Landscape Builder - Procedural Terrains, Advanced Prefab System, spline tool, and more

Will the changes in the time cycle system support multiple skyboxes? I have handmade textures for day and night times. Also, I really like what's in the change list for 1.2, seems like a lot of nice modifications.

 

We are working on this feature right now, if you message us with your email address we can send you a beta version for you to use.

 

Here is the version 1.2.0 documentation for Landscape Builder. For existing LB owners, if you want access to the Beta let me know.

 

Version 1.2.0 supports this with the new Stitching tool feature which is available on the Landscape Tab.

 

We now have this feature in v1.2.0.

 

Here is what will be included in version 1.2.0 and will be available once it has been reviewed.

[FIXED] Mesh Tab error - numeric limits UInt16 max()
[FIXED] Heightmap import with Interpolation Smoothing with large landscapes
[FIXED] Normal Map Generator not setting "Create from Grayscale"
[FIXED] Read/Write permission on Textures not always set with "Fix Now" button
[FIXED] Scene is not set to changed when Auto Save is not enabled
[FIXED] Scene is not set to changed when Update Lighting Preview is clicked
[FIXED] Modifier highlighter may be active when a new scene is loaded
[FIXED] Can create a landscape with incorrect terrain width
[FIXED] Water Duplicating Meshes can attempt to add millions of meshes to a scene
[FIXED] Water does not scale correctly with Water4Simple standard asset
[FIXED] Sun and moon could be on at same time by default
[IMPROVED] Camera Path: first path point is added 2m above landscape corner
[IMPROVED] Modifiers - Flatten
[IMPROVED] Water asset integration in Landscape Tab (bring your own prefab)
[IMPROVED] Lighting control
[IMPROVED] Map texture validation
[REVISED] Modifiers - default settings for Topography and Image modifiers
[NEW] Landscape Stats
[NEW] Landscape Height picker
[NEW] Topography Curve Based modifier - Smooth Ridged
[NEW] Topography Curve Based modifier - Smooth Double Ridged
[NEW] Topography Curve Based modifier - Power of One Point Five
[NEW] Modifiers - drop hills, mesa, mountains, valleys into landscape
[NEW] Modifiers - users can add custom landform heightmaps
[NEW] Modifiers - Smoothing
[NEW] Import Terrains not created with Landscape Builder
[NEW] Texturing - minimal blending option
[NEW] Remove Grass near Mesh option with proximity
[NEW] Animated fog colour and density with timing control
[NEW] Procedural or 6-sized Skybox support in LB Lighting
[NEW] Combined Height, Inclination and Map option for Texture, Trees, Grass and Mesh placement
[NEW] Stitch two adjoining landscape's terrain topographies seamlessly

 

Here is the latest day/night cycle demo using Landscape Builder's out-of-the-box lighting control.

(Don't forget to change YouTube Settings to 720p HD)

 

Version 1.2.0 is now available in the Asset Store

 

Now that 1.2.0 is released, do you have any more thoughts on your idea of vegetation placement? What settings would you like to see?

 

Having read your documentation and viewing your tutorials tutorials I'd say this is a must buy asset, simpler than
terrain composer, not bug ridden like terraland, I like to work with SRTM data which LB will allow, does using satellite
imagery in the first texture slot foul anything up ?.
Do generated tree get place in a tree layer or like unity invisible in the editor?.
Grass and tree placement on specific texture very handy, later will it support texturing from splat maps?.

 

Yes, you should be able to use satellite imagery as a terrain Texture in LB. It doesn't matter which "slot" you allocate it to, simply set the Texturing Mode to Constant Influence.

Trees are placed in the terrain data on the Trees Tab in LB (just like Unity, except you have procedural control over placement and can do it across multiple landscapes). However, if you want the trees to be added to the scene hierarchy as meshes you can use the Mesh Tab for Tree placement.

For those who purchase LB, we have a beta program. As part of a beta release, we can investigate your use-case for texturing from splat maps.

 

We are currently working on a feature that provides integration with the excellent road creation tool EasyRoads3D. Landscape Builder lets you define road corridors based on roads that are created with EasyRoads version 3. This lets you have finer control over tree and grass placement near roads. You can also provide different texture blending options for road verges.

If you'd like to see other features that allow you to have finer control over the terrain near roads just post here or message us.

