How to do terrain on top of floating platforms / plateaus and cliffs?

I love the landscape tools. They are one of the reasons why I love to use UE5. But one thing that keeps confusing me is how to make smaller, mor organically-shaped patches of landscape wherever I need it. A good way to describe it would be to look at the game Omno.


Omno is full of cases where the world is vert vertical, but the walkable space always feels organic, like it was designed using the landscape tools.

Even the tops of cliffs and distant, OOB level features are like this. How do I make isolated platforms and cliffs have a natural design? Is the Omno dev using the UE landscape tools? Or do you think he used his 3D tool?

You can use the landscape tool to make little sections of landscape. It doesn’t have to be a huge sprawling plain ( that everyone seems to think is necessary ).

You can also make as many little landscapes as you like. You can always add one here:

( 4.27, but the concept holds ).

PS: those background moutains are meshes, though… :wink:

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Thanks. I think that the landscape educational contnet is more focused on large, open worlds than smaller, more detailed platforming levels. Thanks for you answer!

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Yes, everybody’s obsessed with infinitely large landscapes. For puzzle games ( which I make, and like ), pretty much useless…

PS: You can also use meshes for these sections of landscape. Might be more efficient. Very easy to make in Blender.

They might look like cutesy little bits of terrain, but if they have other things surrounding them, they could well be square. It’s just the bit you can’t see is poking out the other side of the cliff! :smiley:

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Yeah, It’s unfortunate. If you have any tips on making levels like that, I’d be happy to hear them! Environment/level design is not my strong suit.

See above.

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Thanks again.

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I’m curious on how performance would be with just using meshes as landscape from Blender. I bet if I ever ran into a performance issue, Nanite could help.

It doesn’t have to be super high res. Especially if it’s not large, meshes are fine. I use them, a lot of people do.

The landscape actor always takes a hit on performance ( once you get into layered materials and it’s quite large and hilly ).

That’s very true. The Landscape actor has the foundation for near-infinate worlds, which automatically takes a toll on performance. Thanks for all of your insight.

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