Can't paint foliage on an imported landscape

Jamendxman3 · June 29, 2015, 5:54pm

Hello everyone, I’ve made a landscape in World Machine, and imported it into UE4 as a tiled landscape (.r16), and I can’t seem to be able to paint foliage onto this imported landscape. I am in a project right now, I can place foliage on another landscape that I generated in UE4, but not the landscape I imported, I have all filters checked in the foliage tab. I also do not see the brush sphere when I hover over my imported landscape, but do see the brush when I hover over other things. I can confirm that the imported landscape is indeed a landscape, as I can sculpt it using the landscaping tool, so what is going on? I have also tried to paint foliage on this landscape in multiple projects, no luck.

Any help is appreciated, thanks ahead of time!

anonymous_user_923c79df · June 29, 2015, 6:08pm

-Is there probably a plane/static mesh beneath the landscape?
-do you use the world browser? -> to paint you have to make sure that you are in the right map

Jamendxman3 · June 29, 2015, 7:14pm

[=;321242]
-Is there probably a plane/static mesh beneath the landscape?

[/]

I am not sure, I don’t know why there would be.

[=;321242]

-do you use the world browser? -> to paint you have to make sure that you are in the right map
[/]

Well, I am in the main level with all of my tiles loaded, it looks like I can paint if I open up just the world for that tile, but that is extremely inconvenient because while working on each tile, I cannot see that tile’s relation to other tiles of the landscape. Is there any work-around to paint while in my persistent level?

Uprentiss · June 30, 2015, 5:38pm

[=;321288]
I am not sure, I don’t know why there would be.

Well, I am in the main level with all of my tiles loaded, it looks like I can paint if I open up just the world for that tile, but that is extremely inconvenient because while working on each tile, I cannot see that tile’s relation to other tiles of the landscape. Is there any work-around to paint while in my persistent level?
[/]

bro there has literally been painting issues since early 4 and while epic knows about it they are not fixing it and I have no idea why I guess they think it is not important enough.

anonymous_user_b9532c9a · June 30, 2015, 7:06pm

[=;321288]
I am not sure, I don’t know why there would be.

Well, I am in the main level with all of my tiles loaded, it looks like I can paint if I open up just the world for that tile, but that is extremely inconvenient because while working on each tile, I cannot see that tile’s relation to other tiles of the landscape. Is there any work-around to paint while in my persistent level?
[/]

Hi ,

I just tested this on my end and I was able to paint on World Composition Browser tiles that were imported from WM without any problem. What specific steps are you taking when you attempt to paint on the landscape. What is your material setup? Are you placing the material on before importing or after?

Edit: I managed to reproduce this on my end and have entered a bug report, UE-17993, to be assessed by the development staff.

Jamendxman3 · July 1, 2015, 5:31am

[= ;322028]
Hi ,

I just tested this on my end and I was able to paint on World Composition Browser tiles that were imported from WM without any problem. What specific steps are you taking when you attempt to paint on the landscape. What is your material setup? Are you placing the material on before importing or after?

Edit: I managed to reproduce this on my end and have entered a bug report, UE-17993, to be assessed by the development staff.
[/]

Thank-you, are there any ways for me to manually track bugs that staff have entered?

anonymous_user_b9532c9a · July 1, 2015, 1:49pm

[=;322261]
Thank-you, are there any ways for me to manually track bugs that staff have entered?
[/]

At present we don’t have a public tracker, though this is something we are looking at in the future. For now, if you ask any of the engine support technicians about the bug report number in question we can pull up the status of the bug and let you know.

Uprentiss · July 1, 2015, 4:52pm

[= ;322028]
Hi ,

I just tested this on my end and I was able to paint on World Composition Browser tiles that were imported from WM without any problem. What specific steps are you taking when you attempt to paint on the landscape. What is your material setup? Are you placing the material on before importing or after?

Edit: I managed to reproduce this on my end and have entered a bug report, UE-17993, to be assessed by the development staff.
[/]

I have made 2 or 3 tickets about painting issues and the going black thing and you all have not answered a single one. I love epic and Ue4 but that is bad business imo and its been going on around 6 months.

