Tinyworld Mesh Terrain

Tiny World Mesh Terrain Sculptor

A self-contained, opt-in landscape designer in engine/world/46-mesh-terrain.js. Lay a fine voxel grid over the home board, paint per-voxel materials, and pull/push voxels up and down. The result is flat-topped voxel blocks, not a smooth/curved surface, and it stays that way — Apply keeps the block mesh as the terrain instead of baking into per-tile setCell.

The model is per-voxel blocks (not a smooth heightfield)

• cellH: Float32Array(N*N) — the flat-top height of each voxel. There are no shared/interpolated vertices, so tops never slope into curves. Sculpting clamps cellH to [0, MAX_HEIGHT] — ground (0) is the floor, so you build up from the ground and cannot dig below it.
• mats: Uint8Array(N*N) — per-voxel material index into MATERIALS (ids match real terrain names: grass/sand/water/stone/dirt/snow/lava).
• N = GRID * effVpt voxels per side; effVpt is clamped so N <= MAX_N (96).
• Render (rebuildGeometry): each voxel writes a flat top quad at its height plus vertical step-walls only on edges where a neighbour (or the board boundary) is lower. The real-material path greedily merges flat same-material top rectangles that have no exposed drop edge, then leaves exposed bevels and walls per-voxel so the chunky silhouette stays intact. Boundary walls drop to a base skirt below the lowest block. Geometry is non-indexed and writes from scalars via quad()/wv() (no per-quad array allocation). Sculpt/paint edits don't rebuild inline — they call scheduleRebuild(), which coalesces to one rebuild per animation frame (rAF); flushRebuild() forces the final frame on pointer-up and cancelScheduledRebuild() runs on teardown. This keeps a fast drag from forcing multiple full-board rewrites per frame (engine perf budget).
• Preserved sunken board cells (water/stone) are mesh holes so the underlying board terrain shows through. Treat those holes as open/low neighbours when computing adjacent wall panels; otherwise deleting adjacent blocks leaves see-through missing side faces around the cutout.
• Materials use the app's REAL terrain shaders. The geometry is laid out grouped by terrain (all tops, then all sides) and surfaceMesh.material is a parallel array: tops get terrainVoxelMaterials(t).base, sides get terrainRiserMaterial(t) (the soil/stone risers). Exception: stone reads as grainy NOISE rock via rockNoiseMat — a grey-tinted clone of the sand material (M.sand/texSand) — because both the masonry finish (M.stone) and the blocky stone pattern (M.rock/texStone) look like built walls, not rock. Those materials compute UVs from world position in-shader (applyWorldUVs onBeforeCompile), so the blocks pick up the same textures/shading as the rest of the world — do not hand-roll UVs. Materials are used via double-sided clones (dsClone) that copy onBeforeCompile/userData/customProgramCacheKey across (Three Material.clone drops onBeforeCompile), cached by uuid so there is no per-frame churn; clones are disposed on teardown. If M/terrainVoxelMaterials/ terrainRiserMaterial are missing, it falls back to a single vertex-coloured flatShading mesh (fixed per-voxel stride + degenerate fill for absent walls).

Sculpt / paint

• Entry point: the Terrain toolbar flyout includes a Mesh Terrain action tool (id: mesh-terrain) that opens window.__tinyworldMeshTerrain.open(). Keep it as an action, not a paint brush.
• Sculpt: pressure-brush controls. Hold/drag left mouse to raise and right mouse to lower under the brush; right-click context menu is suppressed on the terrain canvas while editing. The brush applies SCULPT_PRESSURE_RATE * dt * falloff(dist/brushRadius) continuously while the button is held, so a stationary press keeps raising/lowering and dragging paints height across the surface. Every voxel stays flat at its own height.
• Paint: drag left mouse to set every voxel whose centre is within brushRadius.

Apply keeps blocks — it does NOT bake into world tiles

• Persistence is Apply-only. Edits (sculpt drags, paint, Flatten, resolution changes) mutate in-memory state and are NOT written to storage; applyDesign() is the only writer (saveDesign()), and it also snapshots the design in memory (captureApplied() -> appliedSnap). This is what lets Cancel truly discard.
• applyDesign() sets applied = true, snapshots + persists, hides the flat home tiles (setHomeMeshesVisible(false) toggles only m.tile, never m.object, so placed objects stay visible), and leaves the block mesh in the scene. There is no setCell bake, so there are no full GRID tiles afterward.
• cancelEdit() reverts from the in-memory appliedSnap (recovering correctly even if the resolution changed mid-edit); if nothing was ever applied it disposes the mesh, restores the flat tiles, and clearDesign()s any draft.
• removeDesign() deletes the block terrain, restores the flat tiles, clears appliedSnap, and clearDesign()s storage.
• Boot restoreApplied() rebuilds an applied design and re-hides home tiles (with delayed retries + a tinyworld:world-changed listener, because world tiles can render slightly after this module boots).

