Ecosystem painting canned?

[DamirH]

Can someone clarify please?

[zeOrb]

Wow, this is weird.
I think it is relevant to this card. At least I hope.

[anonymous_user_59fbbb31]

Not canned, is still working on it. We’ll be expanding on this feature in future releases most likely beyond 4.7 but we need to revisit our plans again.

[Mr_SquarePeg]

@Ray Davis;210488

Not canned, is still working on it. We’ll be expanding on this feature in future releases most likely beyond 4.7 but we need to revisit our plans again.

Good to know - Really looking forward to Ecosystem

[DamirH]

@Ray Davis;210488

Not canned, is still working on it. We’ll be expanding on this feature in future releases most likely beyond 4.7 but we need to revisit our plans again.

Thanks for the info. The Trello card says “going in a different direction” though. Am I to understand that this means that some things will be changed, and if yes, can you share which? This is probably the most important feature for me at this point, would love to know more about it.

[Mr_SquarePeg]

@DamirH;210639

Thanks for the info. The Trello card says “going in a different direction” though. Am I to understand that this means that some things will be changed, and if yes, can you share which? This is probably the most important feature for me at this point, would love to know more about it.

Same here - This is a very important feature for me. If you guys could give us some info that would be great

[Mr_SquarePeg]

@Chariots;214474

I tried this with the latest promoted build.

There’s a procedural foliage asset that has basically the same settings as the foliage tool with some procedural placement settings added on top. It holds all the settings for a mesh, ie min/max scale, radius, and so on. There’s another asset that is only used for placement, you drag and drop that to the map, select the tile amount, select the procedural foliage assets that you wish to use and click “Simulate” button on the details panel.

Not sure if this is the new direction they mentioned, but I like it.

So question or three about the current state of Ecosystem.

1, Can we use non foliage assets (Asteroids / Space Debris for example)
2. Does this work similar to a volume or is it specifically made for terrain?
3. How stable is Ecosystem?

[anonymous_user_d573ef49]

Thanks for the feedback, it’s good to know what issues you’re hitting.

Ability to modify the tile size

This is actually available already. It should be a setting in the procedural foliage asset.
In the latest version in main you don’t have to use tiles directly. Instead you create a volume where instances will be spawned. The tiles are created for you automatically under the hood. You can still control the size mind you.

This feature is still in heavy development so expect lots of improvements/changes. We’re still not preserving backwards compatible since this won’t be officially out until 4.8

[Sitrec]

@;215203

Thanks for the feedback, it’s good to know what issues you’re hitting.

This is actually available already. It should be a setting in the procedural foliage asset.
In the latest version in main you don’t have to use tiles directly. Instead you create a volume where instances will be spawned. The tiles are created for you automatically under the hood. You can still control the size mind you.

This feature is still in heavy development so expect lots of improvements/changes. We’re still not preserving backwards compatible since this won’t be officially out until 4.8

Great to hear that it’s still being worked on, this is right now by far the most important feature not yet implemented for our project.

Will it still include the features that we talked about here?: [Twitch] 4.7 Preview, Preview Builds, and More - Jan 8, 2014 @ 2PM ET - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums

[papillon68]

Any chance to know if besides painting, it’s possible to procedurally populate a terrain area with objects without coding?

[zeOrb]

@papillon68;237195

Any chance to know if besides painting, it’s possible to procedurally populate a terrain area with objects without coding?

This is exactly what about new foliage-ecosystem-tool is!
You can drop a volume on landscape(or whatever you want) and then set “rules”(without coding) that will procedurally populate designated area with foliage, so stay tuned!

[Maximum-Dev]

I too am waiting for a way to distribute vegetation with the use of splat maps. (without having landscape layers made with splat map of course).

@zeOrb, Is that possible to do so with the new system? using the splat maps I mean.

[anonymous_user_d573ef49]

@Maximum-Dev;237202

I too am waiting for a way to distribute vegetation with the use of splat maps. (without having landscape layers made with splat map of course).

@zeOrb, Is that possible to do so with the new system? using the splat maps I mean.

You can use the landscape painting tool to create a layer mask for the procedural vegetation. When you specify a foliage type you can tell it which mask layers it can grow in.

[Maximum-Dev]

@;237231

You can use the landscape painting tool to create a layer mask for the procedural vegetation. When you specify a foliage type you can tell it which mask layers it can grow in.

But for example this landscape I made is totally textured with a uber shader where I have used the splat map in the shader and all of what you see counts as 1 landscape layer so I can’t tell what foliage to go on which layer because there’s only 1 layer so I was looking for an alternate way to distribute the foliage with the same splat map.

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[zeOrb]

@Maximum-Dev;237236

But for example this landscape I made is totally textured with a uber shader where I have used the splat map in the shader and all of what you see counts as 1 landscape layer so I can’t tell what foliage to go on which layer because there’s only 1 layer so I was looking for an alternate way to distribute the foliage with the same splat map.

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You can plug in same uber shader into different layers so visually you can’t see any different, but matters for foliage

[Maximum-Dev]

@zeOrb;237330

You can plug in same uber shader into different layers so visually you can’t see any different, but matters for foliage

In fact I made a uber shader to avoid having multiple layers since it had some issues when later painting manually on the layers. (probably a bug that only showed grey squares when I was painting). What could work out is the ability to use masks as a guide to distribute foliage regardless of the landscape layers at all. Because after all, you might want to distribute foliage like that but you don’t want it to be distributed exactly according to the splat map you have used to texture the landscape itself. There are a lot of work around to this but in the end these are work around we invent. Foliage should be able to load it’s own masks, free from layers you have.

[Mr_SquarePeg]

Just thought I would chime in on this - They showed this off at GDC.

[anonymous_user_d573ef49]

I think these are all valid points. The ecosystem is still very early in development and a lot of these issues are worth discussing.

[Maximum-Dev]

@;237388

I think these are all valid points. The ecosystem is still very early in development and a lot of these issues are worth discussing.

True. Since the title of the thread doesn’t read very well as a request/feedback thread I made one only for the Ecosystem Painting Tools hopefully that helps you through the development.

The Ecosystem Painting Tools Improvement and Feedback Thread

Edit: I’d appreciate it if you share the current status of it every once in a while so the community can leave their constructive feedback for you.

Thank you.