Landscape Editor

Overview
GenesisII landscapes comprise both a description of the landscape surface and the terrains present on that landscape. The Landscape Editor is used to define both these characteristics.

Surface shape information is held in the form of a rectangular grid. Each grid (sample) point defines the height of the surface at that point as well as certain other characteristics. The grid dimensions are arbitarily defined as meters, but in practise may be regarded as any unit.

Information about the terrains present on the surface is held as a set of terrain layers, each layer being defined as having certain characteristics. The placement of these terrains on the surface is described by a set of polygons. 3D models may also be associated with terrain layers and placed anywhere on the surface.

The Landscape Editor
The landscape editor has three main parts:

• A Toolbar that gives access to the tools you will require to define the map plus redraw, zoom in/out buttons and information about the current position of the cursor on the map in terms of grid reference and georeference position. There are three types of tools - surface definition, water definition and terrain definition.
• The Parameter Display area down the left hand side of the window which shows various status information about the map and the tools being used. The
• An initially blank area representing the Canvas used to define the map.

Defining the landscape surface
Before viewing a landscape with GenesisII you must define the shape of the surface that you wish to model. GenesisII offers several ways to import data from files. Once imported a powerful set of surface manipulation tools can be used to edit the surface, or indeed create a surface from scratch.

Terrains
Terrain layers are defined in the Terrains Layers module. The terrain layers available are displayed in the check list on the Layers page of the Parameter Display area. Terrain polygons can be defined either using the terrain tools or by importing GIS data.

Water
Although similar to terrains, water is defined at sample points rather than as polygons. See the information about water tools for details.