I have a large landscape map. I wanted to introduce some cave systems, so I cut a hole using the landscape visibility tool:
The hole cuts fine and works great, however the landscape component that i cut the hole in now no longer returns a physical material when drawing a trace onto it.
Even if I paint the area again, it always returns ‘none’ for the physical material (meaning my footstep sounds are not working correctly).
Is it possible to cut holes in landscape without breaking the physical material for the landscape material?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve too found issues with landscape and materials in a trace, I suspect you’ve hit a landscape feature like I did. I couldn’t get t to work so I added trigger volumes around certain areas to override the trace. Would seem this would be an easy solution for a cave and for you/
I suspect the phys material only is returned if the landscape is created originally with it, any changes where a phys material is added or updated causes it to not be recognised.
So you think it’s not possible to punch a hole in the landscape without losing the ability to trace the physical material on that component?
Edit: Oh and thanks for taking the time to respond 
My experience with landscape is there are bugs, the latest bug I found on 1 map required me to add a mesh underneath the landscape surface with collision and stretch it out to cover the entire landscape.
Why, cause the framerate of the game would suddenly plunge to 0.5 for no apparent reason ( I figured out a solution after isolating that the landscape was the cause - no idea why, I suspect something to do with projectile collisions and that maybe as I created the landscape it got corrupted in some way. I was close to deleting and recreating the entire landscape before I found the solution with the mesh). Other maps with landscape did not have the issue.
I figure you just hit one of the bugs that exist with it … maybe there’s a workaround fix for the phys mat, it just might require you to be creative in your thinking to find it. Please let us know if you find a solution.
Thanks, yeah i think you’re right and this is just one of those things. Once work around i can think of is the reduce the size of the components dramatically so that the lack of physical material detection is limited to only a smaller area. But I believe there is a performance hit for that.
I’ll let you know if I find a proper solution. Thanks again man.
On Landscape I had a problem with my instant hit decals not showing. In weapon.uc, from my memory, there’s a comment mentioning decal no-show on landscape - a problem with the instant hit variety
Inspired by mixtures of your problems I gave up on Landscape and went to meshes entirely. The only landscape I kept vanished - only in the editor, true, but invisible the thing couldn’t be edited. There’s the weird texture setup; the number of textures limitation. Landscape is convenient but for me there’s too many things that can go wrong with it.
I still use landscape to get complex shapes but I export them to .obj then edit, reimport and use vertex painting and other camouflage for texture transitions. Although using that process there’s a peculiarity with size. In my 3d program(blender) the .obj mesh export from UDK appears miniature. I mean way, way down beside the XYZ centre dot, it’s about the size of that dot. After editing I scaled up the first one for UDK but in UDK I couldn’t find the mesh. Turned out the scale up was bigger than the entire UDK workspace. Since then I’ve not scaled them up.
Thanks for your input @Snipe34. If you’re importing a mesh instead of a landscape, how do you handle lod’s, or do you not bother with them for the landscape? It’s one thing I find very nice about landscape is the seamless transitions of component lods. My landscape is huge, so without the lods, i think i would see a performance hit.
It’s very frustrating about not being able to cut holes without losing the ability to get the physical material when doing traces though. I still haven’t found a solution yet. It’s just footstep sounds that are ******** me up.
This is my game by the way: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=542180743
I saw some vids before of your work and it’s most impressive + you have Steam Green Light.
Yummy-Vegetables appears to be the expert here(and several other posts of his I’ve read) but fwiw using Landscape I’ve come to the conclusion it’s best to work backwards. Cutting, shaping etc, and finally, but 1, texturing. ‘But 1’ is lastly allocating the Physical Material.
My invisible Landscape’s Physical Materials don’t work now because I did more shaping. It needs replacing, probably with a mesh. Lesson for me then is once the Landscape’s done, it’s done - no more touchee.
But my Landscapes are relatively small, tiny even, compared to your massive Landscapes. Also as you say UDK’s excellent Landscape LOD setup would be difficult to emulate, particularly if players can move in all different directions. My Landscape takes players in a linear direction; roads thru the countryside to a village or a complex.
And, vertex painting my meshes is bit of a pain, but on your kinda scale, a massive pain.
It’s plusses minuses. I definitely prefer working with Landscapes and I think I’ll give it another try, but as I say, ‘backwards.’ Sorry I couldn’t be of more help here.
Thought I’d bump this topic as it’s frustrating that I can’t expand beneath the landscape surface.
I’ve noticed in ARK, they don’t seem to cut holes, and instead remove collision as the player moves through a cave entrance. So i wonder if this issue has carried over to UE4.
Either way, I’d love to find a solution. Any ideas are most welcome.