Uprentiss · July 2, 2015, 5:46pm

Yeah so a reply would be great since I can not ever get on in support.

anonymous_user_b9532c9a · July 3, 2015, 3:22pm

[=Uprentiss;322571]
I have made 2 or 3 tickets about painting issues and the going black thing and you all have not answered a single one. I love epic and Ue4 but that is bad business imo and its been going on around 6 months.
[/]

Hi Uprentiss,

Can you link me to the answerhub posts in question? I’d be happy to take a look. I didn’t see any in the bug reports section of the answerhub which is where we focus the majority of our attention so it is possible that if they are in another section we didn’t see them. However, I know there are a few known situations where the landscape goes black. Three in particular come to mind:

Too many textures on the landscape, make sure that your textures are set to shared: wrap if you have more than 12 on a single landscape tile

&stc=1

If there are black splotches appearing after painting, cover the entire tile/landscape with a single layer and then paint, this should remove the error from occurring.
If you are using landscape layer weights the landscape will probably appear black but can be painted on after setting up your layer weights. This is the most common and isn’t a bug, it simply has no initial layer data to work with.

Kiwi-Hawk · July 4, 2015, 12:04am

Sorry don’y mean to hijack a thread but seem silly to start a new one on same vein

I would like to create a landsacpe material that has say:

Cracked Rock
Blended
MossCovered Rock

Grass rich
Blended
Grass/dirt patchy

dirt
Blended

The UE 4 macro wrtten for World machine outputs weightmaps: (theres a full spalt and a set of High Mid and Low splatmaps too)
High Angle map
Mid Angle map
Low Angle map

Theres a:
Full Normal
High Angle Normal
Mid Angle Normal
Low Angle Normal

I’m thinking thse could be use to blend a landscape texture that would in general change
to suit the landscape if it was edited at anytime. But I have no found a tutorial to show
how this would be done. I messed my effort up just trying to make a basic material blend

https://www.dropbox/s/aco9u968cdgw7wt/Screenshot%202015-07-04%2000.44.01.png?dl=0

Uprentiss · July 4, 2015, 7:23pm

[= ;323856]
Hi Uprentiss,

Can you link me to the answerhub posts in question? I’d be happy to take a look. I didn’t see any in the bug reports section of the answerhub which is where we focus the majority of our attention so it is possible that if they are in another section we didn’t see them. However, I know there are a few known situations where the landscape goes black. Three in particular come to mind:

Too many textures on the landscape, make sure that your textures are set to shared: wrap if you have more than 12 on a single landscape tile

&stc=1

If there are black splotches appearing after painting, cover the entire tile/landscape with a single layer and then paint, this should remove the error from occurring.
If you are using landscape layer weights the landscape will probably appear black but can be painted on after setting up your layer weights. This is the most common and isn’t a bug, it simply has no initial layer data to work with.
[/]

my issue is on a simple paint you have to cover the entire landscape with the pain before you can then paint it another color, and then there is sections that stay the first paint and absolutely refuses to let you paint on it or over it or remove it. I have seen a good amount of people complain about it, I will link you some stuff when I get to my desk top so you can see,

Kiwi-Hawk · July 4, 2015, 11:38pm

I really don’t get this. if it broken why is it not fixed?

I have done evry thing by the letter to the letter and still get a black landscape

https://www.dropbox/s/hify8gz0r4g9l2g/Screenshot%202015-07-05%2010.53.21.png?dl=0

I can NOT see whats wrong with the setup my map is 4033 and my images are 4092, I believe (and see it)
UE4 will not upload images that are not power of 2, So as I understand it a 4033 map as to have 4096 images

https://www.dropbox/s/5bthjler7nb4m9e/Screenshot%202015-07-05%2010.53.39.png?dl=0

If I load the normals for the textures I get a lovely black flashing screen

Sorry I’m getting angry, I spend money buying assets only to find that people don’t put a readme
or a little text to explain the install, NO Doc’s at all, they and Epic take your money, (Realictic Female Animations
doesn’t even have a blue print let alone any install help, Landscape Material pack crash’s my editor when I put the
material on my landscape, no instruction on how to use it correctly). I know theres tutorials all over the place, they don’t
relate or the relationshipis NOT always easy to see, beside you pay for a product you exspect a manual. We follow tutorials
to the letter and it doen’t work. very frustrating

anonymous_user_b9532c9a · July 6, 2015, 6:46pm

[=;324765]

I really don’t get this. if it broken why is it not fixed?

