THIS GUIDE IS OUTDATED, USE THE OFFICIAL WIKI INSTEAD: https://github.com/NoMoreUsernames999/Recurrent-Complex-Wiki
#Creating Terrain Blended Recurrent Complex Structures
green bison
So what is the purpose of terrain blending? Terrain blending makes structures look more natural by integrating them into the terrain, instead of the default behavior which often ends up causing structures to float.
Take the following house structure as an example:
As you can see, without blending, structures look pretty ugly.
So how do you blend? RC has several tools for this, including blocks and generation rules.
Blending Basics:
The 3 blocks you use for blending are called (from left to right): Natural Ground, Negative Space, and Air Space.
When included in a structure they have special properties that trigger on structure generation, called "transformations." Several additional transformation blocks are included for you to define custom rules in the structure GUI (15 actully), but that's beyond the scope of this guide.
The natural ground block will mimic whatever block is below it, as well as try to do basic smoothing by generating additional blocks that match with ones nearby. This block is typically placed on the bottom of your structure as part of the ground, or around the perimeter.
The negative space block acts as a marker to tell the structure not to replace blocks at its location. So if you have, say, a large tree structure; when you export the tree it will have the shape of a rectangular prism. Normally all the air blocks in the structure would cut into nearby trees, but if every air block in your tree structure is replaced with negative space, then that won't happen.
The air space functions relatively similarly to MC air blocks, except you can do additional rules and functions on them. They won't be covered in this guide as it's mostly used for advanced transformation rules.
(Note: These blocks only trigger their transformations upon generation. If you want to edit them, use the RC /#import command. If you want to test them out, use the RC /#gen command).
Now, the most basic form of blending is done by simply putting a layer of natural ground on the bottom of your structure, but this often has ugly results in hilly terrain:
The better option is to create spherical blobs underneath your structure, which blend in better and have enough blocks underneath to account for steeper terrain.
Advanced Terrain Blending:
To start off, get a WorldEdit brush and set it to sphere mode. Adjust the brush size depending on the size of your structure.
Start off by creating a grid of spheres like so:
You'll want this grid to be about half the size of your structure's ground space. My house is pretty small, so 4 is enough here.
After you get the base, create a circle of spheres around the top. The goal is to create a sort of cone with the top being wider than the bottom:
Next, cut off the top so it's flat (for placing your structure. You can add additional molding to the top later if you want). You'll also need to fix up the blob by hand to make sure it's more spherical. You don't want any holes or weird angles as this will mess up with the transformations. After you've done so, use WorldEdit to replace the blob blocks with natural ground from RC (tip: If you have CraftTweaker installed, using /CT hand to copy the ID of the ground blocks to your clipboard saves time. Don't forget to remove the "< >" symbols).
The end result should look something like this:
My example is a bit messy, and you'll probably want to make something a little smoother for an actual structure. Larger bases also tend to look better.
Next, you'll want to create a cone of a different block on top of your blob (the reason for this will be explained in a moment). Don't forget to set your brush mask to "air" so you don't replace any of the ground blocks. After you've made your tower roughly the height of the structure you plan on using this for, cut off any excess. You'll need to do manual fixing for this part as well:
Next, select the bounds of your structure with WorldEdit and use the replace command to switch out every air block with negative space. The reason for this cone is to make the air blocks around your structure blend into the terrain as well. Without negative space, your structure will cut a square space out of nearby trees and terrain from all the air included in your structure. But if you fill in the entire space with negative space blocks after you build your structure, then the surrounding trees and terrain will get too close to your building. In the case of natural structures like trees, rock formations, or overgrown ruins, this would be desirable. But in the case of buildings that you want to have some open space around, it isn't. By doing this method, we will be creating a gradient of a bowl shaped area made of air blocks to gradually cut into surrounding terrain and trees.
Now to finish creating this bowl, use WorldEdit commands to replace your cone blocks with air blocks:
Now you can build or copy paste your structure into the space in the middle. Keep in mind if copy pasting that you'll probably need to manually fix up the insides of your bowl as the WorldEdit paste will override the negative space blocks within the paste bounds.
Don't forget to set your structure height with "baseline" in the placer window when exporting. This is the number of blocks below ground level that your structure will sink into the terrain. In my example, I have 13 blocks of natural ground below my structure, so I set it to 11-12:
This is a bit of a messy example and you can create a much smoother bowl in practice. The larger you make your blending portions, the more natural your structure will appear. However, this has the side effect of reducing generation chance, as larger structures need more open space to generate. You can fix this by changing the "required conformity" slider in the placer window when exporting. The lower the conformity, the less flat the terrain needs to be for your structure to generate. You can play with this value until you find a best fit. I usually start at 50-75% more or less:
Worldgen Examples And Blending Alternatives:
And finally here are 3 examples of this structure on hilly terrain. As you can see, it's no longer floating and blending decently well. In the first image, you can also see how the negative space and air blocks carved a natural looking slope into the hill surrounding the edge of the house:
Now we do have one problem. In hilly terrain where you have very steep cliffs, this method sometimes doesn't work as well (as can be seen in the second image above).
There are alternative methods you can use for blending, such as the "tower method." In this method, you build a steep pillar like mountain below your structure instead of a spherical blob. These work best in very hilly terrain.
To do this, instead of using a solid block for your brush to create the base, use sand blocks. This will cause them to fall and form a pillar-like mountain. Then you can bind the smooth brush to another item to touch it up (use a smaller size for the smoothing than your brush). Finally, slice off the top to place your structure:
The rest of the process is the same as before. Negative space, air block gradient if desired, replacing the sand with natural ground, etc. Here is an example of this method in practice:
If you don't like the messy nature of the natural ground blocks, you can also just use stone (or whatever else matches your biome) to have finer control over the pillar shape, which is sometimes better. This has the side effect of not matching nearby blocks on generation though, so you can do a blend of stone and natural ground where you mix some natural ground blocks into the top as in the first image (here it turned to grass):
(Again, a messy example. In practice you would blend the two in a more natural way. This also has the bonus of making the structure blend into flat terrain perfectly, as the stone pillar would be entirely hidden below ground, allowing for such structures to fit flat and hilly terrain alike).
Town Generation With Terrain Conformity:
Placeholder town p2.
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Placeholder town p2.