Design Post Update: landscape

Showing posts with label landscape. Show all posts

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Read UE4 Landscape Editor Introduction Now

SmartGirl gaming , Introduction

Landscape editor mode in UE4

In this tutorial I will be showing the basics of the Landscape Tools in Unreal Engine 4 and what they are used for.

Once you create a new level in Unreal Engine 4 you have to choose the landscape's size and material.

Landscape

For this tutorial I am going to be using the default grass material, witch can be found in the content browser in Unreal Engine 4. After choosing the material and clocking Create you level will be filled in with the material you chose and the size you wanted also.

Landscape after creating

After your landscape has been filled in you can use the selection tool to select certain areas of your level.

The Landscape Tools

The Selection tool, selects Landscape components, one at a time for subsequent use with other tools, such as moving components to streaming levels and deleting components.
Controls- Left mouse click to select components, Right mouse click to de- select components.

The Add tool, adds new components to the landscape one at a time.
Controls- Left mouse click to add new component.

The Delete tool, deletes selected components from the Landscape
Controls- Left mouse click to delete selected components if there are none selected it deletes the components that are highlighted by moving the mouse over it.

The More Level tool, moves the selected components to the current streaming level. This makes it possible to move sections of the Landscape into a streaming level so that will be streamed in and out with that level, optimizing the performance of the Landscape.

The Change Component Size tool, Changes the size of the whole Landscape not individual components. With this tool you can change the size of the Landscape components and adjust how many sections each component has in the Change Component Size.

The Edit Splines tool, Landscape Splines are a flexible system for creating any linear feature that needs conform to a Landscape, and can even push or pull the
terrain to better facilitate building these features. They are created and edited using the spline tool in the Landscape toll.

The next Tab of the Landscape tools are the Sculpt tools.

Inside the Sculpt Tool bar there are a number of different tools, I will be talking about all of them in this tutorial.

The Sculpt tool, Increases or decreases the heightmap height in the shape of the currently selected brush and falloff
Controls- Left mouse click, heightens or increases the selected layers weight.
Shift + Left mouse click, Lowers or decreases the selected layers weight.

Showing Increase

Showing Decrease

The Smooth tool, Smooths the heightmap. The strength determines the amount of smoothing.
Controls- Left mouse click to Smooth.

Showing Smoothing tool

The Flatten tool, flattens the Landscape to the level of the Landscape under the mouse cursor when you first activate the tool.
Controls- Left mouse click to Flatten

Showing the Flattening tool

The Ramp tool, enables to select two different locations on your landscape and create a flat ramp between them with a falloff you specify on the sides.
Controls- Ctrl + Left mouse click on two locations marking the start and the end of the ramp.

Showing unfinished ramp

Showing done ramp

The Erosion tool, uses a thermal erosion simulation to adjust the height of the heightmap simulating the transfer of soil from higher elevation to lower elevations. The larger the difference in elevation, the more erosion will occur.

Showing Erosion

The Hydro Erosion toll, uses a hydraulic erosion simulation to adjust the height of the heightmap. A noise filter is used to determine where the initial rain distributed. The simulation is calculated to determine water flow from that initial rain as well as dissolving water transfer, and evaporation. The result of that calculation provides the actual value used to lower the heightmap.

Showing HydroErosion

The Noise tool, applies a noise filter to the heightmap or layer weight. The strength determines the
amount of noise. Also the noise filter is related to position and scale, which means if you do not change Noise Scale, the same filter is applied to the same position many times.

Showing Noise Tool

The Visibility tool, lets you create holes in your ladscape for such things as caves.

The Region tool, selects regions of the landscape using the current brush settings and tool strength to be used to fit a landscape gizmo to a specific area or to act as a mask for copying data to/or pasting data.

Showing Selection Tool

The Copy/Paster tool, is used to copy height data from one area of the landscape to another through the use of Landscape Gizmo.

I hope this is really helpful for first time users or if anyone wants to brush up on the Landscape Tools.

Read UE4 Tools and Brushes Now

SmartGirl 3D Game , beginner

In this tutorial I will be showing you what tools and brushes are available to us in Unreal Engine 4 and what they are used for, giving you a basic understanding of what each does.

