Procedural Nature Pack - Vol.1

**— UPDATE - 04/18/2017 — **
Hey everyone!
I’ve put together an optimization video for both the Nature Pack Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 showing you how to export and import Spline Trees and use them in a much more optimized way. I hope you all enjoy it and get some good use out of it. Cheers!

**— PACK UPDATED!! - 09/03/2015 — **
Release notes for the new updates can be seen with pictures at this link.

Release notes without pictures are below.

  1. Fixed issue where the user would have trouble cooking the pack when ready (Removed problem blueprints and Data Array’s)
  2. Water- Fog Plane issue in distance (This is caused when the user has both Exponential Fog and Atmospheric Fog in their level. In order to fix the problem seen with the translucent material, the user has to disable either 1 of the two fog options so that there is only 1 fog being used)
  3. Water- Add spline point numbers floating above each spline point to help with scaling the river (See Picture Below)
  4. Fix Wobbling Terrain Tessellation (Created new heightmaps with less variation for the grass to reduce wobbling. Left old heightmap textures in the files incase you preferred them more. The old files are titled with a -1 at the end of their name)
  5. Look into some foliage turning black and why (This is caused from the skylight. The fix is to simply change it’s type from Static to Moveable)
  6. Added a new tree branch spline that does not have the auto scaling feature. As the original would auto scale the branches to get smaller and smaller towards the end of the branch. Now you can select the standard branch spline or use the branch spline with “no_auto_scale” Enjoy!

— UPDATE!! - 07/26/2015 —

I created a tips and tricks video for everyone!
I finished up a tips and tricks video for you guys! It’s 40 minutes long, so be sure to check out the time stamps in the description to find what you’re looking for faster Hope it helps! Thanks for all of the awesome feedback everyone!

**— PACK UPDATED!! - 08/03/2015 — **
Hey guys, the Pack has had its first bug fix update to take care of some of these initial problems that you guys are experiencing using the pack.
Here is a list of the updated bugs/features.

  1. Terrain - Fixed holes in the landscape terrain materials
  2. Water- Fixed water distortion issue creating a double image on assets in front of it (gave option to use refraction instead of distorted screen image)
  3. Water - Updated water with tessellation to deform with the speed and intensity of the river
  4. Water - Look into screen space reflections with the water to look correct (Turned off screen space reflections for the time being, but can be turned back on in master_river_material)
  5. Water - Exposed Parameter for reflectivity of water surface
  6. Water - Adjusted Foam Population to work using either depth based population or a simply addition overlay on top of the water surface
  7. Look into some foliage turning black and why (Adjusted LOD lightmaps and textures to fix the issue, please build your level and this should no longer be occuring with the update)
  8. Delete second directional light in Overview_Map
  9. Rocks- Updating worldspace moss blend texture to create softer transition lines
  10. Tree - Update worldspace moss blend texture to create softer transition lines

This is just the first update and here are some of the features still to come in future updates!

  1. Find a better wind system for the trees, vines and branches
  2. Research the “weld intersecting assets” speedtree with branches
  3. Water- Fix Seam in Water Spline caused by reflection sphere captures
  4. Add branches and options so the leaves don’t look so flat on the tree’s
  5. Research the merge actors tool for more optimized trees
  6. Fix Gimbal Lock spline twisting issue when curving spline past 90 degrees vertically

— UPDATE!! - 07/22/2015 —
Hey everyone!

It’s been released today!!!
Please feel free to check it out and I posted a comment on the page as well which I will re-iterate here for all of you.
https://www.unrealengine.com/content/ae5f950500cc4987ab6edb2089574058

From the comment:
“Hi everyone! I hope you all enjoy the Procedural Nature Pack! If you like it and want to tell people about it, please feel free to rate it and leave a comment here If you have any comments or concerns, please feel free to email me first and we can try to sort out any issues you might have. Thank you for your support! jacob@purepolygons.com

Thanks to everyone who has been following this thread throughout and if you pick up the pack today please let me know if you notice any issues or having any concerns as I want to fix this pack up with anything you find and make it one of the best nature packs on the market with all of your help
Thank you!

— UPDATE!! - 07/21/2015 —

— Original Post —

Hey guys,
So maybe some of you have seen the progress of this scene along the way, and maybe some of you haven’t. I’ve been working on an almost entirely procedurally generated Nature Environment. So far it can create rivers, tree’s, vines, and plenty of stuff that I haven’t even thought of that I’m sure its capable of haha


There is also procedural moss placement on assets, like the rocks and tree trunks, procedural color variations of grass and leaf textures, and some vertex painted moss as well if you prefer to be more precise with your placement. The branches can be adjusted by - the number of branches, the angle of the branches, the angle variance of the branches, twist of the tree trunk, the amount of wind applied to them, and the ability to select seperate branch models for each spline i place in the scene.The branches will randomize their position and rotation so no two will ever be exactly the same :slight_smile:

The rivers are all spline generated as well with a material that increases the speed of the river based off of the normal angles of the geo and adds foam to the water at the tops and base of any water falls which is calculated using the tangent angles of the spline.

