Gaea introduces directed erosion

Quadspinner has released a new early access build of Gaea that adds directed erosion tools to the landscape modelling application. Erosion in procedural landscape creation tools is usually applied to the entire area, or at best it can be masked, but Gaea has added the ability to ‘sculpt’ erosion effects only where they’re wanted for precise fine tuning and art directing of terrains. 

Twelve new tools are included that allow the user to paint different types of erosion. 

1. LandBreaker, a general all-purpose erosive breakdown.
2. Flowlines to create breaker style broad flow lines.
3. Soil deposit tool.
4. WideFlow to create long wide flows.
5. Carver for strong rock carving. 
6. Gullies to create gentle flowing gullies.
7. Pockmarks for small impact holes. Useful for detailing.
8. Rocks to create rock flows. 
9. RoughFlow for chaotic soil/rock flows.
10. Roughness for detailing and roughening surfaces.
11. Scratch for creating superficial scratches.
12. Sedimentary for strong soil flows.

Tools can be used in one of three modes. Normal mode behaves as you would expect in nature, erosion takes material away from the terrain and deposits it elsewhere. The second mode, Infinite flow, deposits debris on the terrain but without removing it from anywhere. Finally, Erosive mode does the opposite, removing material without redepositing it. 

You can read more about directed erosion in a blog post by Quadspinner on Medium.

Perpetual licenses of Gaea’s are currently available during pre-release at a 15% discount, costs are $84 for the indie license, $169 for the Professional license and $254 for an Enterprise license. Find out more on the Quadspinner website