Hi, I have recently decided on the type of terrain i want for my game, but am struggling to start working on it. I cant figure out whether i need software to create a terrain or heightmap which will be imported to UE4, or whether i can create the terrain well in UE4 alone. I really dont know what to do. I can see you can create terrain in UE4, but i think i would find it easier to do in a different software, but i really dont know! I am new to game development and cant really afford anything expensive at the moment.
I have Google`d about a bit and found some software, for example:
Terragen 3 - $199 (£119) in order for commercial use
World Machine - $99 (£60) for commercial use
L3DT - $35 (£20) for commercial use
Vue Pioneer - Free but has a watermark and no commercial use
I think what i want is something that lets me plan out and create a terrain which i can adjust and edit as i go. I dont need to be able to plant vegetation and such, i will do that in unreal. I have no experiance with any of these software.* I need to be able to use it commercially in UE4 aswell.* The only one i could actually afford there would be L3DT, and Possibly World machine.
Sorry if this is a really confusion question but can anyone possibly point me in the right direction and advise me on what i would be looking for. If anyone has experience with these programs can you tell me anything about them. Lastly if you know of any other software that is relatively cheap which can do this please can you say. Thanks and sorry for the question.
Check out TerrSculptor. It’s still in alpha/pre-beta phase (and probably will be for quite some time) and is free for commercial use until it hits final release. http://www.lilchips.com/wiki/doku.php
World machine is good, learning curve is middle of the road. Terragen is also good, learning curve is pretty steep.
Personally, I’ve used a DEM>Blender pipeline in the past with good luck, but the plugin might be a bit out of date now.
Here, let me share the results of my current workflow for terrain in Blender:
The workflow for this was pretty simple, I made a few sculpt brushes from greyscale heightmaps which you can find a lot of online. Then I sub divided a plane and used Dynamic Topology for the sculpt. After I was happy with it, I baked it out to a heightmap so I could use it with the terrain engine in UE (as opposed to a static mesh). I find that this workflow gives me more flexibility than going with a completely parametric approach.
Scape: 5. Overview and downloads .This is a landscape sculptor,it has some good noise effects that generates peaks and other effects,but it doesn’t have a fully working erosion effect.it’s totally free and has the source to boot in the site.
has almost all of the needed export formats can create big terrains but if you want to change the size from 4kx4k you need to go to folder settings/startup.conf and change the column and rows to the size you want