The scene has wind, including the spline branches and of course the river moves and flows, all of the grass n such is moving and a little garden gnome says hi sometimes if you look closely. Watch it for hours when i release the video… you’ll see him eventually. I want to try to find some time soon too to be able to expand on some of the techniques with the splines and materials that I used for this to share it with you guys. In the mean time, I hope you all enjoy the work and like what I’ve done with it so far :slight_smile:

I am thinking the price point will be $69.99 for everything!


I couldn’t quite figure out how to change the title of my previous thread in order to add or change the prefix so I am starting this new thread. Sorry if this is wrong! Please let me know how I can sort it out otherwise. Here is the link to the previous thread.

Please feel free to follow my work on facebook as well

For the rocks, I just set it up with worldspace color overlays and normals so that I could scale and rotate the thing without any distortion of the material.

Example of the Procedural Splines used to create the environment


And here are some of the Textures/Materials/Assets that will be Included in the pack as well.


Any feedback is welcome! Thanks!

Looks good is not enough of an expression, I couldn’t find better words but you get the idea:):cool:

Looks almost too good to be true. By the way I saw your dirt materials on the polycount forums few months back (I assume that was you who had posted them), was really impressed.

But if there is an entire forest of those trees, how fast will it run, is there instancing or some other measures to ensure good performance?

You done any testing with this in large open world? Performance heavy?

Hey guys,

The splines are easily instanced in the level and all of the features are scalable! So you can turn tessellation on or off, moss painting, vertex painting, worldspace color/normals, tessellation fade, river depth and features, it’s all in there per material instance. Everything has LOD’s for it as well with cheap versions of material instances applied to the meshes. You can decrease the density of the grass or branches to suit your needs. Another awesome features, is after you build a tree, you can simply select all of the splines and export it as an fbx file. Then bring it back into the engine and re-apply the shaders to it and you can generate any or all of your trees that way. So you can apply custom animations to them, whatever you like :slight_smile:

I’m currently getting 30fps with the scene that you see above with all of the features enables on all of the material instances and real-time sun shadows. I’m using a GTX 760 Graphics card. Hope that helps to answer some questions!

Hey everyone,
The files have been sent off to Unreal! I hope it will be processed quickly :slight_smile:
Also i updated a couple of the images in this post to show off some of the assets in an overview scene as well as an image showing some of the options and tools within the material and spline instances. Still working on a video, but I’ll be out of town for a bit so I’ll be sure to finish it up when I’m back. Thanks!

I’m going to have to redo my current level, lol. Can’t wait for this.

About the trees

could the procedural aspect work with SpeedTree assets, or just your own assets?

Haha thanks a lot guys! I’m glad you like it :slight_smile:

Hi Vata,
You could easily save branches from speedtree that you could then use with this procedural system. I’m not too sure of the speedtree workflow but there may be aspects of it that you could integrate

Any plans on selling the materials separately? I dont need the procedural tree(even though it looks awesome) but I am interested in the materials :slight_smile:

Simply awesome, great work!

Thanks Zeroy!

Hi Martin, I’m not sure that i can unfortunately the way the marketplace works, but i do have versions of the Textures on my Gumroad in the link in my signature if you’re interested :slight_smile:

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Wow! Pretty Dang Awesome. Want!

This looks awesome. All I can say:

3e20f71eb1f757c79357effc8d190b9a8002b8c2.jpeg

Damit need to buy this. NOW!

I’ve already described how much I want this in previous posts, but the 30FPS benchmark does scare me a little. Will probably have to turn off quite a few features for console.

Tessellation is greedy in FPS, as is dynamic lighting but its all about optimizing the scene / level with LOD/DoF and other tricks, 30FPS is not too bad considering the complexity of that scene

30fps for my project is a huge no-go as I must maintain at least 90fps ;] It’s all about optimizing.

What would the performance be just for the river? The ability to have a flow river with waterfall like effect is huge for me. The tree feature isn’t as useful

I’m sure the river doesn’t cost much at all. Zeroy is correct that the biggest hit is probably the tessellation and lighting, though Jacob mentioned that LODs are in effect already.