Creating Detailed Low Level Landscapes

[TimeSpirits]

1. How was this darker dirt blended so naturally into the lighter dirt (i.e. in the depressed ground)?

I’m not entirely sure what you are asking here, you can setup your Landscape Material so you can have 4 layers per component painted down. To replicate a darker/lighter dirt what I typically do is run the dirt material through a Multiply node with a vector parameter in the other slot. Name this DarkerDirt and do whatever you want with it. This way you aren’t adding textures to your material, only another layer.

2. How were these flowers blended onto the other grass texture? (I assume the flower grass and the base grass are two different textures overlapped)

For the flowers, set your blending to Height Map for that one, and put your mask in the alpha channel. This way, only the flower petals will be painted down and the grass will be seen inbetween.

3. How was this third dirt texture placed down (I’m guessing it could be done via spline + raise/lower ground)? Or it could be painted on using the tessellated advanced material I bought?

I can’t tell anything special about that texture from the shot, looks like another texture.

4. How have they mapped a darker texture to effect the base of the static mesh foliage (I’ve seen this done on walls and buildings - I’m guessing it isn’t hand done)?

Again, hard to tell from the shot, it could be ambient occlusion- but you seem to think it is a darker texture? I need to see another angle.