Improve Region Blend, gizmos, shaders by Xtarsia · Pull Request #899 · TokisanGames/Terrain3D

Xtarsia · 2025-12-12T23:37:57Z

TokisanGames · 2025-12-13T02:07:49Z

Note, the color map is getting injected in #842.

TokisanGames · 2025-12-13T05:37:31Z

We could optionally generate new regions at ground level; and maybe the world noise offset level. Though I'm not terribly concerned about leaving it at 0.

TokisanGames · 2025-12-13T22:32:01Z

disable or provide option to use gizmos OR shader version

Do we need this? I'd like to drop the classes. The gizmos are ugly. As long as we can render everywhere we need, is there any reason to keep them?

Xtarsia · 2025-12-15T09:23:07Z

some quick AB test in the demo,
Main:

This PR:

The blendinging differences are due to the grass now being projected at the fixed 45 degree point as well.

TokisanGames · 2025-12-15T11:39:15Z

The speed boost is great. I don't see any, but are there any artifacts due to vertical projection? What happens with faces exactly at 45? Or when a grass slope starts off <45 and curves up >45? Is there a seam?

Xtarsia · 2025-12-15T12:34:12Z

The speed boost is great. I don't see any, but are there any artifacts due to vertical projection? What happens with faces exactly at 45? Or when a grass slope starts off <45 and curves up >45? Is there a seam?

The condition is checked against each index normal, (not the smooth interpolated terrain normal) and then the biliniear blend prevents seams.

So there are no severe stretching artifacts like before, if the threshold was too high/low.

TokisanGames

Wow, really nice work on the region blend, matching collision and the control we have over the edge of regions now. This makes sculpting down under the ocean a breeze.

I'm also very glad to be rid of the region gizmo. We can finally keep view gizmos turned on without seeing all of those annoying lines.

Some notes for improvement:

One of these is a region, the rest are not. What about making the grid near non-regions a dark/middle grey say around .333-.4, and white around regions?

This addition to the material is great:

I don't think these debug views are very useful. I was thinking these checkboxes would turn on and off the above material settings, and what they currently do goes away. They could be renamed, height dropped, etc.

src/terrain_3d_util.h

src/shaders/samplers.glsl

src/shaders/main.glsl

src/terrain_3d_collision.cpp

src/terrain_3d_material.h

TokisanGames · 2025-12-30T22:34:06Z

Flat mode works great and will do well with an ocean. In None mode, I'm unable to sculpt down to any height I want without a lip.

Depending on the camera angle the lip comes all the way up to 0.

In Noise mode the region blend is a little odd.

In flat mode region_blend goes from the region height to ground_level. This provides great control over blending.

Here region_blend=0.25 with Noise, offset lower. Region_blend seems fixed at 0 height. It is more possible to get a usable coast line with Noise than it was before, but it still feels a bit inflexible. Is it possible for Noise to work more like Flat, using world_noise_offset.y as ground_level? Maybe with a multiplier (maybe of about 88).

Xtarsia · 2025-12-30T22:39:45Z

Yeah, i can look at making noise blend regions similar to flat.

None is problematic, but now that its a seperate insert, I could investigate it a bit more. I suspect having tesselation enabled doesnt work well with the current fix.

update

Xtarsia · 2026-01-06T23:39:53Z

NOISE background is now purely background (fixed blend, noise always has ZERO effect on in-region heights), and has the same features as FLAT mode.

The PBR debug views, I have found useful on occasion, for checking normals, heights etc are packed correctly. They are tucked away at the bottom of the debug views so I think its fine if they stay.

None mode I think could be a seperate issue, as it might need some investigating again.

TokisanGames

Really great work, as always. I fixed some broken things in the minimum shader, and adjusted categories in the shader uniforms and inspector parameters.

One pending issue is if the Region tool is selected, it shows the grid. If Terrain3D is deselected, the grid goes away. If reselected, it does not show the grid.

TokisanGames · 2026-01-20T18:23:40Z

src/terrain_3d_material.h

+		UNIFORMS = 0u,
+		TEXTURE_ARRAYS = 1u,
+		REGION_ARRAYS = 2u,
+		FULL_REBUILD = TEXTURE_ARRAYS | REGION_ARRAYS,


This structure is a little confusing.

UNIFORMS implies that it's optional, meaning update(TEXTURE_ARRAYS) won't include UNIFORMS, but it does in the activity.

0 isn't a bit and should mean no flags are set. If UNIFORMS was optional it should be a bit. NONE or UNIFORMS_ONLY might be more clear. WorldBackground::NONE already exists and we might have an issue with the same name, especially in C#. Maybe I'll just do UNIFORMS_ONLY.

