PC Perfectly flat BUT....

[Atrophied]

I have a wonderful location to build a base, flat almost as far as the eye can see BUT, the terrain is at half block height and every block I place seems as though its flying... short of digging into the ground, whats the solution ?

It does occasionally raise the terrain to meet the bottom of the block but this makes me unhappy for some reason, just doesn't look right.

Can I make a case to FP to allow a little intersection with voxels so we can place blocks without digging to make things level, (kinda the way space engineers does it) ?

 

[skullpoker]

Usually when I get a half block anything I place will sink down into it, but that's usually on a hill. You are probably going to have to dig, at least to make support columns.

 

[zombie4hire]

I had a lot of trouble with this same problem when I decided to green the area around my base in the burnt forest by laying down lots of grass soil blocks. It looked flat but it was not and the new blocks were nearly impossible to lay flat.

 

[Atrophied]

Further exploration tells me that the entire flat plain is actually an incredibly mild slope. I have encountered a couple spots where the blocks clip into the ground just fine then suddenly, "ground" level for the block makes them appear to be flying, I suppose as the elevation transitions from one voxel grid level to the next. You can see in the background the results of placing the blocks in this case, the ground is sunken around the block that clips the voxel and it is pulled up in the case where its above.

The placement wirefram transitions from clipping in a lower voxel position to hovering in adjacant spaces in the picture below.



I just feel it would make the game just a smidge more aesthetically pleasing if we could clip blocks into the voxel grid so long as we could see a portion of the block and snap them to another block as well as have them not deform the terrain. Smooth transitions for ramps, seemless insertion of POIs etc etc would be the result.

 

[Kam R.]

Flattening terrain can be a pain indeed but it's not too complicated – Just tedious. OP is kinda half way there actually and using the right "tool" for it – Frames.

Make more wood frames and start laying out a plain of frames. They will press the terrain blocks to standard block heights from their original heightmap values as you already found out.

Terrain blocks that are below standard height will elevate. With a single frame placed you get a lil spike and that's why the frames appear "floating". As soon as you lay down more around the terrain will follow suit and look flat n proper.

Terrain blocks that are over standard height will flatten down when the frame is placed.

When you have a slope, use frames to make it better visible where blocks go over or under the desired elevation. fill out every space with a frame, remove them again and fill out parts that are under your desired elevation with self crafted terrain blocks (In your case "plains ground", crafted from dirt fragments) and dig away parts that go over.

Depending on the size of your build it's more or less easy to make it look flush with the surrounding terrain. the bigger it gets the more it might stand out. My experience is that it's usually looking better when adding blocks than digging blocks away.

 

[skullpoker]

Ramps, too. Not only will they make the edges look better, but jerks will usually walk straight up without smacking them.

 

[sadpickle]

Disclaimer: I'm an idiot at algebra so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

I don't know how Space Engineers does it exactly, but their voxel grids are I think independent of the world. This is why ships can have different orientations in the same space, or why station voxel grids can clip into terrain voxel grids at perpendicular angles.

7DTD is like Minecraft: the entire world is a voxel grid. Terrain looks smooth, but that's an abstraction of many voxels over an area. The only place to find naturally level terrain is POIs or collections of POI; ie, towns. Some areas of the map will present with remarkably level terrain, but odds are it's an extremely mild slope.

The easiest way to correct is lay out frames of any sort over the area you want to build; this will recalculate the height of the terrain to "fill" the voxel below it. Then it's just a matter of removing the frames, and either digging out the higher elevation(s) or filling in the lower elevation(s). Absent an error in physics calculation, no block will actually "float" even if it appears to not be making contact with the ground: if it doesn't fall, it's sitting on something.

If you're going to build tall, you may want to dig out the ground to bedrock or at the very last, place support pillars to bedrock to ensure you have a solid weight-bearing column.

 

[the_virus_84]

Could work to just damage the block once and then repair to.

Usually when you repair damaged blocks they return to full blocks. Ground blocks at least.

 

[Atrophied]

...Terrain blocks that are below standard height will elevate. With a single frame placed you get a lil spike and that's why the frames appear "floating"...

Actually, I had more than one that didn't pull the terrain up, so it genuinely looked like it was floating.

in this image, the one on the left didn't pull the ground up while the one on the right did... :concern:

The light and terrain texture makes it a little difficult to tell.

View attachment 24351

...I don't know how Space Engineers does it exactly, but their voxel grids are I think independent of the world. This is why ships can have different orientations in the same space, or why station voxel grids can clip into terrain voxel grids at perpendicular angles.

7DTD is like Minecraft: the entire world is a voxel grid. Terrain looks smooth, but that's an abstraction of many voxels over an area. The only place to find naturally level terrain is POIs or collections of POI; ie, towns. Some areas of the map will present with remarkably level terrain, but odds are it's an extremely mild slope.

That makes sense !