Landscape Editor

[sholloway]

Summary

I want an interactive way to work with landscapes. Ideally, this should be a 3D editor that enables rapidly creating and editing landscapes.

Landscape Builder Tasks

• [ ] File -> New Landscape: Create a new file in a selected directory. Open the Landscape Editor Frame.
• [ ] File -> Edit Landscape: Select a file from the file system and open the Landscape Editor Frame**.
• [ ] View -> Grid
  • Display a planar grid to represent the XZ plane. This is to help with visual layout.
  • The grid size should be spaced the same as the tile size.
  • Tiles should "snap" into the grid on the XZ plane.
  • You could set the XY plane to at whatever Y elevation you want so it's easier to build sim landscapes that aren't flat.
  • Question: How to make ramps and stairs?
• [ ] Add Tile: Place a tile with the mouse. Tiles should "snap" to grid coordinates.
• [ ] View -> Tessellation: Draws lines on the triangle edges.
• [ ] View -> Tiles: Draws lines on the tile boundaries and the tile appears continuous.
• [ ] Select a tile.
• [ ] Select a group of tiles.

Considerations

• Leverage a new GPU pipeline for the landscape editor.
• I need a way to represent text on the canvas. WebGPU HUD Examples
• Rather than SimFrame being the parent class, probably need something like LandscapeEditorFrame. The UI probably needs additional toolbars and side panels for inputing values.
• I want an infinite ground plane to form the basis for where tiles are added. Consider using ray tracing for visualizing this. The Best Darn Grid Shader (Yet) and WebGPU Implementation Simple Blog Tutorial via GLSL Stack Overflow Example Video Tutorial Old WebGPU Example

Desired Workflow

1. Launch Agent Playground
2. Either create a new landscape file or open an existing one from a pull down menu option.
3. Once in the editor, every aspect of the Landscape file should be exposed as a control.
4. Adding tiles or removing them should be a mouse click in 3d space.
5. Alternatively, a table of the tiles should be editable to enable tweaking a tile by coordinates.
6. Hot keys should enable rapidly toggling between tile creation mode and tile removal mode.
7. The camera should fly around in a "natural" sense. How does this work with Blender (i.e. controls)?