My naming is horrible so I am not sure if the title of the post properly conveyed what I am trying to do. In any case, here goes:
My landscape is made in World Machine. I export 6 different weight maps for 6 different landscape layers, import it all into UE4 and it works like a charm. The problem is, my final landscape will be HUGE and have different biomes. So at point A the 6 layers might be describing a jungle environment but at point B it might be a snow region.
Bottom line is in the snow region I need an entirely different texture set than what I got in the jungle region + a smooth transition between the two.
My ideas so far consist of material blending and vertex color. Anyone done something similar in the past and / or has a few pointers?
I’ve been thinking about this as well, one way could be to either import terrain heightmaps into blender (or mudbox/zbrush), and paint a biome mask and blend everything that way (quicker way to test might just be to render a screenshot from top-view and paint over it in photoshop).
It might not be the best way though.
Could also make a base layer for each biome, then have more layers for single/a few materials that may also change based on which biome they’re painted over for some more control.
I haven’t tried doing this yet so I don’t know if the transition will be nice (though maybe a transition mask would make things look nicer?).