Landscape editor – ARCHLine.XP

In LIVE, you can create a fully customizable environment. This includes terrain, water and roads. The terrain editor can be used to create hills, valleys and landscaping elements, making it easy for landscape architects and land planners to design the environment around buildings. The Water editor allows you to create water surfaces with a single click, so you can add lakes, rivers, seas and other water surfaces to your environment quickly and easily. The Road editor allows you to create paths in the terrain that fit in with their surroundings. Elements created with the Environment editor feature are only available in ARCHLine.XP LIVE 2023, earlier versions do not display these elements.

Terrain editor

The terrain editor allows you to modify the terrain in the project. With this powerful tool, the only limit to the environment you can create is your imagination. Two different colours are displayed on the terrain: one for horizontal areas (default setting is grass) and one for sloping areas (default setting is rock). This material can be modified in the material library, each element can be replaced with a unique material.

Tool:

Sculpt:

This is the primary landscaping function, which can be used to easily shape the basic look of the terrain. With directions, shapes and falloffs, any terrain can be shaped with this tool, limited only by your imagination.

Flatten:

This tool can be used to create an area with a flat surface, lowering the higher areas and raising the lower ones to the height of the given value. With the automatic height function, the height at the cursor position is always applied. When disabled, it adjusts the height of the surface to the user-defined custom value.

Smooth:

This feature smoothes out uneven terrain. It can be used to easily correct inaccuracies created during terrain editing or to smooth out excessively uneven terrain.

Noise:

In contrast to smoothing, this function can be used to make a terrain that is too flat uneven. Separately, you can create only protrusions or only indentations, but with the Both directions function, the terrain is modified by a combination of the two. The Both directions is only available with this function.

Ramp:

By specifying two points, you can create a smoothly rising surface. The width of the ramp can be specified by a given value (up to 200 m), and the slope type can be used to specify the overhang of its sides. This value can be up to half of the total width of the ramp. After placing the start and end points in the model, the ramp is created by clicking on the Make Ramp button.

Direction:

While editing the terrain, it is important to know which direction you want to modify the terrain. Specifying the direction makes it easy to create mountains, hills, valleys and waterfronts, and the Both function can be used to create lifelike roughness. It can be used for landscaping and noise.

Up: creates an elevation relative to the ground plane.

Down: creates a indentation relative to the ground plane.

Both: in the case of noise, it both raises and lowers parts of the terrain.

Shape:

The shape of the landscaping brush can be selected for landscaping, flattening, smoothing and noise reduction. The two types of functions offer different solutions for editing terrain.

Circle: the shape of the modified area is a circle.

Square: the shape of the modified area is a square.

Falloff:

The falloff is available for landscaping, flattening and ramping. Here you can specify the shape of the edge of the raised or sunken area.

Smooth: creates a curved landform.

Linear: creates a peaked landform.

Constant: creates a terrain shape with steep sides and a flat surface.

Diameter:

The brush size can be adjusted here. In addition to the value set with the slider. You can also enter a custom value, which can be maximum 200 m. The diameter value determines how much detail is modified within the terrain.

Intensity:

The value set here can be adjusted between 1-100%, which sets the speed of the terrain change. The lower the value, the slower the terrain changes, the higher the value, the faster the terrain changes. At low values it is best to make small changes, at high values it is best to do the primary shaping of the terrain. You can also enter a custom value, which can be maximum 1000%.

Update terrain continuously:

By default, this feature is disabled for faster and more continuous operation. When off, the two types of material are not displayed on the terrain while editing the terrain, only after releasing the mouse button and finishing the terrain modification. When enabled, the edit terrain function requires more power, so both colors assigned to the terrain material are displayed during editing.

Water editor

With the water function, you can add water surfaces to the terrain with a single click. The water surface is automatically displayed with the desired size, so you can place several at different heights in the project independently. You can rotate the water plane to adjust it to the surface. If needed, you can resize the water pane to the desired dimensions. The water material can be easily modified afterwards, just select the desired real water material from the library and drop it on the surface. In the material property dialog, you can customize the water parameters.

Road editor

It is easy to create a road in LIVE that is fully synchronised with the terrain. Just define the route and the road will automatically cut out the extra terrain or add the missing terrain to the model. The angle of inclination of the cut or paste can be easily specified in the dialog. Spline and polygon paths can be created depending on which one is required.

Add road

In the Landscape editor dialog, you can start creating a path by selecting the path editor function and clicking on the plus button. You can define the route by placing the nodes and then finalize it by pressing the right mouse button or ENTER.

Edit road

The roads created in LIVE are fully in sync with the terrain, so they automatically adapt to it. In practice, this means that where the road hangs into the terrain, the program cuts out the terrain, and where the road hangs over the terrain, it fills in the empty space. Once the path is selected, the parameters of the path can be edited afterwards. You can use the drag and drop method to modify the texture of the road and the slopes bordering the road using textures in the library.

Width:

The total width of the road can be set here. The slider can be set between 1 and 30 metres wide, it cannot be overwritten by a custom value.

Height:

The height of the road relative to the reference line can be set here. The slider can be set between 1 and 30 metres wide, it cannot be overwritten by a custom value.

Slope angles:

It adjusts the angle of the slopes of the roadsides. When creating a road, the centre line is set so that the road can cut into and rise above the terrain. This phenomenon is automatically bridged by this function, as it cuts out the terrain above the road plane and fills the empty space below it.

Upward: adjusts the angle of the slope of the roadside cut into the terrain. The figure between the values shows the direction of the road and its corresponding side.

Downward: adjusts the angle of the slope of the road. The figure between the values shows the direction of the road and its corresponding side.