Advanced Perlin Noise is a second generation, highly customizable fractal terrain generator based upon the basic fractal noise techniques pioneered by Ken Perlin.
Perlin Noise works by layering the output of several sets of noise together. These layers are called octaves. The multiple octaves are combined together in a variety of ways to create the final result. Advanced Perlin Noise gives you total control over the types of noise used in each layer, as well as how they are combined. This allows you to create some very unique terrain shapes.

A Layout Generator interacts with the Layout View to provide a home for a set of shapes you can use to define terrain shapes, create masks, add roads, and more. When you double click on a Layout Generator, World Machine will automatically launch the Layout View for the appropriate layout. An entire section of the User's Guide is devoted to using Layout Generators and the Layout View; see Chapter 5 of the User's Guide.

The Tiled File Input device allows you to load a set of files that together represent a large expanse of terrain. From there, you can work with as large or small a portion of the tiled area as you want. In addition, since the Tiled File Input is simply another device in your world machine workflow, you can have as many input streams as you wish, allowing you to use many possibly overlapping tiled datasets, or to import texturing as well. The User's Guide has a section devoted to working with the Tiled File Input device; see Chapter 10 for more information. The focus here is explaining on what each checkbox or button does.

The Color Generator is the primary way to create colors in your Bitmap networks. It creates a single solid color that exists everywhere in the world; however by using the mask input or combining the output with color generators or other sources of texture, they form the basis of texturing networks.

The Mesh Output creates a triangulated mesh from the input heightfield. This is intended for general purpose rendering software or other applications that cannot use a Heightfield; The heightfield should be the preferred output method as it is a much more compact and efficient way of storing terrain data.

The Bitmap Output allows you to export a Bitmap datatype to a file. You may export to either 8 or 16bit per channel color formats.

The Convexity Selector discovers areas of the input terrain that are either highly exposed (convex) or recessed (concave). Convex areas are white (one), while concave areas are black (zero). Neutral areas that are neither will be neutral grey. This device can be very useful for texturing to either to help shadow recessed cracks in the terrain, or to bring out ridges and other areas that are highly exposed.

The Lightmap Generator produces a mask of light and shadow (called a Lightmap) that can be used in many applications to illuminate the terrain easily. The Lightmap Generator supports Raytraced lighting, and the output can be either exported to a file (by connecting a File Output node), or it can be used within World Machine to combine with a texturemap to produce a fully lit texture.

The normalmap generator encodes the terrain normal into an RGB texture; each direction component of the normal is mapped to a color. (R=X, G=Y, B=Z) is the default encoding. Among other uses, this information can be then used over a low-resolution mesh, giving much of the feel of a high resolution terrain with a fraction of the geometry data.

Map a color gradient to an input heightfield such that the values in the heightfield determine the color.

The Channel Splitter converts a Bitmap data packet into 3 individual component heightfields. You can use then use the individual channels in any manner you wish. You can split the bitmap into either Red/Green/Blue channels, or Hue/Saturation/Luminosity channels.

The Channel Combiner recombines three individual heightfields into a Bitmap packet. The opposite of the Channel Splitter, this device can treat the three heightfields as either Red/Green/Blue or Hue/Saturation/Luminosity values.

The Coastal Erosion device provides a quick approximation to the effect of large bodies of water on land; specifically, you can define a waterlevel and all adjacent heights will be adjusted so as to produce a beach and bluff region adjacent to the water. Note that the Coastal Erosion device does not perform any simulation to achieve its result, which has the benefit of making it very fast. However, the output is not as complicated as other simulation-based World Machine devices.

The Snow device simulates the accumulation of snow on the terrain. By varying the parameters, you can achieve results ranging from a slight dusting of snow to glacial accumulations. Note that unlike texture-based snow, the Snow device performs simulations and actually modifies the terrain heights, producing a very realistic snow effect.

Perlin Noise is a noise function developed by Ken Perlin.
By itself perlin noise produces output that looks something like lumps scattered about the world in random intensities. By layering multiple perlin noises at different frequencies and amplitudes, fractal noise functions that look to varying degrees like mountains can be created.
Perlin Noise serves as an extremely useful building block. It can be used as the basis for a terrain, to randomize the application of effect filters, and much more.

Voronoi noise implements a cellular texture basis function as described by Steven Worley. Voronoi noise has sharp discontinuities (ridges), and can form the basis for some very interesting terrain effects.

