Having had a chance to think about this topic for a while, and having gotten spanked for trying to start a new thread about it, I guess I'll post my thoughts here.

It seems to me a feature that would be most easily implemented and most artistically relevant, would be the addition of a material paintbrush to the terrain editor. Were already using brushes to sculpt and deform terrains, so it should it shouldnt be that difficult to brush on material assignments.

Think about how Vue currently handles terrains with multiple materials. Vue uses the material Mix function. This has the following problems:

1. Its very difficult to balance the individual materials using the Mixing proportions function.
2. The results of Influence of altitude and Influence of slope are unpredictable, can change if the terrain is resized or repositioned.
3. Theres no way using the mix function to lock a particular material to a particular point on a terrain.
4. If you have more than two material you have to stack mixed materials on top of each other creating new mixed materials. All this only serves to compound the difficulties.

Just think what could be done if Vue had a material paintbrush in the terrain editor. Take a Mountain terrain for example. Using simple, non-mixed materials, you could:

1. Paint a grassy meadow at the base of the mountain
2. Paint dirt further up the mountain
3. Paint rock on cliffs and peaks
4. Paint a snow field on one small face of the mountain
5. Paint a little stream running down a gully
6. Paint a pathway running through the grassy meadow
7. Paint a trail running up the mountainside
8. Etc.

The material assignments would be locked to the surface of the terrain and so would be unaffected by resizing the terrain or re-scaling the individual materials.

From a purely artistic point I can think of no function that could be added to Vue that would give you greater control over the final appearance of your picture than this.

If I had one and ONLY one function that would be added to Vue 5, a Materials Paintbrush would be it.

-SMT

I'd rather stay in my lane than lay in my stain!