 

We hope to share something soon about a great feature called Topography Layers. Other additions coming in 1.3.0 include new Filters for textures, trees, grass and mesh placement. Also there is improved smoothing for imported heightmaps and a bunch of interface enhancements.

 

Here are some basic steps for integrating EasyRoads3D Pro with Landscape Builder 1.3.0 or newer.

1. Create a new Unity Scene
2. Save the Scene
3. Create a new Landscape
4. Create a topography with maybe gently rolling hills
5. Create a Road Network in the scene with EasyRoads3D Pro version 3
6. Add a new road of type "Race Track" with a width of 15 to the Road Network (do not Finalize the road)
7. Build the road
8. In Landscape Builder, select the Export Tab.
9. Drag the Road Network game object from the scene Hierarchy onto the LB EasyRoads Network property, or use the Game object selector
10. Enter the name of the folder where the MAPs will be stored (e.g. ERTest). This will be a folder under Assets/LandscapeBuilder/Images within your current project.
11. Leave the Map Resolution as the default
12. Set the Left Edge Width to 10
13. Set the Right Edge Width to 30
14. Change the Map Colour to Blue (0,0,255,255)
15. Click "Create Road Maps"
16. In the Project Window, rename the new Map file (under Landscape Builder/Images/ERTest) to "Race Track 0001 inner"
17. In the LB Export tab, change the Left Edge With to 15 and the Right Edge Width to 45
18. Make sure "Include Road" is ticked
19. Click "Create Road Maps"
20. In the Project Window, rename the new Map file (under Landscape Builder/Images/ERTest) to "Race Track 0001 outer"
21. In the LB Window, click the Texturing tab
22. Choose a preset, and click "Assign Textures From Preset"
23. Click "Texture Landscape" and make sure the landscape looks ok - make any adjustments needed
24. Click "Add Texture"
25. Click "Hide" on the other textures so you can see the new one you have just added
26. Select "GoodDirt" for the new Texture
27. Change the Texture Mode to "Map" (you can also use Height Inclination Map if you want)
28. Select the "Race Track 0001 inner" Map you created earlier
29. Change the Colour to Blue (0,0,255,255)
30. Click "Texture Landscape" and see that you now should have some dirt on either side of the road. Adjust the Strength and add Noise as required. Click "Texture Landscape" again when you're done.
31. Click the LB Trees tab
32. Change the "Trees Preset" to "Pine Forest"
33. Click "Assign Trees From Preset"
34. Change Tree Placement Mode" to "Map"
35. Select the "Race Track 0001 outer" Map you created earlier
36. Change the Colour to Blue (0,0,255,255)
37. Enable "Inverse"
38. Click "Populate Landscape With Trees"
39. If a dialog box pops up that says "Texture is not readable", click "Yes" to fix it now, then click "Populate Landscape With Trees" again
40. Try making adjustments to the Noise Tile Size and/or the Tree Placement Cutoff and reapply the Trees.
41. Try blending multiple Texture with and without noise along the road verge
42. Try adding Grass with the Maps you created.

If you have any example screen shots, please post here.

 

I think you missed one step. Before exporting the map, one should check Include Road, or else you will end up with trees on your road.

I'm off to a beer fest. When I sober up I will post some screenies of my terrains.

 

Yep, you're right, "Include Road" should be ticked when you export a Map that will be used with the "Inverse" Map setting. Thanks for your feedback.

Yes, we'd like to see what you've been building with LB and ER3. Probably best if you don't drink and drive on the new roads you've built...

 

I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on various aspects of Landscape Builder over the past few weeks, and I’ve put together a quick scene to showcase some of these improvements. The 3 main things I’ve been working on are:

1. The new topography layers system
2. The calculation speed (performance) of the generation code
3. A new terrain shader to ship with Landscape Builder

I’ll talk about 2 in a later post, and I’ll be discussing 1 and 3 in this one.





These are two of the screenshots from the quick scene I’ve made. The trees are from Nature Package, the grasses are from HQ Photographic Textures Grass Pack Vol.1. and the water is from the AQUAS water set.

If you were looking closely at the second screenshot above, you might have noticed something odd. It’s more apparent in this next screenshot:



If you’re still wondering what’s “odd” about these two screenshots, contrast them with this next one:



In this screenshot (taken from outside of play mode) you can quite easily see the horrible UV stretching that takes place on the steep slopes of Unity terrains. By default, Unity uses the Standard terrain shader for its terrains. You can choose to use the diffuse or specular terrain shaders as well but they all have this problem, because of the way that UVs for textures are calculated. These shaders each calculate their UVs from the UV mapping of the terrain mesh, which simply projects UVs onto the x-z plane (looking down on it, so to speak). This results in UVs on steep slopes being stretched as the distance downwards is calculated as a very short distance sideways in the UV map and doesn’t take into account the increased size of the actual quad.

