Best way to create a large floating island?

Development Asset Creation
1

I was wondering what people thought would be the best way to create a large (region sized) floating island terrain? Also, advice on non procedural terrain creation, or getting a specific, controlled result from procedural terrain tools, would be great. So far the only idea I have is to create a basic shape of my island in Zbrush, make height maps of the top side and bottom side, add erosion effects in a procedural terrain generator, import them into unreal and kind of sandwich them back to back. I have no idea if this would work. Any advice/Ideas?

2

You can’t achieve this effect with unreal engine terrain, so meshes are probably the best solution. If your island is going to be that big, consider world composition.

3

Thanks! What do you mean by “composition?” Also, how would you recommend dealing with scaling up the island?

4

World composition is a tool for unreal engine. It allows you to break up your world into chunks, which are loaded based on player proximity. Pretty much every single open world game uses it. Without out it, prepare your project to run at 2 FPS. It’s easily the best tool for massive terrains. It’s also easy to set up.

5

If your island is bigger than 6 kilometers, then you need advanced scripting.

6

What do you mean by scaling up?

7

Ooh. I was hoping to be able to do something like the composition thing you mentioned. By scaling up I mean taking a fairly small object
and turning it into a massive object playing can walk all around without it looking all funky. Thanks for all your help.

8

The best solution to detailed objects is LOD. Basically, it reduces the texture resolution and triangle count the farther you go from it. At that distance, the player can’t tell the difference, so it creates a higher quality experience.

9

Thank you!

10

you could probably use the normal landscapes for the top and use static meshes on the sides.

11

I just realized that it’s probably important to mention that certain parts of the island need to be editable/landscapable by the player. Ugh. Why can I never have simple ideas…

12

Have you looked at the Voxel plugin yet? https://voxelplugin.com/

13

Ooh! this looks so useful. The smoothness is impressive.

14

I’m a bit confused as to how I open it, though. I’m not seeing a .exe

15

Also, any idea as to where to find some tutorials for this baby?

16

I haven’t used it, but here’s some links I found:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/released-projects/125045-voxel-pluginTM

https://voxel-plugin.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#

17

Yeah. I can’t even figure out how to open this thing.