Programmatic generation (used by the "Realistic" landscape generator)

• window.__tinyworldMeshTerrain.generate(sample, opts) fills the voxel grid from an external per-voxel sampler and displays it as a transient block overlay (hides the flat home tiles like an applied design, but does NOT persist unless opts.persist). sample(cellX, cellZ) gets board-cell coords in [0, gridAtEnter] and returns { material: 'grass'|'sand'|…, level: 1.. } (level → cellH = (level-1)*opts.levelStep) or { material, height } (world-Y directly). It exits the manual editor if open.
• clearGenerated() tears the transient overlay down and restores the flat tiles (no-op if none, or if the user opened it for editing). isGenerated() reports state.
• sampleWorld(wx, wz), sampleCell(x, z, opts), and anchorForCell(x, z, opts) expose the visible block surface for runtime grounding. anchorForCell samples the center plus optional cardinal probes (offsetX, offsetZ, radius) and returns the highest support. Consumers must fall back to LandscapeEngine/tile heights when it returns null (for example over preserved water/stone holes or outside the home board).
• The Generate modal's Realistic landscape style routes here: applyRealisticVoxelLandscape() (in engine/world/27-landscape-engine.js) samples sampleLandscapeCell() (the same procedural height/biome the old realistic LandscapeEngine used) at voxel resolution, with levelStep = LANDSCAPE_VOXEL_LEVEL_STEP (1.12, matching the landscape-mode tile step so block tops align with the hidden tiles objects sit on). It is driven from the generate handler (module 28) and the reload path (module 29, when useLandscapeEngine && landscapeMeshStyle==='realistic'), and torn down by disposeLandscapeMesh() → clearGenerated(). Realistic keeps landscapeMeshMode = false; the world save (cells + seed + style) is the single source of truth, so reload regenerates the blocks deterministically — the overlay itself is not persisted in tinyworld:meshTerrain:*.
• A generated overlay is editable: opening the editor on top of it lets the user tweak and Apply (which turns it into a real persisted design; generatedActive clears).

Why it is structured this way (do not regress)

• One IIFE, no top-level names → dodges the tools/check.js cross-file duplicate-declaration guard; keep new code inside the IIFE.
• Own localStorage keys (tinyworld:meshTerrain:v2 design, tinyworld:meshTerrain:prefs:v1 prefs). The world schema and embedded WORLD_SCHEMA are untouched, so schema parity stays green. Do not persist this feature in the world save.
• Height consumers ask the mesh first, then fall back. Current wired consumers include object/extras placement (17-tile-renderers.js), selection/hover height (12-selection-tool.js, 18-scene-pick-xr.js), crowd/vehicle grounding (11-vehicle-crowd.js, 10-world-data.js), and Tinyverse avatar grounding (47-worlds-room.js). Keep this one-way: consumers sample the overlay; they do not mutate or bake it.
• CSS injected from JS; guarded styles/tiny-world.css is never edited.
• Window capture-phase pointer handling that engages only when e.target === renderer.domElement and the ray hits the surface, then stopPropagation(). Otherwise events flow through so orbit/zoom and UI clicks keep working. Handlers attach on open, detach on leave.

Known limitations / next steps

• The block terrain is still a separately persisted overlay. Object/avatar grounding can sample it, but the world save/version schema does not yet store a mesh-terrain payload for published islands.
• Mesh Terrain is visual/grounding data only for the economy. If a sculpted formation should become harvestable, project it to ordinary cells or object cells with explicit economy metadata; do not infer resource payouts from shader/material pixels.
• Home-tile hiding can race world (re)renders; it re-hides on tinyworld:world-changed and via short boot timers.

QA checklist (needs a browser — npm test cannot verify rendering)

• Open the editor: a flat grid of grass blocks covers the board; flat tiles hide.
• Sculpt drag raises/lowers flat-topped blocks with vertical step-walls — no sloped/curved surfaces; neighbours taper with the brush.
• Tops use the real terrain textures/shaders (grass, water flow, stone masonry, etc.); side walls use the soil/stone riser materials. If they render as flat plain colours, the real-material wiring fell through to the fallback — check M/terrainVoxelMaterials/terrainRiserMaterial are defined at open time.
• Paint lays materials per voxel.
• Orbit/zoom still work on empty-space drag / scroll; toolbar clicks not hijacked.
• Apply keeps the blocks (no full tiles reappear); reload restores them.
• Cancel reverts; Remove deletes the blocks and restores the flat tiles.