So in short,... Mobile Terrain tools is a Full procedural terrain editor for UE5 where you can Sculpt, erode, splines, foliage, bake to Static Mesh.
My goal was to build a terrain that ships on different devices, not just good looking in the editor.
Mobile Terrain Tools is a complete in-editor terrain pipeline for Unreal Engine 5.
So as major steps will be required for the best results, everything happens inside one plugin panel — no Landscape component, no external DCC tools, no manual mesh export.
Tested at 60fps on a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (Snapdragon 835, 6GB RAM — 2017 hardware). If it runs on that, your target device is covered.
Works on Android OpenGL ES, Android Vulkan, iOS, PC, and consoles. If UE5 supports the platform, this plugin bakes terrain for it.
Four tabs. One workflow.
Basic — Create terrain, sculpt it, apply heightmaps, run erosion. This is where you build the shape of your world.
Terrain Data — Bake to Static Mesh, manage LODs, set render distances, prepare for packaging. This is where you make it shippable.
Paint + Splines — Vertex paint up to 4 material layers, carve roads, rivers, lakes, and walls non-destructively via spline actors.
Foliage — Paint foliage instances directly onto any surface using 8 tools, with per-type density, scale, slope filtering, and placement settings. All instances stored in a single actor — no outliner flooding regardless of instance count.
Landscape Creation Steps
Terrain Creation
Create a single chunk or a full multi-chunk grid in one click. Set your sections and section size, hit Create. Chunks tile seamlessly and the edge vertices stitch automatically so there are no cracks regardless of how many chunks you use.
Apply heightmaps to a single chunk or tile one image across an entire multi-chunk grid proportionally. Every chunk samples its own region of the source image so no seams, no repetition.
Sculpt Mode
Five tools. Two modes with the key "Escape" to exit.
Single-chunk mode : targets one selected chunk. Global mode sculpts across every chunk simultaneously and the brush spans chunk boundaries like they are not there. Neighbor edge vertices stay welded during every stroke.
Sculpt : raise and lower terrain. Hold Shift to lower. Configurable size, strength, falloff, and shape (circle or square).
Smooth : multi-iteration blur. Softens sharp peaks and rough sculpt strokes.
Flatten : samples height on first click and pushes surrounding vertices toward it. The right tool for plateaus, roads, and building footprints.
Noise : Perlin noise stamp with configurable scale. Adds natural variation without disturbing the underlying shape.
Erosion : two real-time modes. Thermal erosion for fast talus-angle simulation. Hydraulic erosion for quality water-flow simulation.
A decal brush previews your radius on the terrain surface in real time. Sculpt data survives bake and restore cycles. Undo and redo work on every stroke.
Spline Tools that are Non-Destructive
Place a spline actor, configure its parameters, click Apply. The terrain deforms. Move the spline in the viewport and the terrain updates automatically.
Your base sculpt data is never touched. Spline contributions are stored separately per spline ID and layered on top at render time. Remove a spline and the terrain reverts exactly.
Road : flattens terrain to a consistent height along the spline. Flat cross-section, configurable width and falloff.
Ramp : lerps height smoothly from start to end. Mountain switchbacks, stadium ramps, dock approaches.
River : carves a U-shaped channel using a cosine cross-section profile. Configurable depth and bank steepness.
Wall : raises a ridge along the spline. Defensive walls, cliff edges, crater rims.
Lake : draw a closed spline polygon. Everything inside gets carved to a flat floor at a configurable world-space Z height. Bank falloff controls shoreline sharpness.
All spline types support per-point weights, multi-chunk influence, and color-coded viewport guide lines.
Foliage Painter
Eight tools for placing foliage on any surface in the scene — not just terrain.
Paint : scatter instances within a brush area based on density settings. Single — place one instance per click with full placement precision. Fill — flood the terrain surface to target density in one operation. Erase — remove instances within the brush radius. Select / All / Remove / Move — selection and management tools.
Instances land correctly on floors, walls, ceilings, and any slope angle — the brush traces the surface normal, not a fixed Z axis. Slope filtering via min and max angle range (0 to 180 degrees) gives full control over where each foliage type can appear.
Per-type settings: mesh, material overrides, density, radius, scale modes (Uniform, Free, Lock XY), Z offset, normal alignment, random yaw, cull distances, shadow settings, collision, physical material, and lightmap type.
Bake and Build Pipeline
The terrain you sculpt uses a ProceduralMeshComponent — ideal for editing, not for shipping. Mobile Terrain Tools handles the conversion.
Bake selected chunks or all chunks at once. Each chunk becomes a UStaticMesh asset stored next to your level in a TerrainData folder. Five LOD levels are generated automatically at bake time.
Restore any chunk back to PMC for editing at any time. Rebake when done. Vertex colors, spline data, and height data survive every round trip.
Prepare for Build replaces every terrain actor with a pure Static Mesh actor — no plugin classes in the packaged build, no runtime dependencies, maximum platform compatibility.
Reverse Prepare brings everything back when you need to edit again.
Auto-bake mode exits sculpt and bakes immediately — useful if you prefer to work in SM mode by default.
LOD System
Five LOD levels applied at bake time. Configurable triangle reduction percentages and screen size thresholds per level. Three presets: 2x Halving, 3x Aggressive, and Custom.
The LOD Estimator shows reduction percentage per level before you commit to a bake.
Max render distance control culls distant chunks on low-end hardware. Set once and apply to all chunks in one click.
Vertex Paint
Four material layers packed into RGBA vertex colors. Paint R, G, B, and A channels directly onto terrain chunks in the editor. Hook them up to your terrain material for slope-based blending, triplanar projection, or any custom shader.
Painted data persists across PMC and Static Mesh swaps. Vertex colors are stored in the ChunkData asset and restored automatically on level reload, PIE, and packaged builds.
Works With
PCG (Procedural Content Generation) : UE5 native PCG reads vertex colors and surface normals from baked terrain for scatter workflows.
UE5 Water Plugin : place water actors on terrain shaped by River and Lake splines.
Lumen and GPU Lightmass : baked Static Mesh terrain receives full global illumination with no extra setup.
Navigation Mesh : NavMesh generates automatically on baked Static Mesh chunks.
Ultra Dynamic Sky and other environment plugins : no conflicts, no special configuration.
Chaos Vehicles : vehicle physics on baked terrain collision works as expected.
Technical Details
Plugin type: Editor plugin — zero runtime overhead in packaged builds
No Landscape component dependency
ProceduralMeshComponent used in-editor only — converts to UStaticMesh for shipping
ChunkData UAssets stored next to your level — version control friendly
No Windows-only code paths — runtime module is cross-platform clean
Full undo and redo on all sculpt operations
PIE-safe — loads correctly in Play In Editor without manual steps
Tested engine version: UE 5.3
Tested Hardware
Mobile: Samsung Galaxy Note 8 — Snapdragon 835, 6GB RAM, Android — stable 60fps in packaged build with 50km² terrain.
Editor: Windows PC, UE 5.1, 5.3, 5.6 and 5.7 editor.