Unreal Engine 4 is completely open source, so yes that is all possible. But two times the size of DF? Thats like 320,000 square kilometers, unless its like minecraft, based on blocks, you will never be able to detail all of that.
With streaming (aka persistent loading) you could make an environment as big as you want, or until hard drive space runs out which ever comes first.
Blueprints “is” C++ coding exposed but since the engine code is available if what you need is super special I’m sure someone can pop it in for you upon request.
My question is, and I’m on HOLD until I can figure this mess out, is how do I ‘stitch’ if that is the right word, say 1 very detailed terrain that I imported ( 2000x2000x1000 but atm FLAT around edges), with 3 others right next to it ? THe 3 others are blank, and I will be creating as I go for the world I want to create, much like other well known engines do their mmorpg stuff ( wow maybe ?).
Trouble is, I need to be able to texture paint and sculpt terrain without being limited design wise by ‘borders’. I’ve tried this in other editors shall we say, and the borders make things a huge mess where painting in one and trying to ‘flow’ into the other, doesnt’ work in the slightest , same with sculpting,it raises fine on one terrain, but right next to it at the border of another one and it stops dead cold ( or shows empty air where its ‘raised’ the edge straight up). There’s a unity plugin that does it, but the author isn’t updating it anymore , that’s life. I’m more drawn to Ue4, so Im here asking how I might achieve this, or if coding is mandatory.
My hope, was that I could achieve this now, so that I could then continu designing the world according to my storyline, because unlike other games, I do not want a ‘load’ screen which breaks up the immersion factor .
I would try making your terrain in another program and rendering to a heightmap that you could then break apart into pieces and use to create your separate terrain meshes. I’m not sure if it would line up exactly, but it would be closer than trying to paint across it.
World machine would be the best best for that as I understand one can use ‘mosaic’ mode to bring into ue4 ?
Trouble is with wm you can’t really do edits like you need to, for a advanced looking terrain ( think questing design, etc.).
Also, for a huge world, with continuity from one ‘zone’ to another like wow does ( great example ), the idea of making my terrain in another program, only works for zone ‘1’, as then trying to maintain continuity and bringing in zone ‘2’, is going to mandate being able to stitch terains together on edges and have LOD work out as well. NOt a simple task I guess…
I realize world browser is there and 'beta’ish atm. I saw the video, but there is nothing about being able to make edits from one terrain chunk to another and maintain shape between borders.
I also realize UE4 is new so I don’t expect it to have the kitchen sink , but if anyone has other ideas, please let me know
I asked here, because the discussion was centering around ‘streaming’ which at least is a big part of the picture for such a project.
I’m not sure the issues you’re seeing—if you sculpt a terrain in another program you won’t be limited by size, then you render to a heightmap, that map you would then break up into chunks to make multiple terrains in UE4, each terrain should lineup correctly, just have to make sure that your terrain is the way you want it before you render your heightmaps because changes you make once it’s in UE4 will make it difficult to make sure the edges line up, like you said.
Break up into chunks, where ? Or are you saying that UR4 does that part via its streaming/lod code or the app itself after export does it ?
The only thing I’m aware of for working with a seamless env similar to this is the new world browser tool.
HOw about if I want to ‘add’ more terrain ,even though I start out with something fairly large, into UE4, because then I would have to find some way to ‘stitch’ borders and make sure LOD and streaming continue to work and that sculpting or painting IN UE4, at or near borders would keep working
Sorry, just making sure about these things before I get involved , and find out I’m stuck ( since im not a aged programmer as many here prob. are) and nowhere to go ( short of hiring people…and we don’t all have huge budgets, yet )
So, the issue is that you’ve got multiple terrains and you want the edges to match correctly, but you can’t because when you sculpt across the edges it doesn’t match.
Solution is to use a heightmap instead of sculpting in UE4, you can create a heightmap for all of your terrain meshes together in a different program, and then break it up into multiple textures and use each to create a new terrain in UE4.
Also, if you really need a large world you wouldn’t want to sculpt it by hand inside the editor unless you have infinite time in your hands. I can understand the need to tweak a 2x2 landscape, but for anything bigger than that you should follow what darthviper said. You can also combine zbrush and world machine to get the topography you want and have it tile properly.
Also, you might consider using WorldMachine Layouts for editing your terrain. Using these you can “imprint” things like roads, rivers, flat circular any many other things to your heightmap.
TO keep this simple instead of replying twice to different people:
Darth said to use a heightmap instead, which is precisely what I imported…a 16bit heightmap I made elsewhere having ( not world machine, a 3d modeler I used to then render a heightmap and create a 16bit one in PS > raw file.
That’s fine, but what dark is talking about isn’t crystal clear, as I have no idea what he meant by, break it up into different textures, using what process ? If WM thatg’s fine, but there you are only getting procedurally generated worlds, and often those are SO over the top generic as to not work for what Im doing. I need fine grained control, only a ‘modeling’ package can offer ( not just simple objects/splines), which is why I asked if world browser could handle this going across borders and being able to handle painting and ‘sculpting’ ( final touches ?) without incident.
Also you mention world machine and z brush, but don’t give any info on how to achieve desired results, could you therefore elaborate, or point me to a tutorial or such ? Yes,not a active e zbrush user, atm]
Ty everyone for helping, this ‘newb’ status is a real grunt deal , but I know UE4 can help me achieve goals once I wrap my head around the pertinent framework details.
I"ve already make a test world in WM and exported it seamlessly into chunks, but I’d have no idea on how to do the zbrush/wm combo ,wm does export tiles, so Im n ot sure what you were getting at with zbrush, unless zbrush can import tiled worlds exported from WM where I can then, add the ‘detail’ I want and reexport into tiles into ue4 ?
You just open up your heightmap in photoshop and break it up into pieces, like if it’s 8192x8192 you could break that into 4 4096x4096 textures, then you would have 4 terrain meshes and the edges should line up correctly
Lets say you want to make an 8k map with tiling 4k pieces and you also want to have control over the topology for level design. You can use Zbrush or Mudbox to sculp the base details of your map(like where a hero mountain should be and roughly in which shape, or where will the roads pass, etc.) then export that heightmap to World Machine. And then add finer details like erosion and noise on top of that heightmap. Then you can tell World Machine to split that landscape into 4 pieces in 4k resolution.
