Build 4059 ‘Dragontail Peak’

What’s New in Dragontail Peak

Dragontail Peak is the next major release of World Machine. It builds on Hurricane Ridge with true 3D terrain, multiplatform support, a rebuilt viewport, and dozens of workflow and device improvements.

Here’s your high-level tour.

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True 3D Terrain (VDM)

The headline change in Dragontail Peak is full support for terrain that isn’t just a heightfield. A new datatype — the Vector Displacement Map, or VDM — allows the terrain surface to move freely in 3D. That means overhangs, undercuts, caves, and proper cliffs are now first-class citizens, and are created naturally and organically within World Machine. You can start from a heightfield or create a VDM from scratch. After creation, you can export directly, convert to a 3D mesh, or export a hybrid heightfield+cliff mesh setup.
You can mostly work with a VDM just like a heightfield, except enjoy the ability to create rock detail on cliff surfaces and overhangs.

Most of the classic selection and shaping devices also understand VDMs now: Basics like FileInput and Selectors, as well as tools like Strata, Tiling, and Blur have been extended so your existing graphs keep working when you swap a heightfield input for a VDM. A number of the popular texturing macros have been upgraded to support VDMs as well.

The simulation-type devices such as Erosion, Thermal Weathering, Snow now support VDM terrains directly.

A full family of new devices works directly on VDMs:

• VDM Primitive — Shape generators including localspace spheres, squares, and cliffs.
• VDM Noise — Create Perlin and Voronoi noise that adds true 3D displacement, not just elevation.
• VDM Displace — Modify a VDM by displacing the surface from another VDM or from a heightfield.
• VDM Combiner / Compare — Blends, masks, and compares VDMs.
• VDM Analyze — Pulls interesting per-point information like relative area and twist out of a VDM.
• VDM Detail Sieve — Separates large and small features so you can smooth, sharpen, or dampen each independently.
• VDM Repair — Cleans up self-intersections, cracks, and tangles that result from heavy displacement.
• VDM Optimize – Reshape the terrain surface to better distribute detail
• VDM → Heightfield+Cliffs — Convert back into a heightfield, and export unrepresentable cliff areas as meshes
• VDM Output — Writes VDMs to disk for use in your DCC.
• World<->VDMspace — Remap masks and attributes between worldspace and the UVs

Experimental status

VDM-based workflows are ready for use now, with a few caveats. Many VDM devices are marked experimental and are still subject to change. Some popular devices are missing VDM support. See the known issues and roadmap at the bottom for further details..

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Cross-Platform

For the first time in its history, World Machine supports other platforms than just Windows! This initial release is Windows only to get it out the door quicker; subsequent releases will be available natively on Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon), and Linux.

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Improved Viewport

The 3D viewport has been modified to better support working at smaller-scales, with improved viewport navigation. The 2D and 3D views have been unified. The 3D viewport now contains a fully integrated 2D mode (including the Layers list), and the standalone 2D view has been removed.

Other viewport changes worth knowing about:

• Panorama skybox loading — Load an HDR panorama and use it as both background and lighting source. WM includes one default skybox if you don’t have any.
• Image-based lighting from cubemaps, so your terrain picks up ambient color and reflections from the sky around it.
• Exponential height fog for atmospheric depth.
• Orthographic camera everywhere, with smooth orthographic ↔ perspective transitions and an ortho toggle in the viewport.
• Side-by-side A:B comparison for evaluating changes.
• Automatic orbit pivot that picks a sensible point under your cursor.
• Velocity-sensitive zoom and double-click-to-navigate.
• Ctrl-key freelook toggle while orbiting.
• View splitting is now supported in floating viewports for your second monitor.
• Backface display toggle for inspecting overhangs and VDM geometry.
• Terrain grid improvements, including grids for data resolution or UV space.
• Saved cameras that work consistently between the Explorer and standard views.
• A near-plane that adapts to the scene, so distant detail no longer gets unexpectedly clipped.

