Heightmap is small

Hello again guys,

I want to make my heightmap huge and then use level streaming, but the problem is, I can’t make it so my landscape looks seamless…
From world machine I have made my landscape 40km x 40 km on 4k resolution, exported as raw16, imported in ue4 and still looks small… How can I make huge? It must have been something I missed…

Thanks in advance!

Here is how my terrain looks when imported:

Here you can easily see the other side (edge) of the terrain… That’s why I say it small

And here are my stats when importing

I have so many ideas about texturing my heightmap, I have so many things in my mind that I want to do and all these days I struggle on how to make it large… It’s holding me back badly…

Just add some more mountains/hills so that it looks more natural + always play your level from the view of the player! (then it will look different) + when you add meshes to the level, it will also look much larger :slight_smile:

Change the XY scale of the landscape. Default is 100x100, which means that each heightmap pixel is 100x100 centimeters large in game world.
If you want 40 km * 40 km map with a 4k * 4k heightmap, you need to scale up the landscape XY to 1000 x 1000.

So that’s the trick? Playing with the XY scale? I’ll try it when I’m at my pc! How do you make the calculations based on the km’s of the map and the resolution and come up with how much you need to put the scale?

Yes, thanks for telling me, but I know this. I took a pic from it’s starting pose as I wanted to show you how small is my landscape…

What do you mean how I came up with the calculations? It’s simple math. Size of landscape in UUs = landscape heightmap resolution * scale.

It surely is simple math, but I cannot underestand WHAT you calculate to rightly adjust heightmap XY scale.
I’m asking this because I want to make a new heightmap with 2k resolution and even more km’s.

What are UUs you say in the size of landscape? Then you multiply the 4k x 4k resolution and this outcome you again multiply it with which scale?

I thought of a solution but I don’t know if it’s gonna be ok, so I’ll share here with the experts!
I am thinking of making a terrain with unreal engine’s tool to make a simple massive-endless terrain and after that applying mountain models made in 3d program like blender or maya like the video here. What do you guys think? And if that’s a good solution, why poeple bother making heightmaps as it’s a fuss?

Also can anyone tell me, how big landscapes like skyrim’s are beeing made? What length do they have?

Well as you said: you made a 40 km x 40 km map in world machine or some other software and exported that map as a 4k heightmap. The question then is: how big do you need to scale the landscape in UE 4 so that it’s the same 40 km x 40 km?
You could guestimate it by adjusting the scales and then using middle mouse to measure the landscape dimension. But since now you know that the scale directly affects the spacing between landscape vertices, you can calculate the scaling factor of the landscape so that it becomes 40 km x 40 km.

I thought that as I export it from world machine as 40km x 40km it will be auto-adjusted in the unreal editor… Didn’t know that I will have to scale it again in the editor…
Ok, so I’ll have to play with the scale for it to meet my needs… But how will I know how many km’s long it will be if for example I’ll make the scale X 2000 and Y 2000 ? The scale is measured on what?

Very few file formats contain data about the scale relative to real world units. Heightmaps are usually simple images like any other image on the internet and it’s up to the software to interpret that data correctly.

Thanks for taking the time to answer me mate, but you don’t really answer my REAL questions…

Can anyone answer this?

And this as well please?

Sorry, I thought I made it clear already. I’ll try to walk you through it.

So did you try it? Setting X and Y scale to 2000 and 2000 will scale the landscape so that each vertex of the landscape is 2000 UUs away from each other. In other words, each landscape quad will be 2000 * 2000 unreal units large.

Since your heightmap is 4k * 4k (or something like that), you just multiply each dimension with the appropriate scale. Width with X scale and so on…

Assuming 4k means 4000: 4000 * 2000 unreal units = 8000000 unreal units. Since the default world scale in UE 4 is 1 unreal unit = 1 centimeter, it means that the terrain is 8000000 cm * 8000000 cm large, which is 80 km * 80 km.

That’s a really nice explanation! Thanks!

The only thing I can’t underestand is this

So 1cm is 1UU (unreal unit) so 8000000 cm is 8000000 UUs (unreal units) ok this far. But 8000000 is not 80 km, it is 8.000 m ( as 1000 cm is equal to 1m and 1000m is equal to 1km).
Or the other way around:
1000cm 1m
8000000cm x;


1000x=8000000
x=8000m

So how can it be 80km?

Thanks in advance!

But btw jonimake you rock! I tried 1000 * 1000 XY scale and I got some wonderful results!
Here you go:



Skyrim’s landscape has been built with the same way, what do you think jonimake? Maybe a 20k XY scale? or maybe more? But hell, I make 5 mins to go from one point to another…

1m == 100cm

Oh how silly I am, of course…

Hello

If you work with world machine than it is simple if you set your landscape size lets say to 40KM by 40KM and the hight 2560M.
i would sugest working like this, if you build a 4k map than you need to upscale that to 40KM so i do it like this.
40000 / 4096 * 100 that ill give you 976.5625 that is your scale.
you hight is also very inportent remember this 0.1953125 ,that you need to multiply by the hight from world machine or a other program so.
2560 * 0.1953125 makes 500 that is your vertical number.
i hope it makes sence, remeber more than 20 by 20km you will start to exeed the skybox and it is big realy big bigger than gta 5 map almost and i see the weird thing on the side of the you can get rid of then by exprting the landscpape or building in these values.
2017
4033
8129
than you will get rid of those sides.

anymore question?