In Landscape Builder, we will be aiming to offer a way to solve this issue. For terrains in Unity you can to choose to use a custom shader, and we will be providing one that uses triplanar instead of conventional UV mapping. Triplanar mapping maps the UVs from all three axes (x, y and z) and blends between these UV maps based on viewing angle. So on steep slopes instead of using the y-axis UV projection the x-axis or z-axis projection will be used (or more likely a blend between the two). This method of UV mapping helps eliminate the UV stretching issue and makes terrains look more real.

The other part of what I’ve been working on in Landscape Builder that’s evident in this scene is the new topography layers system. The topography layers system is a new workflow for generating topography that’s intended to replace all the current topography generation options (value based and curve based noise, image heightmap generation). It includes all the functionality of these workflows and adds a lot of extra functionality as well.

The main premise of the topography layers system is the ability to create layers which can be added together to generate an overall topography. In this scene I’ve created, I started off with an image base layer. An image base layer is a layer that uses the grayscale output of an image to create the overall “shape” of the topography. Here, I’m using some SRTM3 heightmap data of the grand canyon extracted using this site: http://terrain.party. Here’s what the terrain looks like with just the image layer (the image layer has some smoothing applied to remove sharp edges and blockiness from the heightmap data):



(I’ve removed the trees and grass for clarity)

This looks good BUT on the surface there isn’t much detail, as most of it got removed during the smoothing process.

(This post is continued in the next post, as I can only add a maximum of five images)

 

(Continued from last post)



However to fix this we can add a SECOND layer - a perlin detail layer. A perlin detail layer allows you to add the output of a perlin noise function at a very small amplitude to add details to the terrain. This layer allows us to add back in details to the terrain that we removed during the smoothing process. These next two screenshots show the terrain with the detail layer added:



In all of these screenshots you can see on the right the landscape builder window with the topography layers I've used to generate each iteration of the terrain. The detail layer I used was simply chosen from a preset then scaled down slightly to better fit the terrain.

The heightmap texture I used in the image layer was 1024 by 1024 resolution however the terrain itself is 2049 resolution. The extra detail comes from the perlin detail layer. It’s also interesting to note that although the heightmap data originally was extracted from SRTM3 data of the grand canyon it works perfectly fine for a forest near a deep gorge, as I’ve used it in this scene. All of the topography layers and shader stuff I’ve talked about in this post will be coming to Landscape Builder in v1.3.0.

 

I purchased Landscape Builder yesterday and have a lot of errors showing up which prevent Unity compiling when trying to publish a scene to Windows .exe so I can test the same as a game level?

I have no idea why the error messages should be returned other than there being errors in Landscape Builder scripts.

I am using the latest Unity version 5.3.4f1.

I have attached a screen shots showing the issue and here's the first of may compile error messages :

"Assets/LandscapeBuilder/Scripts/Behaviours/LBCameraAnimator.cs(3,7): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `UnityEditor' could not be found. Are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?"

I cant use it unless I can get a fix so I have gone and purchased another competitor product, but I would like to use Landscape Builder if possible.....

EDIT UPDATE :
Tried reinstall of Landscape Builder but it seems there are errors initially in scripts when installing package apparently?

I get numerous errors from Unity saying so : First is below and again a screen shot showing the errors immediately following the install is attached:

"There are inconsistent line endings in the 'Assets/LandscapeBuilder/Scripts/Behaviours/LBCameraPath.cs' script. Some are Mac OS X (UNIX) and some are Windows.
This might lead to incorrect line numbers in stacktraces and compiler errors. Many text editors can fix this using Convert Line Endings menu commands."

Help would be appreciated as I dont know what the problem causing this issue is or how to correct it.

Thank you.

Peter

 

Which build are you using? The version number is in the Landscape tab.

 

Hi Peter, sorry you have had compile issues. We fixed those a while ago but the patches aren't up on the Unity Asset Store yet. As a customer you can get access to the patches and all the latest builds. I'll send you a message to your Unity Inbox with the instructions.

 

Which SRTM data have you been using lately? We're currently doing some more enhancements in this area and what to make sure we've covered off what people wish to achieve.

