Skip to content

Sea island 2: sculpting

Sculpting pushes the generated ground into the shapes you want.

  1. Pick the Sculpt tool

    Press Escape first, since the sea from the last part is still selected and Sculpt does nothing then. It works on the selected terrain, or on every terrain when nothing is selected. Then press G, or click the Sculpt button in the toolbar.

    The toolbar with the Sculpt Tool button hovered and its tooltip: raise, lower, smooth, flatten, noise and terrace terrains and displacements, Shift inverts, Ctrl smooths, Ctrl+wheel radius

  2. Find its settings

    Mode, radius and strength sit in the tool options bar right under the toolbar, at the top left. Hold Ctrl while you drag to smooth, whatever the mode.

    The Sculpt Tool options with radius 2800 and strength 32, and the mode list open on Raise, Lower, Smooth, Flatten, Noise, Terrace and Paint Alpha

  3. Keep an eye on the height

    The status bar at the bottom right shows the point under the pointer, and its middle number is the height. Handy to judge how far you have raised or lowered a spot.

    The status bar coordinates -2200.0, 1193.6 and -599.9, the middle one being the height

Hills

  1. Raise, radius 2800, strength 32. Hold the mouse button down west of the middle for about four seconds, until the status bar says the hill is about 1500 units high.

    The Sculpt Tool on Raise with radius 2800 and strength 32, and a hill growing under the brush ring as the button is held

  2. Radius 1300 on the same spot for a steeper top. A smaller brush lifts a narrower area, so the top gets pointier.

  3. Radius 1900 for a lower second hill to the south east.

Cliffs

  1. Raise, radius 1800. Drag along the north east coast, a little inland, for a headland. Then Smooth the whole island once with a very large brush to take the lumps out.
  2. Lower, radius 1000. Drag through the sea in front of that coast to make it deeper, so the cliff drops into deep water instead of a shallow shelf.
  3. Terrace, step 300, radius 1000. Terrace snaps heights to steps of the given size. Drag along the coastline so it breaks into shelves and steep faces, then go over it once with a light Smooth.

Terrace with a 300 unit step along the coast

Beach

  1. Flatten, radius 900. Flatten holds the height the stroke starts at, so start right at the waterline on the south shore and drag along the coast.
  2. Smooth with a slightly larger brush, so the beach runs into the land without a step.

Flatten on the south shore

Next: Sea island 3: painting.