World Machine 4015 ‘Mt Rainier’ has been released with an entirely new user interface based on QT. Other new features include:
- Progressive, high-resolution background builds
- Multiple, resisable viewports
- Complete edit history retained; jump into the past in your edit history to compare changes
- The ability to fluidly tweak multiple devices: Parameter dialogs float, dock, and are non-modal
- Devices and macros have new advanced organising features like groups, “advanced” hiding, and much more
- Tab-to-search to quickly add components in the workview
- Enhanced UI, including full-skin “Dark Mode” and responsive dialogs and panels
- Fast high-resolution terrain display up to 16k, and Maya-style navigation in all views
- Performance improvement from 20% to 60% on representative worlds. Expander device is up to 35x faster
- Hundreds more small features and tweaks, such as click-to-view individual output ports, previewing presets as you mouseover, and much more.
Find out more on the World Machine blog.
Nice to see this getting better and better. It’s always been a favorite.
In some software you can see the love that developers have for making them.
Congratulations for the this awesome team.
Too late, too little. The development of Worldmachine is incredibly slow. The UI still looks outdated. In addition they introduced a new online licensing system which is annoying for such a small app with an certain future and whose developer goes silent for about a year. I lost my interest long ago. GAEA is so much more fun to use.
I almost agree with your opinion about WM, except UI…it looks simple and outdated, but for serious work nothing more is needed. Some discount missing me a lot in WM.
Buying GAEA for me was biggest mistake. They called that shit “production ready” in the end of 2018. I discovered several bugs in first seconds using it. Their programmers from India doesn’t even know how to make a functional button. The company care mostly on marketing and beautiful idiotic small user interface. Don’t wanna talk about roadmap, facebook support, disabled commenting on their YT videos(2018), no basic/trial version before release!…The last good thing they made was geoglyph for WM.
But yeah, you can really create some kind of beautiful terrain, but just for FUN! For serious work you will immediatelly start looking for other software.
I agree the GAEA development road wasn’t that smooth and there were lot of changes in functionality and UI. The available nodes are very clear to use and I find the algorithms (like Erosion) very good. I agree, Geoglyph is / was nice. However (at least for me), the recent GAEA versions deliver great results. I have created many landscape heightmaps and flow- / satmaps, they displace and render nicely (for example in Cinema 4D with Redshift, Vue and Terragen). Also the geometry export works fine. Therefore I really have no need for WM anymore.
Sadly I don’t have screenshot of their original webpage from 2018, where they were lying about what all we have in gaea. From that perspective it was pure scam with no ability refund. What was imediatelly missing me(and was promoted) was tiled processing, which was added on roadmap, but now completelly disappeared.
Somebody was also asking on FB in 2019 https://ibb.co/qYh9D3P
The question is, what they were really doing two years? They already had algorithms for terrain nodes from geoglyph. Whole concept of gaea is almost exactly the same as WM, just with new visual UI and a lot of promisses. Why they started to create another variant of WM+geoglyph with unfinished features with all that facts I mentioned in my previous post?
The answer is, people behind Dax Pandhi are just scammers(..many people in India make a living from fraud).
Funny fact, one time Dax mentioned, that gaea will have voice control…that is a must have feature, the same as a fading effect when you move mouse over nodes panel, or rainbow colors in watson? Do I mention, that you can not uninstall gaea, because of error? WTF?
Nothing personal Mike, I just wish people didn’t have blind eyes in case of GAEA.
Now, does it make sense to talk about “increadibly slow” development of World machine? I don’t think so 🙂
Yeah, it’s still buggy, but already won the battle, and the results are incredible.
World creator guys! World creator
WC is also horribly buggy and has one of the most unituitive UI and UX I have ever used. And I have used it a LOT… perhaps the worse thing to see is how they are trying to turn it inot a rendering engine for low end hobbyists only rather than making it work with other DCC platforms and imporving the ferature.
No we do not need clouds lol…real profersional use unreal and houdini / vdb for that
WM developemnt was so slow but might be worth a revisit.
You said that exactly, low end hobbyists. WC ideas and marketing was mainly focused on GPU processing using simple “almost” fake algorithms, especially erosion. The new erosion using DX12 is better, but speed goes down. And if I am correct, WC is calculating all terrain features on every frame, so it is waste of resources(I could by wrong, but I have that feeling).
What makes WM unique for professionals is tiled processing. With that feature e.g. game designers can see detailed terrain on small area(e.g. 384m wide area with 1m/pix. precision) almost instantly without any GPU acceleration. Therefore WC and Gaea are not suitable for detailed terrain designing, which for me is very sad.
Fake algorithms? So is there other algorithms than artistic/abstract algorithms without simulation for erosion or landscape generation in general?
I know none scientific algorithms for vfx production especially for landscape generation. They are all fake and just try to imitate things visually to look realistic but even houdinifx simulations are just sinulations that looks possible but it isn’t scientificly correct.
I’ve been saying it for years and I am going to repeat it:
I almost feel like there’s some cartel agreement between all of the landscape generation software developers to ensure all landscape generation software has absolutely awful UI and UX.
It seems almost a law of physics at this point, that if it’s a landscape generation software, it has to have absolutely horrible user interface or usability, ideally (and usually) both. 🙂
I would agree with this – its like they threw convention out the window, ignored all precedents and standards, added features no one wanted and then doubled down and were emphatic they know best lol…
Well i hoppe they go broke for not listening to customers, the arrogance and ignorance of these three developers is quite staggering.
I suppose this is what happens when likely heavily autistic devs try and think from a CX point of view and dont hire expert staff.