I have done evry thing by the letter to the letter and still get a black landscape

https://www.dropbox/s/hify8gz0r4g9l2g/Screenshot%202015-07-05%2010.53.21.png?dl=0

I can NOT see whats wrong with the setup my map is 4033 and my images are 4092, I believe (and see it)
UE4 will not upload images that are not power of 2, So as I understand it a 4033 map as to have 4096 images

https://www.dropbox/s/5bthjler7nb4m9e/Screenshot%202015-07-05%2010.53.39.png?dl=0

If I load the normals for the textures I get a lovely black flashing screen

Sorry I’m getting angry, I spend money buying assets only to find that people don’t put a readme
or a little text to explain the install, NO Doc’s at all, they and Epic take your money, (Realictic Female Animations
doesn’t even have a blue print let alone any install help, Landscape Material pack crash’s my editor when I put the
material on my landscape, no instruction on how to use it correctly). I know theres tutorials all over the place, they don’t
relate or the relationshipis NOT always easy to see, beside you pay for a product you exspect a manual. We follow tutorials
to the letter and it doen’t work. very frustrating
[/]

Are you able to paint the landscape using the layer tool in Landscape mode>paint? It looks like this is the initial setup for a landscape paint and what I would expect, then you assign your layers using the + sign next to each layer and paint selected layers over the landscape. You can think of it like a blank canvas that you are filling in with your materials. If you are looking for the landscape to paint layers on import it requires you to import your texture heightmaps at the same time as your overall heightmap and set the paint layers at the time of import as opposed to doing so later. If not, you have to either utilize world aligned blends and math out your layers or paint them on manually as the image you showed would indicate. Here is our documentation on landscape painting:

https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/Engine/Landscape/QuickStart/4/index.html

https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/Engine/Landscape/QuickStart/5/index.html

From reading through your posts, it sounds like what you will want to do is the import option. To do this, import your heightmap through world composition browser, then assign your material to the heightmap. After this, choose which .raw files (these should be your height and/or slope outputs in WM) are assigned to which landscape layer. Once you import and let the shaders compile this should work. I tested it on my end with a very simplistic material and these are the results I got:

&stc=1

Uprentiss · July 6, 2015, 8:07pm

[=;324765]

Sorry I’m getting angry, I spend money buying assets only to find that people don’t put a readme
or a little text to explain the install, NO Doc’s at all, they and Epic take your money, (Realictic Female Animations
doesn’t even have a blue print let alone any install help, Landscape Material pack crash’s my editor when I put the
material on my landscape, no instruction on how to use it correctly). I know theres tutorials all over the place, they don’t
relate or the relationshipis NOT always easy to see, beside you pay for a product you exspect a manual. We follow tutorials
to the letter and it doen’t work. very frustrating
[/]

My BIGGEST issue with the marketplace tbh. I am not buying nothing there anymore until I know they make sure there product works and lets you know at least a basic tutorial tbh

Kiwi-Hawk · July 7, 2015, 3:07am

Thank you for the reply.

Sorry if I sound off and I really don’t mean to diss the software, everything I read seems that even the Pros have trouble
with textureing landscape.

Just so yoyr clear on what I did that resulted in the images in those links

I made the heightmap and exported the splatmap etc with it, the map being 4033 and texture, splats etc 4096
imported the heightmap and got it set in the location with height etc all done made a folder structure
\Landscape\Materials extures
Imported the textures to that textures folder and splatmap to the materials folder with the material
I then edit the material and made that setup you see in the link following this tutorial
https://.com/watch?v=K9WTKK9f1b8
the result was that black landscape.