The values should look like bits, eg, 1<<1 or 0x1, 0x2, 0x4

Full Rebuild updates both the arrays, AND rebuilds the shader. There's no option to just do the arrays. I also added a new bit for full_rebuild, allowing doing the arrays only.

TokisanGames · 2026-01-20T18:52:57Z

src/terrain_3d_material.h

+	void _update_uniforms(const RID &p_material, const uint32_t p_update = UpdateFlags::UNIFORMS);
 	void _set_shader_parameters(const Dictionary &p_dict);
 	Dictionary _get_shader_parameters() const { return _shader_params; }
+	static inline bool _has_update_flag(uint32_t value, UpdateFlags flag) {	return (value & static_cast<uint32_t>(flag)) != 0u; }


I don't think we need this. if (value & flag) is fine. If we need more type safety we could look at moving to C++20 and enum class and these helper functions. But this is only the first flags enum in the class.

TokisanGames · 2026-01-20T19:05:19Z

src/terrain_3d_collision.cpp

 	map_data.resize(hshape_size * hshape_size);
 	real_t min_height = FLT_MAX;
-	real_t max_height = FLT_MIN;
+	real_t max_height = -FLT_MAX;


FLT_MIN is not negative!? OMG

TokisanGames added this to Terrain3D Roadmap Dec 13, 2025

TokisanGames moved this to In Progress in Terrain3D Roadmap Dec 13, 2025

TokisanGames added this to the 1.1 milestone Dec 13, 2025

Xtarsia force-pushed the improve-flat-bg-mode branch from 8816be7 to fcda93b Compare December 13, 2025 18:25

Xtarsia force-pushed the improve-flat-bg-mode branch 3 times, most recently from a08d5db to b8d3312 Compare December 15, 2025 09:12

Xtarsia force-pushed the improve-flat-bg-mode branch from b8d3312 to f8ff8ca Compare December 15, 2025 10:20

Xtarsia force-pushed the improve-flat-bg-mode branch 4 times, most recently from a20f57c to 73641d9 Compare December 17, 2025 11:50

TokisanGames changed the title ~~various improvements~~ Improve Region Blend, gizmos, shaders Dec 19, 2025

Xtarsia force-pushed the improve-flat-bg-mode branch 3 times, most recently from 491e304 to 4f04ede Compare December 19, 2025 10:44

Xtarsia marked this pull request as ready for review December 19, 2025 10:44

TokisanGames requested changes Dec 29, 2025

View reviewed changes

Xtarsia added 2 commits January 6, 2026 16:46

improve flat region blending

795f159

update

no need to lerp geomorph when at subtexel scale

8dd3af9

Xtarsia force-pushed the improve-flat-bg-mode branch from 4f04ede to 57d13d7 Compare January 6, 2026 16:52

Xtarsia added 10 commits January 9, 2026 13:13

add editor region grid and remove RegionGizmo

d0755cb

macro variation as insert and simplify filter inserts

4cc56b4

projection as insert

5fbfb3d

update bilerp condition for better quality

fba1ded

revert per texture projection setting

3f0ca14

flags for material::update()

f2c6ba4

add PBR channel output toggles

c369a21

remove renderer check from interpolated texture weighting

578f74d

Implement flat and noise mode blending collision matching

f06de08

updates for none bg mode

ee3a03f

Xtarsia force-pushed the improve-flat-bg-mode branch from 8a8a4a7 to ee3a03f Compare January 9, 2026 13:30

Xtarsia requested a review from TokisanGames January 9, 2026 21:35

Xtarsia and others added 2 commits January 20, 2026 20:16

update overlays

f1b19d5

Adjust groups for parameters and uniforms

2ddf03a

TokisanGames force-pushed the improve-flat-bg-mode branch from 5efdd4f to 2ddf03a Compare January 20, 2026 17:30

TokisanGames added 2 commits January 21, 2026 02:06

Adjust UpdateFlags

1a097a1

Replace FLT_MIN with -FLT_MAX

13ef878

TokisanGames reviewed Jan 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

TokisanGames mentioned this pull request Jan 20, 2026

Terrain texture issue #902

Closed

TokisanGames added 3 commits January 21, 2026 04:04

Rebuild shader when reselecting Terrain3D for Region, Nav tools

6c25383

Update C# bindings

53bc441

Update docs

9507421

TokisanGames merged commit a0aef00 into TokisanGames:main Jan 20, 2026
15 checks passed

github-project-automation bot moved this from In Progress to Done in Terrain3D Roadmap Jan 20, 2026

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Some notes for improvement:

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TokisanGames commented Dec 30, 2025

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Xtarsia commented Dec 12, 2025 •

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