So I'm continuing to tinker with this with successes. I am curious about the detail distant as you do not mention it's creation and the process involved in making it. World Machine doesn't appear to have a node/device for that except for a "sharpen" macro available in the pro version. Can this be generated through World Machine or is it an external program noise addition?
I'm didn't mention the detail texture because I kinda forgot how I made it. That texture is either noise generated in gimp or a tiled 200-300m section of desert satellite imagery. If I had to guess, my bet would be on the latter of these two. Well, I might as well reply to everything else. edit- no, it's way too late. Those file are scary big. Unfortunately, compression become very noticeable when each pixel is equal to a meter or two.
Hmmm....detail texture next challenge. If the WM macro isn't sufficiently detailed ( even at 4096 ), the mesh smoothing in Blender will make the Dterrain become uninteresting and blurry. I can definitely see the impact a detailmap could provide in that case. I am also finding that there can be a sweetspot between mesh resolution (64-128), and the type of macro used on that mesh. Certain macro's can supplement and actually use the bigger faces of a 64 mesh depending on what the geology is and the macro parameters. The huge obnoxious .png's out of WM are very bothersome and I really need to find a way to shrink those without too much quality loss. Having those load in a map is ridiculous, any suggestions? My first attempt will be the ubiquitous .DDS. I noticed the Shortdistant is a meager 15MB and it looks fantastic.
