Creating Caves using Voxel Objects

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About
Author	Crytek
Skill Level	Easy/Moderate
Compatibility	1.0
Requirements	Not specified.
Date Added	Not specified.
Last Modified	Not specified.

In this tutorial, we are going to use Voxel Objects (VO) to create a cave inside a hill.

1 Prerequisites
2 Setting up the Voxel Area
3 Making the Cave
4 Changing the Material
5 Result
6 See also

Prerequisites

A map with a Hill

Setting up the Voxel Area

Firstly, place a VO over the desired area. Go to the rollup bar and select Misc→VoxelObject, and place a new VO in to your level. Since we want to go under terrain surface we need to tell the game s physics engine that we want to have a hole here. Open in the rollup bar, go to Terrain Holes and make a hole in the area where you want to make the entrance to your cave. Please note this is only a change in your heightmap, and not the VO.

Note

The LinkToTerrain option will not allow us to create a hole under the terrain, it only allows you to add features on top. Instead of using "link to terrain", we will use copy heightmap data . This way we will get full control over this area using the Voxel Painter tool.

Select VO and press Copy Terrain into Voxel button in the VO properties. The hole in the heightmap we painted earlier will be not visible anymore because the VO has covered over the original (hole-less) terrain sector. Here's what it looks like now:

Making the Cave

Now we can start making the cave. In the Rollup bar, open Terrain→Voxel Painter, and select brush type Subtract.

Make a cave by keeping the left mouse button pressed while moving on the area where the hole should be.

Note

Using the Align plane function here can be useful. To align to a plane, first click on Setup position, then move and rotate the plane to where you want it to be, and finally click on Align to plane.

Changing the Material

In Brush settings, select Material from the Type dropdown box. Then select one of the 3D materials in the surface types box. Now you can paint on the voxel area using the left mouse button.

In the same way as cliff materials are used for usual terrain painting, materials that are painted on voxels should have 3 submaterials, one for each of the xyz axis. So as a base let's use the rock_mine material. Go to the material editor and select materials/voxel/rock_mine.