Terrain Controls

The landscape upon which your zoo is built is completely customisable, with terrain sculpting and painting tools that allow you to modify the zoo to your heart’s content.

Terrain Sculpting

Terrain sculpting allows you to modify the elevation and shape of the landscape within your zoo to craft hills, flatten areas and create scenic vistas to build exhibits and attractions. Some modes will allow you to either start with a flat area to build or an already sculpted area to edit.

All the sculpting tools can be modified by tuning the intensity and size options of the terrain brush, which will alter the speed and scope of the effects made on the area.

Terrain sculpting tools include:

• Push and Pull - Can be used to raise or lower the terrain.
• Flatten to Foundation - Horizontally flattens all terrain in the highlighted circle to the foundation height. Useful for quickly flattening areas of ground to an already established height.
• Flatten to Surface - Like Flatten to Foundation, this uses a location as a base but also takes into account orientation, allowing you to easily create slopes or sheer cliffs.
• Chisel - Takes the location and orientation of a point and removes terrain in that plane. Useful for creating consistent slopes.
• Smooth - Useful for finishing terrain, the smooth option will help remove rough edges and provide smoother undulations.
• Roughen - The opposite of Smooth, use this to increase the roughness and variability of terrain for a bumpy finish.
• Flatten to Terrace - Flattens raised terrain in set increments to form flat areas while retaining some verticality. Useful to make space for buildings along a hill or to create large wading height water features for animals.
• Terrain Stamp Tool - an alternative way of adding or subtracting terrain, with five shapes available. By toggling 'Subtract terrain' in the Stamp Mode options, the shape can be used to remove terrain instead of adding it.

Terrain Painting

The terrain in your zoo plays an important role in its suitability for different animal species and their happiness within the habitats. The specific terrain requirements and preferences for each animal can be found in the Zoopedia.

There are six core terrain types:

• Grass
• Long grass
• Soil (light/heavy)
• Rock (smooth/rough)
• Sand (fine/coarse)
• Snow - will only stick to the ground if it is cold enough.

Animals don't distinguish between different types of rock, dirt and sand. If an animal likes sand, both fine or coarse sand will be acceptable. However, animals do distinguish between grasses and may prefer them in different proportions, so be sure to check the Zoopedia and monitor their happiness in the habitat.

Adding Water

Water is an essential part of many animals' lives and it is an important factor to consider when building a zoo. Many animals need a body of water in their habitat to swim, keep cool and drink from. If water is necessary in this way, it will be highlighted along with any space requirements in the Terrain tab of the animal's info panel.

Adding water is a simple process:

1. Create a space to put the water into (e.g. create a pit or lake bed with the Terrain Tools)
2. Highlight the position on the wall of the space where the water is to be filled to
3. Select to fill
4. If water can be placed, then the height marker will appear blue. If it is red, then water placement is blocked.

Once added, water can be selected in two different ways in order to customise it: move to the body of water to select it or enter the ‘water selection’ mode from the terrain browser.

The colour of individual bodies of water can be adjusted with the flexicolour system. The water transparency can also be changed to create very murky or crystal clear water. Any custom water colour setup is saved but can be returned to the default colour with the ‘Use natural colour’ toggle.

Water in a habitat that contains animals will become dirty over time, but you can also manually place water into an unclean state if that's what you'd like! But be aware: untreated water will increase the chance of infection if present in an animal's habitat, and so should be kept clean wherever possible using a water treatment facility.