Tools and brushes in the modes panel.

Most of the tools and brushes can be found in the modes panel, which is located in the upper left corner of your screen.

BSP Brushes

Starting off in placement mode which is the first mode to the left. Here we can find the BSP brushes.

BSP brushes.

You can choose from a box, cone, cylinder, curved stair, linear stair, spiral stair and sphere BSP brushes. To use them you just click, drag and drop onto your level. BSP brushes can be used to create buildings and other objects in your game.
At the bottom of the panel on the BSP section you have the option to change the brush to add or subtract.

Paint

Paint.

The paint tool can be used to paint your landscape, to paint texture onto static meshes and basic colours onto static meshes.

Landscape

Landscape.

In landscape mode, first of all you need to create your landscape. You can choose the size, change dimensions and basically make the landscape anyway you want. Then when you are happy with it click create. If you go wrong just click on the landscape on the view port and hit the delete key on your keyboard.

Editing and creating landscape options.

After creating you can now use the sculpt and paint tools in landscape mode.

Foliage

Foliage.

To use this you need to import a static mesh, something like grass, flowers or a tree.
You can download a good quality static mesh from the internet, then bring it into blender and delete all unnecessary objects which means everything but the actual mesh itself.

Mesh opened in blender.

Make sure the materials are unpacked, you check this in the materials tab when you are clicked on the mesh. You can check this by clicking on the go to file, export, select .fbx and save.

New folder and import button.

Then in unreal engine, in the content browser (as seen in the image above), under game make a new folder called meshes and in this folder import your .fbx file.

Drag and drop area in foliage.

When you have that done simply click and drag the static mesh up to the modes panel in foliage.

After dragging and dropping the mesh into foliage.

Now you can edit the mesh you imported, by adding multiple texture and adding effects to the colour.

Geometry

Geometry.

In geometry editing mode you can edit objects in your level. Just click on the face of the object you want to edit and select witch feature you want to use.

UE4 Terrain and Landscape

SmartGirl First Person Shooter Series , gaming

This tutorial is the second in the 10 part series on how to create a first person shooter game using Unreal Engine 4.

Creating The Terrain

Go to 'Contents Browser' and select 'Add New' and choose 'New Level'

Select level and in ‘Modes menu’, select ‘Landscape’ and your view-port should look like the following:

In the ‘Modes’ panel, select the landscape mode and adjust its settings to the following (15 x 15 quads is large enough for the first level), then select ‘Create’

Editing The Landscape (Terrain)

1 When a landscape is created the following options panel should appear under ‘Landscape Mode’

You can edit your landscape you can choose from three edit modes. These three modes are:

Manage Mode
Sculpt Mode
Paint Mode (This will be covered under the Materials and Textures tutorial)

Manage Mode – Create new landscapes, Modify an existing landscape, Select components (building blocks/grids of landscapes) and modify their properties in the Level Editor’s Details Panel

Selection – Selects a section (Block) of the landscape

Add – Adds a section of landscape to the current Landscape and can add a number of blocks based on the value of the brush size

Delete – Completely removes a section of the landscape

Move Level – Moves any selected components to the specified streaming level

Change Component Size – Changes the size of components and the size of the landscape according to the settings

Edit Splines – Ctrl + Left Click on the landscape will place a node for a spline. If a node is selected and there is another node placed, this tool will connect the two nodes and if there are no nodes selected then a new node will be placed

Sculpt Mode – Allows you to mould the look of your landscape height map

1. Sculpting Tools – Sculpts the landscape with various tools.

2. Brush Tools – Modifies the appearance and effect of the brush that is used when you are painting or sculpting the Landscape

3. Falloff Tools – Modifies how your brushes falloff

Sculpt Tools

Retopologize Tool

Similar to the smooth tool but it pushes and pulls triangles to smooth the transition of the landscape and try and keep the basic form of the terrain which minimizes change to the height of the landscape. This tool makes the project slower to render and should only be used if really needed.

Visibility Tool

Used to create holes in the landscape for things such as caves. For this tool to be visual, the landscape must have a material/texture on it. This tool will be covered in more detail in our ‘Textures and Materials’ tutorial.