How Do I Zone?

Create a terrain.

Above it, make a flat group containing a face. Keep it simple. A circle is a good start.

Paint a material onto the group. Or set materials to the faces inside. Or both. These are your input groups.

Select your input group.

Run Zone.

You can do the same with batch-selections.

Make a Map

The best approach is often to keep all your zone faces inside one and the same flat control group. This way, you get a simple representation when editing the control group.

This essentially becomes a map of all the ground types.

Put the control group above the terrain, and hide it on atag when you do not need ut.

Sharpen Zone Boundaries

Zone will not retopologize your terrain. It simply changes the material on existing terrain faces. This can lead to borders between zones looking jagged. This is easy to fix.

To give your zones lateral definition, do this:

Select your zone control groups.

Then run Embed. This adds boundary edges to your terrain

Run Zone.

Pro Tip 💡

If your using Holygon Compfire, its Starter library contains some dozen preconfigured swatches with terrain materials. These are made for Landshape. Download Compfire today. In Compfire, simply Import the Swatches from the Finder.

As Zone input, you may use one or more groups that contain no faces, but instead a well-defined edge perimeter. Paint the group itself. Zone apply the container material to the terrain.

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Zone

Paint terrain by selection face material, creating zone.

Useful to color terrain. To get crisp material boundaries in the terrain, first Embed boundary edges, then Zone.

Type: Pick, Other
Menu: Extensions > Landshape > Main > Zone

Input

One or more groups containing one or more faces. The groups or faces should be painted.

What Is Zone?

A Zone is simply a contiguous terrain area of one and the same material. Your terrain can contain many zones.

Typically, each zone represents a ground type. Often the same material is used in different Zones.

The Zone tool is a way to color your terrain with materials, using control groups as source.

How Do I Zone?

Create a terrain.
Above it, make a flat group containing a face. Keep it simple. A circle is a good start.
Paint a material onto the group. Or set materials to the faces inside. Or both. These are your input groups.
Select your input group.
Run Zone.

You can do the same with batch-selections.

Make a Map

The best approach is often to keep all your zone faces inside one and the same flat control group. This way, you get a simple representation when editing the control group.

This essentially becomes a map of all the ground types.

Put the control group above the terrain, and hide it on atag when you do not need ut.

Sharpen Zone Boundaries

Zone will not retopologize your terrain. It simply changes the material on existing terrain faces. This can lead to borders between zones looking jagged. This is easy to fix.

To give your zones lateral definition, do this:

Select your zone control groups.
Then run Embed. This adds boundary edges to your terrain
Run Zone.

Combine with Fill

Once you have your Zones in place, you can quickly change materials within a Zone. To do so, use the sibling tool Fill.

Fill can often be faster and more expressive than Zoning.

Stacking Order Matters

If you stack several different colored input groups on top of each other, with vertical distance between, and then run Zone, the uppermost will win.

Use this to your advantage. This way, you can create a stack of 2D layers, and move individual layers or change their precedence at will.

Pro Tip 💡

If your using Holygon Compfire, its Starter library contains some dozen preconfigured swatches with terrain materials. These are made for Landshape. Download Compfire today. In Compfire, simply Import the Swatches from the Finder.
As Zone input, you may use one or more groups that contain no faces, but instead a well-defined edge perimeter. Paint the group itself. Zone apply the container material to the terrain.

🌱 ...this Learn section is still incomplete. Expect more content in a future Landshape update. Keep Landshape updated and check back soon.

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