Jimco Software Reviews - WorldBuilder Professional 4.1 (continued)
Figure 9 shows my lake with a good amount of smoothing applied. I'm now ready to apply some materials, add some water, and add some plants and other realistic elements to the scene.
Figure 9 - The Landscape with Proper Smoothing
This is where WorldBuilder really starts to shine. To begin with, the materials library is huge! As if that weren't enough, you can edit any of the materials or create your own with the Materials Editor. Unlike the materials in some other applications, the materials in WorldBuilder look very good. They are convincing, and that's obviously important in an application like this one. Figure 10 shows my lake scene from a different angle and with a grassy material applied.
Figure 10 - A Grassy Material
You may notice that the material looks blurred up close. I could fix that by changing some properties, but I'm not concerned about it because I'll be covering that with water shortly. The material on the distant hill looks quite good.
Unlike the materials in some other applications, the materials in WorldBuilder look very good.
Water is another area where I found WorldBuilder to be strong. Unlike many applications that make water look ... well, not like water, WorldBuilder's water is believable. Figure 11 shows my scene with some water added to the lake. Notice that it doesn't look very realistic yet. That's because WorldBuilder doesn't add unnecessary effects to water to try and make it look more realistic. Instead, WorldBuilder uses the natural (albeit virtual) environment to effect the water and make it look real. To see what I mean, have a look at figure 12 and compare it to figure 11. You'll notice that the addition of a sky has make the water look as it should.
Figure 11 - Water before adding a sky.
Figure 12 - Water after adding a sky.
Now I want to add another modifier to my landscape. I'll add some erosion to get rid of the unnatural smoothness to the hill and to get rid of that rough drop-off around the lake. I also added some grass, a tree, some cumulous clouds, and some haze. I also slightly modified the position of the camera. The results are shown in figure 13. Notice how good WorldBuilder's vegetation looks close up.
Figure 13 - WorldBuilder vegetation looks great up close.
Notice that the grass in figure 13 is quite realistic. In fact, each blade is a separate 3D object! WorldBuilder can handle and render an incredibly large number of polygons. Because of that, WorldBuilder can handle complex scenes unlike any other application on the market today, including scenes containing a forest of thousands of unique trees as seen in figure 14.
Figure 14 - A WorldBuilder Forest
You may notice that in figure 14, the trees are growing only partway up the mountain. I controlled the maximum altitude at which my trees grew by specifiying the placing conditions for the trees. (I used this same technique to apply the sandy looking material to the banks of the lake in figure 13.) Not only can you specify the altitude, but you can control many other parameters as well such as the steepness of slope on which trees can and cannot grow. WorldBuilder is full of this kind of level of detail and that's what makes it a great choice (and for many types of scenes, the only choice) for realistic landscape creation.