I wondered if it was the splatmap so I hand made one using
the heightmap to select the shading eg: select by colour range selecting the whites copy paste to a layer
then the grey range I wanted copy paste to a layer and lastly the darker shades to a third layer, I then
copy pasted them into layers in the channels tab and removed the red, blue and green channels renaming
the new ones as need be then changed the image to a 16bit RBG and di the material process again in UE4
the result was a cover that was %90 the blue layer (the lowestlayer) and %10 th dirt (the next layer above the lowest)
the mid layer (Green) and high layer (red) did no show at all.

What I’d really like to be able to do is something as simple as make a material:

for use with a splat or weight map

highest layer (Red Splatmap layer)

Blend
Crack_Rock 0.5
Mossy_Rock 0.3

Blend
Dryed_Crass 0.6
Clover_Grass 0.3

Blend
Wet_dirt 0.6
Wet_Sand 0.4
Sand_Shells 0.2

connect those to a layer_blend either weight_blend or Height_Blend using a weight_map or a heightMap
and lastly drop that on the landscape and have it blend nicely giving the higher number prioity with the lower
numbers being patchy random section over the landscape eg: dryed_crass with patch’s of rich green clover here
and there.

Sorry if I make a standard material and try to paint it, I get the brush filling the whole cell in regtangles I have black patch all
over the place where I’m painting, I can’t see the edges where I’m trying to blend itjust a mess so I gave up opting for the splamat
blend method, I’d like to endup with something like this

https://www.dropbox/s/vhwz2nqxut7l32k/Screenshot%202015-07-06%2016.52.18.png?dl=0

Thats an over veiw from WM

I’m using an i7 4770 @3.8Ghz with 32Gb ram running windoz 7 Ultimate on a 500Gb SSD and has a 4Gb GeFroce 970 video card
Do I need to throw this out? I’m sure there would be some running after my truck arms wide open hopeing for a catch

Edit to add the two splatmaps maybe theyer my issue

https://www.dropbox/s/19etb2mc5ezdm43/Splatmap.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox/s/gxr69qm5ea8et3x/Splatmap.tga?dl=0

I tried two different maps both I got fails

Kiwi-Hawk · July 7, 2015, 4:48am

Heres a thought

The Creation Kit for Skyrim had a much simpler method of textureing landscapes.

A \Landscapes extures folder where you put your textures sure it to only allows 4 textures per cell
but then in Creation Kit you bring upthe editing tool select the texture you want, dirt, grass, rock or
even cobblestone for road and paint your wee heart out. and using 2048x2048 or 4096x4096 textures
the landscape looks great. feel much easyer than making materials and messing about trying to work out
which nodes do what and how to inter connect them

anonymous_user_b9532c9a · July 7, 2015, 2:06pm

[=;326089]

Thank you for the reply.

Sorry if I sound off and I really don’t mean to diss the software, everything I read seems that even the Pros have trouble
with textureing landscape.

Just so yoyr clear on what I did that resulted in the images in those links

I made the heightmap and exported the splatmap etc with it, the map being 4033 and texture, splats etc 4096
imported the heightmap and got it set in the location with height etc all done made a folder structure
\Landscape\Materials extures
Imported the textures to that textures folder and splatmap to the materials folder with the material
I then edit the material and made that setup you see in the link following this tutorial
https://.com/watch?v=K9WTKK9f1b8
the result was that black landscape.

I wondered if it was the splatmap so I hand made one using
the heightmap to select the shading eg: select by colour range selecting the whites copy paste to a layer
then the grey range I wanted copy paste to a layer and lastly the darker shades to a third layer, I then
copy pasted them into layers in the channels tab and removed the red, blue and green channels renaming
the new ones as need be then changed the image to a 16bit RBG and di the material process again in UE4
the result was a cover that was %90 the blue layer (the lowestlayer) and %10 th dirt (the next layer above the lowest)
the mid layer (Green) and high layer (red) did no show at all.

