TaleSpire Terrain Node

The main node for managing a terrain project, this node contains subnetworks that allow a workspace to craft your terrain. It is also the main interface for setting up the terrain and exporting the final results.

Map Setup

The Map Setup tab is where you configure the base settings for your map and also has controls for the water level and ground height.

Parameter	Description
Terrain Name	$OS is the default which will name the terrain whatever the name of this node is. This name is mainly used when caching terrain tiles, it will be the name of the directory that the data is stored in.
Terrain Size	This is the size in 1x1 TaleSpire Tiles that your map will be. While TaleSpire supports up to 3000x3000 sized maps it is recommended to keep the map size under 600x600 as the number of assets can get quite high.
Max Tile Stack	This is the maximum number of tiles that will be generated in a vertical stack on shear surfaces. If you are using a lot of props to cover cliff faces this doesn't have to be that high, you could possibly set it as low as 2.

Water

Parameter	Description
Enable Water Plane	This controls wether the Water Plane has any affect on the terrain, with this turned off the water plane is not used by the system.
Show Water Plane	Controls the visibility of the Water Plane in the viewport.
Water Plane Level	Controls the height of the water plane.
Max Water Tile Depth	When generating water tiles, this controls the maximum number of tiles that will be stacked on top of each other.
Enable Water Tile Generation	When enabled this will generate water tiles if water is present on the map.
Exclude Water Tiles Below Water Plane	When enabled, water tiles below the water plane will not be generated. This allows you to combine water tiles and the water plane in TaleSpire to optimize the number of tiles used.

Ground

Parameter	Description
Show TS Board Level	Controls the display of a representation of where the map is in relation to the board in TaleSpire.
Automatically Determine Board Level	With this enabled the height of the map compared to the board will be set automatically, the lowest part of your map will be a few tiles higher than the board level.
Board Level	With the above setting disabled, you can manually set the height of the board. Any assets that are lower than the board level will not be generated. This might not work when manually placing slabs, it is mainly intended for use with Multi-Paste.

Display Settings

Parameter	Description
Display Heightfield Terrain	Controls the display of the output of the Terrain network. This is a preview of the heightfield of your map.
Display Tiles	Controls the display of the ground tiles of your terrain. These need to be generated first using the Build/Cache button below.
Display Props	Controls the display of the Props generated on your terrain. These need to be generated first using the Build/Cache button below.
Textured Tiles	This turns on texture mapping for tiles, the first time this is turned on this may take a moment to generate the texturemaps needed.
BBOX LOD Size Cutoff	Assets that do not have a Proxy in the system will show up as a Bounding Box of that asset. This slider will turn off the display of those bounding boxes based on their size. This helps reduce clutter in the viewport if needed.

Edit

Parameter	Description
Edit Terrain	This button takes you into the Terrain Editting network so you can build the heightfield for your terrain.
Build/Cache Terrain Tiles	This builds the Terrain tiles and caches them to disk. Whenever you modify anything in Map Setup or the "Edit Terrain" network you need to activate this button to re-cache the tiles.
Edit Biomes	This takes you into the Biomes network so you can edit and add biome sets to your terrain.

Export

The Export tab contains everything you need to export your map into TaleSpire.

Limit Area

Parameter	Description
Export Limited Area	When enabled, you can use a referenced Houdini geometry node as a bounding box to limit the portion of your map that gets exported.
Bounding Box Geo	The path to the node used as the bounding box.

Slab Orientation and Order

Parameter	Description
Show North	Shows which direction is North with a large arrow above the map
North Direction	Allows you to set which direction is north on your map, the default is -Z which lines up with the default TaleSpire North direction.
Reorient Slab Order	This uses the North Direction to depict which order the slabs are laid out, so if you are looking North in TaleSpire, the order will go from Left to Right.
Zig Zag Slab Order	This changes the order of slabs on every other row, the first row will go Left to Right and the second row will to Right to Left, and so on. This is mainly to make manual slab placement a bit easier so you don't always have to navigate across the map each time you start a new row.

Base Export Settings

Parameter	Description
Display Slab Bounds	Toggle the display of the bounding box around the currently active slab.
Slab Size	Controls the maximum size a slab can be in 1x1 tiles.
Get Slab Index Range	When you adjust the Slab Size you can click this button to update the Slab Index to show how many slabs will be generated.
Slab Index	Shows the current slab index and the maximum number of slabs.
Use Registration Marks	When enabled, the slabs will be generated with red 1x1 tiles at the lower corners of the slab to aid in manually placing slabs. This can be turned off when using Multi-Paste.
Copy Current Slab	This button copies the current slab to the clipboard so you can paste it into TaleSpire. The current slab is controlled by the first parameter of the Slab Index above.
Copy Slab and Advance	This copies the current slab and then advances the index by one, so you can paste into TaleSpire, then click this button again to get the next slab... repeat until you are out of slabs.
Multi Copy Slabs	This copies all the slabs at once, for use with the Multi Copy Slab Mod. All slabs can be pasted in one keystroke within TaleSpire.
Use Range List	This enables the ability to have a range of tiles exported with Multi-Paste, instead of all of them.
Range List	A comma separated list of ranges to use for exporting slabs.

Range Examples:

• Individual slabs: 8, 13, 22
• Ranges: 1-10, 21-30
• Ranges with increments: 1-30:2
• Full Range with increment: 1:3
• Full Range with offset increment: 2:3 … 3:3

Multi Slab Offset

Parameter	Description
Offset	When using Multi Copy Slabs, this offset will change the position of the entire map in TaleSpire.

Attributions

Parameter	Description
Generate	Analyzes the map for all the objects used that attributions were set for and generates the attribution.
Copy to Clipboard	After the attributions have been generated, this button copies the text to your clipboard.
Attributions	The generated attribution text.

Settings

Parameter	Description
Refresh Configs	Reloads the configs from disk, in case they were changed while this file was open.
TaleSpire Directory	The base directory for where TaleSpire is installed on the system. The toolset will not work if TaleSpire is not installed on the same machine.
Textured Tiles Enabled by Default	With this enabled, all new terrain tiles placed will have Textured Tiles enabled.
Force Recook all the things!	Sometimes things don't update properly, this button attempts to refresh all the systems in the Terrain node, in order to attempt to fix issues. If things still don't look right, you may have to save the file, re-launch Houdini, and re-load the file.