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More Changes

Workview Improvements

• Wire Slice tool — Cut through several wires at once with a single stroke.
• Reveal in Workview — Jump straight from a viewport selection back to the device on the canvas.
• Velocity-sensitive grid snapping — Slow movement snaps tightly; fast movement glides.
• Promote custom devices and macros to the toolbar, and hide devices you don’t need.
• Organize command for tidying up large graphs.
• General visual polish (rounded corners, thicker wires, cleaner text rendering, better workview culling at high zoom).

Build / Workflow

• Build & Export — A single button to build and write all outputs.
• Tile overlay guide now drapes over the terrain in the 3D view, so you can see exactly where tile boundaries fall.
• Narrow-focus preview — Only the focused device is previewed at full detail, saving significant memory at high resolutions.
• Improved editor performance with worlds containing hundreds to thousands of nodes.
• Versioning support for Code and Macro devices – Existing macros in your project files can be updated in place to new versions if a better version exists in your device library.

Mesh and Scene Updates

• Meshify now supports VDMs for both regular and optimized mesh output
• GLB export from Mesh Output (no need to route through Scene Output anymore if you have no material).
• Wireframe toggle and an always-show-material option for scene objects.

New and Improved Standard Devices

• Voronoi gained a fractal mode, and Voronoi noise can now drive VDM Noise directly.
• Height Selector and Slope Selector support directional falloff.
• Convexity Selector has a smoothing parameter.
• Equalizer works with VDM elevations, gains additional tuning for distributions
• Soft (penumbra) shadows in the Lightmap device.
• Material map/Splatmap now supports byte-based material ID output
• Report presence/placement parameter devices and Type filter utility device provide necessary tools for macro creators.
• Automation Parameter now supports piping in string (filename) parameters from a script

Scripting and the Compute Device

• Slang shader language is now supported by the Compute device using Vulkan and metal compute.
• The Code device supports VDMs
• The Code Viewer includes additional panes for the host and Slang API references.
• Shader errors carry real line numbers, and textures of varying sizes can be bound to a single shader.
• A new Console (~) lets power users drive most World Machine actions from a command prompt, including support for scripting console actions

Other Quality-of-Life Changes

• Added “favorites” tab to workview toolbar, right-click on any device to toggle.
• Custom devices can be published to the workview toolbar alongside built-in devices.
• Stylish new What’s New and About dialogs. Each version’s changelog is now broken out seperately and easier to read, while the About dialog includes more details and the ability to easily copy diagnostic information.
• New color tables curated.
• Some devices that previously processed serially are now parallelized.
• Many smaller changes not listed here!

Compatibility

Projects created in an earlier version (Hurricane Ridge, Artist Point, etc) will open in Dragontail Peak and offer to upgrade. Older devices keep their original behavior unless you explicitly upgrade them, so opening an old project should not silently change your output. Old worlds should continue to build identically as before

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Roadmap and Known Issues

This is the first release in the Dragontail Peak series. A number of planned-for features are not yet implemented. Some new features are in flux:

• VDM -> HF+Mesh doesn’t always produce a good seam between the heightfield and the 3d cliff mesh. Both the seam matching and mesh quality are spec’d to be improved.
• The behavior of the VDM-based simulation devices is not finalized; Erosion, Thermal Weathering, etc are subject to further improvements and function change.

The following is a rough guidance on what other changes are coming during the Dragontail series of releases:

• Give VDM devices unique icons
• A design freshening along the lines of the new About/Whats New dialogs
• Coastal/Create Water/River devices will gain support for VDMs
• Ambient Occlusion will gain VDM support
• Additional useful VDM primitives are still to come
• Additional workflow support for Mesh-based terrain, including importing and converting a mesh into a VDM or heightfield

As always, please contribute any thoughts, bug reports or other conversation about this release on the World Machine forum : https://forum.world-machine.com/