What I’d really like to be able to do is something as simple as make a material:

for use with a splat or weight map

highest layer (Red Splatmap layer)

Blend
Crack_Rock 0.5
Mossy_Rock 0.3

Blend
Dryed_Crass 0.6
Clover_Grass 0.3

Blend
Wet_dirt 0.6
Wet_Sand 0.4
Sand_Shells 0.2

connect those to a layer_blend either weight_blend or Height_Blend using a weight_map or a heightMap
and lastly drop that on the landscape and have it blend nicely giving the higher number prioity with the lower
numbers being patchy random section over the landscape eg: dryed_crass with patch’s of rich green clover here
and there.

Sorry if I make a standard material and try to paint it, I get the brush filling the whole cell in regtangles I have black patch all
over the place where I’m painting, I can’t see the edges where I’m trying to blend itjust a mess so I gave up opting for the splamat
blend method, I’d like to endup with something like this

https://www.dropbox/s/vhwz2nqxut7l32k/Screenshot%202015-07-06%2016.52.18.png?dl=0

Thats an over veiw from WM

I’m using an i7 4770 @3.8Ghz with 32Gb ram running windoz 7 Ultimate on a 500Gb SSD and has a 4Gb GeFroce 970 video card
Do I need to throw this out? I’m sure there would be some running after my truck arms wide open hopeing for a catch

Edit to add the two splatmaps maybe theyer my issue

https://www.dropbox/s/19etb2mc5ezdm43/Splatmap.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox/s/gxr69qm5ea8et3x/Splatmap.tga?dl=0

I tried two different maps both I got fails
[/]

I think the problem is the workflow. This video is from last year and there have been a significant amount of changes to the landscape and landscape materials workflow. Try these steps instead:

In your WM file, change your RGB outputs to .RAW height outputs. This will save each piece of data as an individual file instead of all as one image.
Remove the splat map from your material entirely. Switch the layer blend to landscape layer weight nodes for each layer.
When you import your tiled landscape via World Composition Browser, assign your material before importing and assign each material layer to its’ respective RAW files (this will appear on the import screen).
Import and load the tiles.

Once you do this, the materials should be prevalent on your landscape and you should be able to set up your layer weights to paint if you need to make any alterations. Make sure that your RAW and RAW16 files are the same size or they will not accurately match up. Both should be a power of 2 so make the landscape resolution 4096 as well.

I’m following the steps listed on this wiki page: https://wiki.unrealengine/World_Machine_to_UE4_using_World_Composition and have found it to be consistently viable. I would highly recommend following along with it as it is efficient and a significantly easier workflow overall to attempting to use splatmaps after importing.

Kiwi-Hawk · July 8, 2015, 6:52am

Iam I to assume that the 3 slop selectors are set 3 gradients eg 90Deg to 46Deg next at 47Deg to round 30Deg and lastly 31Deg to 0
giving me a weight map on each output or are they all the same, details like this get left out often times

Besides that is for a tiled Persistent Level Setup

I have ONE 40334x4033 heightmap just one that has my Island on it

anonymous_user_b9532c9a · July 8, 2015, 1:31pm

[=;327040]

Iam I to assume that the 3 slop selectors are set 3 gradients eg 90Deg to 46Deg next at 47Deg to round 30Deg and lastly 31Deg to 0
giving me a weight map on each output or are they all the same, details like this get left out often times

Besides that is for a tiled Persistent Level Setup

I have ONE 40334x4033 heightmap just one that has my Island on it
[/]

The slope values are dependent upon your specific map, though you can easily set them to height values or other modifiers as you see fit. The way it works is that each output for a raw file will give you a separate weight map based on the values you select. For example:

&stc=1

Here I was setting up the value for my first weightmap, which I determined would be my “grass” layer weight. I did the same for my “rocks” (using the terms loosely, they were simply constant 3 vectors). You can import a single landscape file with the same import settings through the landscape modes menu instead of World Composition. The main thing to keep in mind is that when doing it this way, ensure that you have the layer info already prepared before importing or you will get errors. To do so, press the + sign next to each layer and assign it a weight blended layer.

&stc=1