicing Rate of 5.0 approximates a polygon per every 5x5 grid of pixels.

There's not much of a reason to go below a value of 1.0 as such detail is not available to be seen when rendering.

Detail Iterations

The max number of LODs or subdivision splits to have. AS will sample the grid this many times from the bottom of the camera view to the top. This is not a guarantee the terrain will be split into this many sections. If the plane is not visible in the section, the terrain will not be given a new section.

Camera Culling Settings

Padding

Shrink or expand outside of the camera view how much of the plane is subdivided. Helps ensure the entire view is has subdivided plane on it.

Extend Towards Camera

Due to creating the grid and attempting to figure out distance from tile to camera before it is deformed, the subdivided areas could be shifted up. This value helps shift the subdivided tiles back fully into view only in the direction of towards the camera. So like padding but only on the bottom border of the camera view.

Outside

Settings regarding the tiles that are outside the camera's view.

Enable

Whether or not to show the tiles outside of the camera view. May need to do so to ensure correct volume shading.

Amount

Vary how wide outside of the camera view to include the outside. Set to 1 to ensure it is there at all times.

Subdivision

How much to subdivide each tile. Default of 0 means no subdivision occurs and it stays at the base resolution.

Resolution: Subdivision

Subdivision Levels

How many times to subdivide the water mesh starting at the resolution of the terrain.

This means that if you have this set to subdivide a couple of time but then increase the resolution of the terrain your water mesh may become unbearable to your computer.

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Attributes

Attributes added to the terrain that can be used by other sections (Scatter and Shader).

Water Height_water_tvfx

The height of the water. This is stored both on the terrain and water meshes.

Only stored on terrain if the water is not a separate object.

Water UVs_water_tvfx

The UVs of the water mesh relative to the terrain. Effectively water_vertex_positions/terrain_size

Crest Foam_water_tvfx

If crest foam is enabled this holds a mask of the crest foam generated by the waves.

Distance to Object_water_tvfx

If distance to object is enabled and a collection is set this holds the distance from each vertex on the water to the closet object in the collection.

River

River Depth_water_tvfx

Depth of the river. Not sure why we store this.

River Flow Direction_water_tvfx

The direction the water is flowing at a given spot.

River UVs_water_tvfx

The UVs of the river to help map features onto it so they bend and flow correctly. The X axis is from 0-1 representing one bank of the river to another while the Y axis holds the length of the river at a given vertex and is therefore 0-inifinity. This allows for undistorted mapping when placing textures.

Simulation

Simulation Velocity_water_tvfx

The direction and speed of the water at a given vertex in vector format.

Direction = normalize(Simulation Velocity_water_ tvfx)

Speed = length(Simulation Velocity_water_ tvfx)