Hi all,
I am an absolute beginner with Unreal Engine 4, I did have a previous account on here but I got so fed up with understanding UE4, I quit, however I am determined to learn the ropes, the thing is, I have no idea where to start on learning what I want to but the good this is, I know what I want to do and learn. I’m also dyslexic and find things like this very daunting frustrating to learn but once I got the hang of something, I am fine with it.
What is it I want to achieve right away?
- I want to learn to import DEM Height data from a map and into UE4 to life scale.
- Landscape and decorate the map with fields, trees etc… Just basic stuff to start with
Eventually I want to learn to build life size scale buildings and texture them. What is the long term goal, I am a railway enthusiasts and I regularly build routes on Train Simulator 2020 (KuJu engine), however I would like to learn some basic Unreal Engine 4 skills for when Train Simulator World 2020 World Editor comes out, which is powered by Unreal Engine 4.
I know at some point I will have to reach out to people who are more skilled in designing 3D animated trains, coding, sounds etc, which will be way beyond my knowledge zone.
For the past few years I’ve been trying to import the Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England, it measures 25 miles/40.23Km wide (west to east) when the tide is out and 15 miles /24.14Km south to north when the tide is out. I’ve been able to import it in but it gets all ‘squashed up’ and looks like a spiky mountain range rather than rolling curved hills. Forums and videos talk about something called “Level Rendering”, where a map is too big for area you can cut it up and convert it to smaller areas so not all of it loads at once but you can bind it to texturise it? I don’t know if this is true or if I’ve got confused somewhere along the lines? I think this is what I am referring to: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/…ser/index.html
I tried again today, with the same success of spiky mountains, I’ve followed a number of YouTube videos and Reddit suggestions but because I don’t know the process prior, if there is any, to DEM importing or half the things that are mentioned, I have to guess what they’re referring too and this is where I am going wrong, some of these videos are years out of date and some are a year old.
The sources I have read and watched are;
- Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial - Import Real World Locations Into UE4 - YouTube (https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengin…rt_real_world/)
- Unreal Engine 4 - Import Real World Terrain (UE4 Tutorial) - YouT
- Build your terrain in Unreal Engine using realworld map data & height maps - YouTube
- Real World Terrains in Unreal Engine - YouTube - I’ve tried this before but with no success
- https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengin…r_video_games/ (Tangram Heightmapper) - This seems to work for me but it causes the spiky mountains
- https://forums.unrealengine.com/comm…ess-than-a-day - This peaked my interest but the free trial is part of a paid subscription - so I ruled this out.
- I’ve read the UE4 Technical manual but I have no idea where to start on this, don’t want to jump to DEM if there is something I should of done way before hand
There seems to be so many different ways to import DEM data but nothing really seems to work for me or goes in how it should.
I do have access to Adobe Photoshop CS6 if things need to be edited in any shape or form for file conversion.
I am, if I can start mastering parts of UE4 to hopefully turn it into a career at some point in the future. A career in gaming is a long term ambition but at the moment I am currently training in NVQ Level 4 IT support so I have technical knowledge, though not much of that transfers to gaming other than building my own gaming rig.
I would be very grateful for any assistance, helps, tips, pointers or someone to assist in any shape or form.
Thank you.