There is a post by David explaining some of the new features here.

 

If you see any build errors or warnings when creating Standalone builds for PC or Mac we have a fix but it is not yet in the Assets Store. Send me a message to my Unity inbox and I'll give you access to the patch.

 

Just saw a post from you but now can't find it. Anyway, all the new features are in the beta. Do you want access to that? I don't think you currently have access. Hopefully all the compile errors have been fixed the 1.3.0 Beta (currently not available in the Unity Asset Store).

 

Sorry about the disappearing message. For some reason I thought this forum was for Landscaper, which is a product I own. So my errors were for that product. I don't have Landscape Builder, but was looking at it at one point.

 

Ok, let me know if you want to test LB using the Beta Program.

 

I'd normally say yes, but I'm waiting for Terrain Composer 2 beta, which will be in about a week and I don't have the extra time to test out 2 products while I'm in development. But thanks for the offer.

 

Fair enough. We each have strengths in different areas - which means you guys are the winners because you're spoiled with choice. Hope your project goes well.

 

I've had a question about creating single islands which dip gentling into the ocean. Here is my first-pass solution.

1. New Scene
2. Save Scene
3. Landscape Tab
4. Landscape Size 4000x4000
5. Terrain Width 2000
6. Generate Landscape
7. On Topography Tab, add a Layer
8. Select "Desert Floor Base" from Preset popup
9. Change "Height Scale" to 0.1
10. Expand "Curve Modifiers and Filters"
11. Add a "Output Curve Modifier"
12. Change the "Output Curve Modifier" Preset to "Squared"
13. Click "Show Mask Options"
14. Change "Mask Mode" to "Distance To Centre"
15. Click "Back To Topography Options"
16. Click "Generate Heightmap"
17. On Landscape Tab, expand "Scene Settings"
18. In Unity "Project" window type "water4advanced"
19. Drag the water4advanced.prefab into the LB window "Water Prefab" slot
20. Change the "Water Resizing Mode" to "Standard Assets"
21. Change the "Water Level" to 46
22. Click "Add Water To Scene"
23. On the Texturing Tab, select "Islands" as the Texturing Preset
24. Click "Assign Textures From Preset" and click "Assign" when prompted
25. Change "Texture 1" (Sand) "Max Height" to 55
26. Change "Texture 2" (Grass Muddy) "Min Height" to 50
27. Hide and Disable Textures 3, 4, 5 and 6
28. Click "Texture Landscape"
29. On the Trees Tab, select the "Islands Forest" Preset
30. Click "Assign Trees From Preset" and "Assign" when prompted
31. Change the "Min Height" to 56 and click "Populate Landscape With Trees"
32. Our Island is pretty flat so you could add some more Topography Layers
33. On Topography Tab, add a Layer
34. Select "Mountain Range Complex Base" from Preset popup
35. Change "Layer Type" to "Perlin Additive"
36. Change "Additive Amount" to 0.65
37. Click "Restrict Area"
38. Set Area to X 650, Y 800, W 2000 H 2000, and "Blend Rate" to 1.0
39. Click "Generate Heightmap"
40. On Texturing Tab, enable "Texture 3", change "Min Height" to 100 and "Min Inclination" to 20
41. Click "Texture Landscape"
42. On Trees Tab, click "Populate Landscape With Trees"

You can easily change the shape of this single island by changing:

1. Layer 1 Output Curve Modifiers (try some of the presets like Power Of One Point Five, Cubed or Power Of Four)
2. Changing the Noise Offset X and Y values
3. Changing the Noise Tile Size (try 3000 and raise the water level to 53 on the Landscape Tab)

Other enhancements:

1. Add some detail layers
2. Change the single tree for multiple trees and give it tropical island look and feel
3. Add some grass from something like the excellent HQ Photographic Textures Grass Pack
4. Switch the water our for something like AQUAS
5. Add some roads on your island using EasyRoads
6. Post your great landscapes here so we can all admire them!

 

14a. Click "Back To Topography Options".

 

Amazing system for creating an Island, thank you for all the information. I've gotten some pretty nice results using my own textures and such. I'll post a ss later as I'd like to create an example based off another function in LB that's new and by far my favorite.

 

Thanks Tinjaw - updated.

 

As I am testing integration with ER3 and Aquas, my terrains are otherwise quite bare/simple. But, never the less, here are some screengrabs.

