Help with painting texture using slope

Aya_Tendou · September 30, 2020, 5:36pm

Hello,

I am new here, and a beginner with Unreal.

I have worked for years with Terragen, so I understant about nodes and some settings there, but I find Unreal much more difficult…

I recently downloaded Gokhan Karayadi’s exellent Procedural Landscape Ecosystem World (with the 4 seasons), but his quick tutorials are too light for me…
All the elements in his package are locked on the same slope angle restriction (In Terragen, I can easily access this setting for every element placed in my world) and I
have no idea how to get to the slope settings and change them individually for every element in Unreal (Rocks, snow, grass, etc… need to have different slope settings)
I would be very grateful if someone can help me find (or set up) those settings…

Thanks a lot!

presto423 · September 30, 2020, 8:53pm

Do the short tutorial below (Painting Landscape Materials), and then thoroughly read the Landscape Materials doc page. I’m a beginner in landscapes too, and one of the first things to learn is how to generate terrain and paint on it. If it’s too beginner for you because you’ve worked in Terragen and other programs, then I suggest at least thoroughly reading Landscape Materials and looking for a few nodes / tips for how to create slope-based materials and placing of objects.

Painting Landscape Materials

Landscape Materials

“Any network of material expressions can be connected to the Layer inputs in place of a simple TextureSample. This makes it possible to do more complex effects such as transitioning from detail textures to larger macro textures depending on the distance the layer is being viewed from.”

Aya_Tendou · October 1, 2020, 7:59pm

Hello Presto423!

Thanks for your message!
Unfortunatly, yes, it might be too beginner for me as I am searching for a way to modify existing very complexe nodes… As far as I understood those nodes from looking at them, there are 2 slope constraints, one for the grass and one for the rocks layer beneath it, but every other layers are locked on those 2 slopes constraints. If they are too low, I can’t paint anything on my terrain. There is no way (as I understand) to add more slope constraints to other materials as those 2 slope nodes are connected to a node which has only 2 entries…
The solution I am thinking of is to set that slope constraint on it’s maximum, import the textures of the layers I want to change and paint them manually… On my whole map, which is kind of very large! XD
Placing things manually often becomes the last solution… I’m doing it a lot on Terragen too! Haha

What software do you use on generating terrains?

Thanks a lot for your help and advices!

presto423 · October 1, 2020, 11:12pm

I’m beginning in UE, but there’s another potential solution using vertex colors. I think you’re going to need to create a material function that checks for terrain z values, comparing multiple points (either the z value of 1 to a 2nd point, or 3 points) for change in z value. I’m not sure how the math and nodes would be connected in it, yet vertex colors are used to paint certain textures / materials based on the xyz values of meshes. There’s a number of nodes that are for checking changes in xyz values of meshes, so it could be a matter of referencing the terrain in regard to xyz, and then enabling a vertex color painting or object placing via an automatic tool or something. There’s also CryEngine, which could suffice for importing the terrain and adjusting objects and textures based on slope. UE seems more capable for a custom solution, though.

Aya_Tendou · October 4, 2020, 5:02pm

Hello!

Thanks for your advices!
I’m kind of lost in front of so much complexity! Terragen seems so easy compared to Unreal !
But even then, I had an other problem: The limits of my computer… It’s not really a good one and Unreal often crashes when
asked to do things that use too much resources…
For painting my textures on my terrain, I think for the best results I’ll need to do it myself manually from an automatic start…

A friend showed me a few days ago Magic Map Material Maker in the Unreal store… I really need this tool to solve all my terrain problems,
but my computer is not powerfull enough to run it…

For Cry Engine, I’ll see that later… It’s very hard to learn a software… I started with Unreal, I’ll stay with Unreal until I’ll fell more confident about it.
Moreover, as I progress in Unreal, new problems and challenges show up, and I need time to work them out… (And time is a luxury when you work all day!)

See you!