The Constant generator simply creates a level, flat terrain of a constant height.

The Gradient generator produces a constantly sloping plane that is optionally tiled or clipped in world space.

The Radial Gradient generator creates shapes that are all centered around one point in space.

The File Input imports a bitmap or terrain file from disk and inserts it into the world at a location and scale specified. The File Input device can read TER, BT, HFZ, PNG, TIFF, BMP, TGA, R32, R16, and RAW formats.

The File Output device saves the fully built heightfield to disk.
Only the heightfield information is saved -- any color-height mapping applied in World Machine is for illustration only, and is lost.

The Splitter device allows you to wire a single output to several different inputs. In other words, it “splits” the output wire into multiple paths. You can configure the number of output ports on the splitter.

The Combiner combines two seperate terrains into one. There are a variety of different methods that can be used to combine the terrains -- each will give a different effect.

The Chooser blends two heightmaps (Input Ports A and B) together based upon guidance from a 3rd input (Input C). Low or high values of input C will strongly favor one or the other of the inputs, while middle values will blend the two.

The Clamp device performs scaling and clipping on the terrain heights in the input heightfield. Scaling means to change the heights of a terrain uniformly. For example, scaling a terrain by 0.5 would reduce all height values by 50%. Clipping means to eliminate any values outside of a certain height range. Clipping a terrain to 0.5 would set any height values above 0.5 down to 0.5.

A set of simple operations that can be performed upon a heightfield.
The usefulness of this set of operations is mostly superseceded by newer and more powerful devices.

The Terrace device creates evenly spaced terraces (level areas) in the input terrain. This can be used to simulate exposed rock strata layers, a river eroding multiple bank levels, and much more.

The Curves device allows you to map elevations in the input terrain to new elevations by graphically drawing a curve representing how each elevation should be remapped. The Height Curve could be thought of as a sort of "Profile View" of the terrain elevation profile.

Inverts the terrain heights. Low elevations become high elevations and vice versa.
Besides producing some interesting terrain shapes in its own right, it can be a very handy tool to have available to create more complex effects.

The Displacement device acts horizontally on the heightfield to push around or smear pixels. There are multiple names for this operation; you will see it commonly called Distortion, Warping, or Displacement; they are all names for the same thing. Displacement can produce some wild looking terrain; rock can seem to be pulled like taffy or be bowed and wavy. The kind of effect that the Displacement device produces is highly dependant on the features of the terrain connected to the second input.

The Ramp device scales and remaps the height values used in the terrain.
The effect can be best visualized by feeding a linear gradient as input. The straight line is turned into a sawtooth shape by the Ramp filter.

The Height Splitter evenly splits the input terrain into ranges of similar elevations. Each elevation ranges is then output on a seperate output port.
A Height Splitter can be useful for applying differing effects based on elevation, creating masks, or other special purposes.

This filter adds a specifiable amount of random noise to the terrain. This extremely high-frequency, fine detail can be useful for adding surface roughness to the heightfield.

The Probability filter treats the input map as a probability density function, and creates a mask that randomly scatters dots according to that density function. It is intended to be useful for object placement maps.

The Bias/Bain device allows you to nonlinearly adjust the Bias and Gain (Brightness and Contrast) of the input map. This is immensely useful for adjusting the shape of terrains, the coverage of masks, and fine tuning the results of almost any output.

The Flipper device flips the input terrain in a vertical or horizontal direction.

The Equalizer adjusts the range of heights present in the heightfield so that as close as possible, each height value is equally represented in the output. This regularity allows you to more predictably shape equalized noises as compared to regular ones.
In addition, the Equalizer can produce some very interesting and useful terrain features when applied to a terrain.

The Blur filter smooths (blurs) the input map. This can be useful either by itself or in conjunction with other devices for special purposes.

The Expander device performs what are often called "image morphology" operations. When operating on a mask, it can intelligently increase or decrease the size of the masked area. When operating on a heightfield, it will produce very interesting shaping operations that can both change the size of the terrain and also sculpt it.

The Erosion filter simulates the work of thousands or millions of years of weathering and erosion by rain, flowing water and mass movement. It is an exceptionally useful tool to add detail and realism to human-created terrains.
There are a large number of parameters in the Erosion device and each parameter can interact with the others to create to a unique effect. Because of this, it is well worth your time to experiment either with your own settings or using one of the presets supplied with the device. Dramatically different effects and intensities of erosion can be achieved.