 

Have you tested with multiple roads and/or lakes? I'm working on some enhancements to the Camera Animator / Path feature that will let you have the camera follow a road system. i.e. you could potentially create a cut scene "racing" round a lake or zooming through city streets.

 

I have tested with multiple lakes and it worked fine. I'm adding some more roads to my island now.

 

Landscape Builder 1.3.0 has been submitted to Unity for approval.

V1.3.0 inclusions

[FIXED] Terrain Detail Resolution is not set until grass is applied to a landscape
[FIXED] Scene is not set to changed when Camera Path is modified
[FIXED] Preset lists not always available before Assign Textures/Trees/Grass From Presets clicked
[FIXED] Using the height picker and clicking the terrain, will attempt to apply a modifier if the modifier tab is selected next
[FIXED] Interpolation Smoothing for Heightmap Resolutions of 65 and 129 sometimes fail
[FIXED] When Camera Path "Closed Circuit" is unchecked, the end points incorrectly influence the path shape.
[FIXED] Standalone Build errors and warnings
[IMPROVED] Valley and Lake landform modifiers now have the option to add water at the same time
[IMPROVED] Smoothing operations on imported heightmap images
[IMPROVED] Topography generation performance
[IMPROVED] Landscape Stats - min/max height added
[IMPROVED] Camera Animator
[IMPROVED] Screenshot Device now supports Standalone Builds (Windows and OSX)
[NEW] Enable or disable individual Texture, Tree and/or Grass types
[NEW] Enable or disable individual bodies of water
[NEW] Filters - Restrict Tree, Grass, Mesh placement by Terrain Texture
[NEW] Filters - Restrict Tree, Grass, Mesh placement by Area
[NEW] Filter - Restrict Texture by Area
[NEW] Runtime sample scripts and prefabs
[NEW] EasyRoads3D integration - create LBMap's to define road corridors for Texture, Grass, and Tree placement
[NEW] Create Camera Path from EasyRoads3D roads
[NEW] AQUAS Water Set and AQUAS Lite integration - create an ocean or lakes in a Landscape
[NEW] Topography Layers - add one or more Base, Additive or Detail layers
[NEW] Landscapes remember their last topography creation settings
[NEW] LB Standard terrain shader for improved texturing on cliff faces
[NEW] uNature 1.0 Integration

 

Landscape Builder v1.3.0 is now available from the Asset Store

http://u3d.as/oaN

 

Here's another screenshot from a quick scene I created in landscape builder:



The trees are from Nature Package and the grass is from HQ Photographic Textures Grass Pack Vol.1. I used Landscape Builder's built-in lighting editor to get the atmospheric feel with the sunset and the fog.

 

I've been playing around with a mountainous terrain, some trees and AQUAS - here is the result:



The water drops on the screen are an AQUAS effect - they really bring the scene to life! The landscape itself was made in about an hour.

 

For this next landscape I've tried to create something a little different - a real "out of this world" feel... (!)



The effect with the planet was interesting, as I didn't have a skybox with a planet you could see in the day... but I did have a normal daytime skybox and a skybox with a visible planet at night. I used the LB lighting system to combine the two together.

Here's another screenshot, this time with some more of those truly amazing wet lens effects from AQUAS:



If anybody has any specific landscape type requests they'd be interested in seeing recreated in Landscape Builder, feel free to post your ideas in this forum.

 

Very nice.
Could you prototype a tropical island with cliffs and a sand beach on a sunny day?

 

Sure. Watch this space. Any particular water settings you'd like us to use?

 

Here are some more screenshots:



Had a lot of fun making the screenshot above! The sunset and the fog really bring this to a whole new level - As per usual, achieved with our lighting editor.



In this image, we get a close up of some of my favoured grasses from the HQ Photographic Textures Grass Pack Vol.1. The AQUAS water also looks really impressive here, the green tinge highlighting how shallow the water in the inlet is! In retrospect, it was this part of the island that probably took the longest - I was rather picky about just how much of the land should be above the water and the width of the beach. I ended up using a curve in the island layer to flatten out parts of the shoreline and adjusting the height scale to achieve my desired island size. The image below shows the final island shape I settled on, with two inlets.





This picture shows how I just can't get over the AQUAS water drop effects - yep, they're back (again). The trees you can see in the background are placed by a combination of height, inclination and noise rules: The height kept the trees out of the water, the inclination kept the trees from appearing on the sides of cliffs, while the noise made the placement appear more natural, placing the trees in small groups.

