Move Area
Overview
The Move Area tool can be found on the Rollup Bar > Terrain > Move Area. It allows you to move a section of your level (objects, vegetation, terrain etc) to a different position, based on defined source and target areas.
This tool can be used to copy terrain to a different portion of the map, with or without vegetation and objects. It can also be used to rotate portions of, or entire terrain heightmaps.
- Copying the area: When you copy an area, only terrain and vegetation will be copied.
- Moving the area: When you move an area, all objects within the area will move.
Move Area Properties | Description |
|---|---|
Select Source | The select source button takes the box that is currently displayed in the perspective view as the source for the moving operation. You can position it with the Move Tool. |
Select Target | This sets the target position to where your box of land and/or vegetation should be moved to. You can position it with the Move Tool. |
Sync Height | This sets the z position of your source and target volumes to the same value. |
Target Rotation | Allows you to add a rotation to the copy/move operation. The source area will be rotated counter-clockwise by the selected amount when moved to the target location. |
DymXYY | Changes the dimension of the box that is used to determine what is moved or copied. |
Only Vegetation | Use this feature to only move or copy vegetation objects. |
Only Terrain | Use this feature to only move or copy terrain without vegetation objects. |
Copy | Copies the section specified with the select source tool to the section that was specified with the select target tool. |
Move | Moves the section specified with the select source tool to the section that was specified with the select target tool. |
Note that both Copy and Move buttons are greyed out until both Source and Targets are specified
Moving an Area
To move an area of the level you first need to select a source area. Selecting the Select Source button will allow you to place a cuboid in the world that will act as your source volume.
Next you need to select the Select Target button, this will added a second cuboid to the world that you can move to the area of the level that you want to copy to.
Now simply press either copy or move to have the level information from the source volume copied or moved to the target volume.
Rotating The Heightmap
Rotating the entire heightmap is extremely simple with the Move Area tool, negating the need to modify heightmap textures in Photoshop, you can do it directly in Sandbox.
Simply create your Source selection and place it in the center of the heightmap. In this example, the coordinates for the pivot point were manually entered: 512, 512, 128.
Now, add your Target selection in the exact same location. Then in the Target Rotation dropdown list, choose how you'd like to rotate the heightmap.
In this example, Forest was rotated 90 degrees, including all objects and vegetation, a process that takes less than a second or two!