CryEngine 3 SDK: How to Move Sections of Terrain

We continue with CryEngine 3 SDK tutorials. If you are just starting to learn and use CryEngine 3 SDK, start here.

When blocking in terrain you will often find yourself wanting to re-arrange and move certain sections of terrain to another location without having to modify it from scratch. There is a useful function called Move Area tool that allows you to do just that.

In this tutorial we cover how to move sections of your terrain to another location.

Topics covered:

• How to move section areas of your terrain

MOVE AREA TOOL

To move sections of your terrain, enable Move Area tool. You will find it under
RollupBar --> Terrain Tab --> Move Area

You first have to select the Source, which is the area you want to move. Click on Select Source. Wireframe box will show up in your perspective viewport. Use DymX, DymY, DymZ to set the scale of the box. You can move the box inside perspective viewport.

Once you are happy with the placement over the part of your terrain that you want to move, click on Select Target.

Select Target is where you want to move a section to.

You may also enable Sync Height, which will keep the same height of Source terrain and translate the same height to Target.

When you click on Select Target, new wireframe box will pop up. Position this where you want to move the terrain to.

I moved Target closer to the left in the screenshot.

If you have vegetation on your terrain section, you may enable to move vegetation. If you have objects/models and you want to move those as well, do not select Only Terrain. If you want to move terrain only with no objects/models, select Only Terrain.

Once you are happy with Source and Target selection, click on Move.

Terrain Move Area dialog box will pop up. Click Ignore.

Source has been moved to Target.

You will need to modify the terrain and flatten the old part of the landscape.

You will also notice that the texture on the terrain has been mis-aligned. We'll need to quickly fix that.

Go to Terrain --> Reload Terrain

Terrain texture has been fixed.

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