 

I was trying out some of the new (beta) Image Effects and was trying them out on a terrain I built using Landscape Builder. I used Time of Day for the sky. Here is a Depth of Field effect shot.



Here is no DOF, but I did some ToneMapping.

 

While my screens aren't as impressive or doctored but at all, here's a tribute to the distance to center mask with also using the image map to define texture grass and tree areas.
I created each tree and grass to both go by the map as well as the ground texture with base and additive textures with minimal blending to create my own layers. @Tinjaw I really like the mountain in the background, is that on the same terrain as the trees we're seeing up close?

@Dave_2000 & @sstrong I like the way the terrain looks so natural in the water and curves around the way a real island would. Such a nice result, something I've been looking to duplicate for a week or two now.

 

Yep. I threw it in because @dogmachris mentioned wanting a mountain.. I just took an island I whipped up and added a modifier to the terrain.

 

Yes, the new Topography Layer system lets you create almost any terrain shape you'd like. And we're adding a bunch of new presets too to make it even easier. We also plan to release a new Topography Layers tutorial soon which should help. Later today David will post more information about how his Layers were configured for this island.

 

Because the topography layers system is fairly new I haven't gotten around to doing a lot of the presets for each layer - I was really busy last week - the next update (v1.3.1) will have a lot of new presets. To create the island however, I just used values from one or two of the old value-based noise presets, plus a bit of tweaking to achieve the characteristics of a typical island.

The first step of creating the island was creating the basic topography - the hills and cliffs but also the smooth beaches. For this I used the first layer, which I made a perlin base layer. For mine, I used something like the following settings:

Noise Tile Size: 4000
Noise Octaves: 8
Noise Lacunarity: 1.95
Noise Gain: 0.48
Warp Amount: 0.5
Warp Octaves: 1
Height Scale: 1.05
Output Curve Modifiers: (Modified) Island Smoothing 1
Per Octave Curve Modifiers: Smooth Terraced

All of these are pretty typical values for presets, and these exact settings will be included in a preset called "Rugged Islands Base" in the next beta update. The octaves, lacunarity and gain values are fairly straightforward and will most likely be modified for your own use case (you may have to change the height scale accordingly, however). I used a bit of warping (0.5) to get a more interestingly shaped island - you can change this to whatever you want to get different shapes. The height scale, as I mentioned before, was just used to try and get the optimal amount of land above the water - I just adjusted it until I was happy. The Smooth Terraced curve modifier creates the hills seen in the screenshots of the island. I'll just mention now that I set the water's height to its default height of 1000; this is what most of the presets are geared towards.

Probably the most important part of my first layer settings was the output curve modifier I used. Island Smoothing 1 & 2 are curve modifiers that flatten out the area of the terrain that is of roughly middling height (from about 900m to 1100m on a 2000m terrain), and this was what I used to create the beaches. I adjusted it slightly, moving the 2nd and 3rd keys slightly towards the left and right respectively (to about 0.35 and 0.65), which made the beaches wider. This is because the flattened part of the curve is now wider.

To get the island I wanted, I adjusting the noise offset X and Z values until I found something I liked. However, for a game where the islands are generated from code with random noise offset values this may not be so appropriate, as for some values (like 0 and 0) I found that most of the landscape was underwater. This was not too common but would lead to nasty surprises for some players, who might find themselves swimming when the game started! I just quickly looked into it - my solution was to move the 2nd and 3rd points of the island curve to the left a bit (about 0.05) which raised more of the land out of the water and helped deal with this edge cases. The thumbnails below show what I mean:



For the island landscape I only used two layers. The second layer was a perlin detail layer which I used to add just a bit more detail to the mountains. I used the Default Detail preset for this, and just added a filter of type "Height", with min and max height set 1050m and 1400m respectively. The height filter ensured that the detail layer would ONLY affect the mountains/hills, not the smooth beaches.

The last part of the topography was the mask. I used the mask to make sure that the borders of the landscape would all be underwater and thus not visible to the player. I used the distance to centre mask, with the default setting (an ease in and out curve from (0, 1) to (1, 0)) but added another key to it at (0.5, 1) - I left the tangents flat. The screenshot below shows what I mean:



The curve doesn't control the general receding of the land into the water - only where it is near the landscape boundaries.

Also, for those interested, for the texturing I simply used the "Islands" preset.