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HeightMap terrain plugin for Godot Engine

Editor screenshot

Heightmap-based terrain for Godot 4.1. It supports texture painting, colouring, holes, level of detail and grass, while still targetting the Godot API.

This repository holds the latest development version, which means it has the latest features, latest fixes, but can also have bugs. You may use the version on the asset library, but if the changelog has fixes or improvements you need, the master branch of this repo can be better.

To get the last version that supported Godot 3.0.6, checkout branch 0.10 (no longer maintained).

To get the last version that supported Godot 3.x, checkout branch godot3 (no longer maintained)

Installation

This is a regular editor plugin. Copy the contents of addons/zylann.hterrain into the same folder in your project, and activate it in your project settings.

The plugin now comes with no extra assets to stay lightweight. If you want to try an example scene, you can install this demo once the plugin is setup and active: https://github.com/Zylann/godot_hterrain_demo

Usage

Documentation

Why this is a plugin

Godot has no terrain system for 3D at the moment, so I made one. The plugin is currently fully implemented in GDScript. I wish I could make it a C++ module, but being a GDScript plugin allows much faster iteration and everyone can try it and modify it much more easily. Recently, some parts started to be implemented as a GDNative library to speed them up (only on supported platforms). Godot could get a terrain system in the future, maybe in 4.x or after, but it's going to be a long wait, so developping this plugin allows me to explore a lot of things up-front, such as procedural generation and editor tools, which could still be of use later.

GLES2 support

Due to a number of things GLES2 doesn't support officially, and the disparity of extensions Godot is currently trying to use, making this plugin work in GLES2 is quite a lot of work. Some things might be easier, others need completely different implementations.

Here are some of the causes:

  • textureSize doesn't work in shaders. If the following issues can be solved, we could rewrite all shaders without using this function so they are compatible between both renderers.

  • High range textures get clamped to 0..1, making heightmaps completely flat (GLES2 actually supports this through an extension, but Godot doesn't appear to use it).

  • VisualServer has set_data_partial, but it's not implemented so editing terrain doesn't work. GLES2 should also support partial texture update.

  • GLES2 does not require texture fetch from vertex shader to work, so some rare mobile devices implement it, others don't. This plugin heavily relies on displacing vertices from shader. Generating unique meshes would require a huge rewrite just so it works on those devices and would use a ton more memory to store all the required meshes and LODs.

  • The procedural generator doesn't work, and likely never will in GLES2 because it relies on HDR framebuffers.

  • For more info, see #96

Supporters

This plugin is a non-profit project developed by voluntary contributors. The following is the list of the current donors. Thanks for your support :)

Gold supporters

Aaron Franke (aaronfranke)

Silver supporters

TheConceptBoy
Chris Bolton (yochrisbolton)
Gamerfiend (Snowminx) 
greenlion (Justin Swanhart) 
segfault-god (jp.owo.Manda)
RonanZe
Phyronnaz
NoFr1ends (Lynx)

Supporters

rcorre (Ryan Roden-Corrent) 
duchainer (Raphaël Duchaîne)
MadMartian
stackdump (stackdump.eth)
Treer
MrGreaterThan
lenis0012
nan0m (Fabian)