Affecting Biomes

Brushes may also affect Biomes (created in our Errant Biomes plugin) by generating masks that can be accessed by Sub-Biomes/Species.

1. Start by adding a new Biome Mask entry in a landscape brush

   • Select the mask asset and texture for that Biome Mask

     

   • Optionally increase the Scale Z/Multiplier when using a dark texture

2. Make a Species/Sub-Biome use the newly created Biome Mask

   • Enter the Errant Biomes editor mode

   • Open the properties of a chosen Species/Sub-Biome

   • Select one of the Mask Materials (Growth/Asset Group/Scale)

   • If using the default template material in the Growth Mask:

     • enable the Sample Errant Landscape Mask (Spawn) override
     • enable Errant Landscape Mask (Spawn) (Mask Asset) and select the mask asset to use

     

• If adding a parameter to an existing material:

  • add the BiomesErrantLandscapeMaskSample node

  • in Details, select the mask asset

    

3. Regenerate Biomes
   • Select some region for regeneration in the Select tool
   • Click the Generate button

Note that you can use the Biomes Debug tool to investigate the mask of the affected Species/Sub-Biome.

Creating Mask Assets

To create Biomes Mask Asset for use in Errant Landscape brushes follow instructions here and choose Errant Landscape Mask Mask Type.

Visualization

To preview the masks you're working on, navigate to Visualize->Preview and select Biomes Masks.

Biomes Mask Names

Errant Biomes 1.4 introduced Mask Assets, replacing the former practice of using names for mask referencing. You can read more about this change here

All newly created Errant Landscape brushes will default to mask assets. Your older brushes will need to be converted manually.

You can change name to the newer asset based key using Biome Mask Key Type property.

This property will show only if you have Errant Biomes version that supports mask assets