User Interface
Table of Contents
Main Toolbar
After properly installing and enabling the plugin, add a Terrain3D node to your Scene and select it. This will enable the editing tools.
The tools provide options for sculpting, texturing, and other features. Each button has a tooltip that describes what it does.
First, select the Region Tool (first one: square with a cross), and click the ground. This allocates space for you to sculpt and paint.
Keyboard Shortcuts
The following mouse and keyboard shortcuts are available.
General Keys
LMB - Click the terrain to positively apply the current tool.
Ctrl + LMB - Inverse the tool. Removes regions, color, wetness, autoshader, holes, navigation, foliage.
Ctrl + Height picks the height at the cursor then flattens.
Use Cmd on macOS.
Shift + LMB - Temporarily change to the Smooth sculpting tool.
Alt + LMB - Use a special alternate mode when applicable. See Raise and Slope Filter below.
Ctrl + Z - Undo. You can view the entries in the Godot
Historypanel.Ctrl + Shift + Z - Redo.
Ctrl + S - Save the scene and all terrain data.
Tool Selection
The mouse must be in the 3D Viewport for these.
E - Add / remove rEgion.
R - Sculpt Raise or lower.
H - Sculpt Height.
S - Sculpt Slope.
B - Paint Base texture.
V - Spray oVerlay texture.
A - Paint Autoshader.
C - Paint Color.
W - Paint Wetness.
N - Paint Navigation.
I - Instance meshes.
Raise Sculpting Specific
These modes are applicable only when using the Raise sculpting tool.
Alt + LMB - Lift floors. This lifts up lower portions of the terrain without affecting higher terrain. Use it along the bottom of cliff faces. See videos demonstrating before and after.
Ctrl + Alt + LMB - Flatten peaks. The inverse of the above. This reduces peaks and ridges without affecting lower terrain around it.
Slope Filter
The slope filter on the bottom Tool Settings bar allows you to paint by slope. E.g., If the slope filter is 0-45 degrees, then it will paint if the slope of the ground is 45 degrees or less. There’s also an option to inverse the slope and paint if the ground is between 45 and 90 degrees.
Don’t confuse this with the slope sculpting tool on the left toolbar.
These operations work with the slope filter: Paint, Spray, Color, Wetness, Instancer.
LMB - Add as normal, within the defined slope.
Ctrl + LMB - Remove within the defined slope.
Alt + LMB - Add with the slope inversed.
Ctrl + Alt + LMB - Remove with the slope inversed.
Instancer Specific
LMB - Add the selected mesh to the terrain.
Ctrl + LMB - Remove instances of the selected type.
Ctrl + Shift + LMB - Remove instances of any type.
Overlays
The mouse must be in the 3D Viewport for these.
1 - Overlay the Region Grid.
2 - Overlay the Instancer Grid.
3 - Overlay the Vertex Grid.
4 - Overlay Contour Lines. Customize in the material when enabled.
Special Cases
macOS Users: Use Cmd instead of Ctrl.
Maya Users: The Alt key can be changed to Space, Meta (Windows key), or Capslock in Editor Settings / Terrain3D / Config / Alt Key Bind so it does not conflict with Maya input settings Editor Settings / 3D / Navigation / Navigation Scheme.
Touchscreen Users: will see an Invert checkbox on the settings bar which acts like Ctrl to inverse operations.
Tool Settings
Depending on which tool is selected on the toolbar, various tool settings will appear on the bottom bar.
Many tool settings offer a slider with a fixed range, and an input box where you can manually enter a much larger setting.
Click the label of any setting to reset the value to its default, or checkboxes to toggle.
The settings are saved across sessions in Editor Settings / Terrain3D / Tool Settings.
Some tools like Paint, Spray, and Color have options to disable some features. e.g. Disabling Texture on Paint means it will only apply scale or angle. Enabling Texture on Color will filter color painting to the selected texture.
See Slope Filter for keys that expand painting by slope functionality.
The three dots button on the right is the advanced options menu. One noteworthy setting is Jitter, which is what causes the brush to spin while painting. Reduce it to zero if you don’t want this.
Brushes can be edited in the addons/terrain_3d/brushes directory, using your OS folder explorer. The folder is hidden to Godot. The files are 100x100 alpha masks saved as EXR. Larger sizes should work fine, but will be slow if too big.
Most other options are self explanatory. See Foliage Instancing for specific details on its settings.
Asset Dock
The asset dock houses the list of textures and meshes available for use in Terrain3D. The contents are stored in the Terrain3DAssets resource shown in the inspector when the Terrain3D node is selected.
Click Textures or Meshes to switch between the asset types.
Mesh thumbnail generation is currently unreliable. Hover over a mesh or click Meshes to regenerate them.
Dock Position
The dropdown option allows you to select the dock position. Shown above, it is docked to the bottom panel. Below, it is docked to the right sidebar, in the bottom right position.
The icon with white and grey boxes in the top right can be used to pop out the dock into its own window. While in this state, there is a pin button that allows you to enable or disable always-on-top.
Next the slider will resize the thumbnails.
Finally, when the dock is in the sidebar, there are three vertical, grey dots, shown in the image above, in the top right. This also allows you to change the sidebar position, however setting it here won’t save. Ignore this and use our dropdown instead.
Adding Assets
You can add resources by dragging a texture onto the Add Texture icon, a mesh (a packed scene: tscn, scn, fbx, glb) onto the Add Mesh icon, or by clicking either Add button and setting them up.
If you add a new texture and the terrain turns white, see Troubleshooting.
Each asset resource type has their own settings described in the API docs for Terrain3DTextureAsset and Terrain3DMeshAsset.
You can read more about mesh setup on the Foliage Instancer page.
Dock Operations
LMB - Select the asset to paint with.
RMB - Edit the asset in the inspector. You can also click the pencil on the thumbnail.
MMB - Clear the asset. You can also click the X on the thumbnail. If this asset is at the end of the list, this will also remove it. You can clear and reuse this asset, or change its ID to move it to the end for removal. When using the instancer, this will remove all instances painted on the ground. It will ask for confirmation first.