The Thermal Erosion device is intended to simulate the erosion of landscapes through freeze/thaw cycles that breakup rock and create talus slopes. Compared to the standard Erosion device, the Thermal Erosion device is less commonly used and often gives best results when used in concert with the normal erosion.

The Height Selector is used to create a mask that hilights a certain height range of the input terrain. The output will be full strength (white) in that range area and zero strength (black) outside of it. There is a controllable falloff amount that blends between the fully selected and fully-unselected areas.

The Slope Selector is used to create a mask that hilights areas of the terrain that have a particular slope. The output will be full strength (white) in those sloped areas and zero strength (black) outside of it. There is a controllable falloff amount that blends between the fully selected and fully-unselected areas.

The Angle Selector is used to create a mask that hilights areas of the terrain that have a particular orientation (facing). For example, you can select only those parts that face north, or are at some angle to the horizon.

The Pull-up is a device intended for Macro creators. It is used to provide a reference value if no outside heightfield is specified.
It has two inputs, the Reference and Override input. If data is present on the Override input, that data will be sent to the output. Otherwise, the data from the Reference input is sent.

The Multi Splitter is most useful for Macro creators.
Like a normal Splitter, it allows you to split a single input into multiple outputs. However unlike a normal splitter, the Multi Splitter will only transfer the input data to a single one of its outputs. All other outputs will not transmit data.
This is useful if you have several effects-paths within the macro. To save processing power and memory, you can disable all but the currently selected path using a Multi Splitter and Multi Combiner pair.

The Multi Combiner is usually paired with a Multi Splitter. It is most useful for Macro creators.
Although the Multi Combiner has multiple inputs, it will only actually use the data from one of them. That data will be passed along untouched to the output port. The input port that is to be used is specified by the Input Choice parameter.
This is useful if you have several effects-paths within the macro. To save processing power and memory, you can disable all but the currently selected path using a Multi Splitter and Multi Combiner pair.

The Switch is a device intended for Macro creators.
It allows you to pass only one of two inputs on to the output based upon the value of its parameter.

Creates a single scalar value between 0.0 and 1.0.
This value can then be used to drive a parameter input on a different device.
Like all Parameter devices, its primary purpose is to assist in the creation of high quality parameterizations for macros. See the User's Guide for more information on parameterization.

Modifies the input scalar so that it lies only in a certain value range.
This is similar to the Clamp device for heightfields except that it operates on single values only.
Like all Parameter devices, its primary purpose is to assist in the creation of high quality parameterizations for macros. See the User's Guide for more information on parameterization.

Inverts a scalar value (IE: 1.0 - value).
Like all Parameter devices, its primary purpose is to assist in the creation of high quality parameterizations for macros. See the User's Guide for more information on parameterization.

Perform a simple arithmetic operation on a scalar value.
Like all Parameter devices, its primary purpose is to assist in the creation of high quality parameterizations for macros. See the User's Guide for more information on parameterization.

The Scalar Combiner takes two scalar values as input and performs one of several simple mathematical operations to combine the two numbers.
If the combined value exceeds the 0..1 range, the result will be clipped to the 0..1 range.
Like all Parameter devices, its primary purpose is to assist in the creation of high quality parameterizations for macros. See the User's Guide for more information on parameterization.

The Bank Selector allows you to change the values of many scalar variables at once. Each variable has its own output port through which it delivers a scalar value. Multiple tabs are created, each of which specifies a preset value for a scalar variable. Changing the active tab will change the value output for each variable.
This is very useful as a way to radically alter multiple scalar values when the single integer input changes value. Inside of a macro, this can be used to create presets, or partial presets, that simplify the experience of the user.
See the User's Guide for more information on proper usage in concert with other devices intended for Macros.

The Universal Splitter device allows you to wire a single output to several different inputs. In other words, it “splits” the output wire into multiple paths. You can configure the number of output ports on the splitter.
It differs from a normal Splitter in that it may be used for any data type that WM allows; upon connecting a wire to the input port, the Universal Splitter will automatically configure the output port types to match.

Generates a parameter datapacket containing an integer value.

Generates a Coordinate datapacket that can then be fed into a device that has a Coordinate input. The coordinate is created from two scalar values that you specify; these values comprise the world-space location.

Compares an integer parameter input with the specified integer value, and outputs either TRUE or FALSE depending on if they are equal or not.