I’ve imported a heightmap (PNG file) for my landscape, but then sculpted additional details within Unreal. Now I want to create a texture as a mask for the foliage tool, so I can mask my river bed. So I want to export the new, edited heightmap. When I export the height map, though, it exports each landscape streaming proxy as a separate PNG file. Is there any way to export the heightmap as a single PNG file (for the entire landscape), so that I don’t have to re-assemble each PNG image into one large image?
Or maybe there are better/other ways to mask the river bed in my level? Thanks in advance.
I was able to use a landscape layer as an exclusion layer in the static mesh of the foliage to keep the foliage out of the river bed (since the river bed has a different texture applied). I think that will work fine for now.
In 4 at least, I believe the export result depends on overall tile size.
Sub 8km total if you select all tiles in the level editor and export you used to get a single png.
Up above that you hit the texture size limits, so i think the engine would revert to just separating each tile.
I doubt even the newer export system has the intelligence built into it that would allow it to export the max size it can with multiple tiles selected of different sizes (or individually smaller than 8km) when the overall size exceeds the 8k texture size limit.
Matter of fact, ue5 us just overall worse in all landscape aspects so far. Wouldn’t be surpised if the export wont work the same as ue4 used to.
For not painting grass or whatever on layers, you can export each tile’s paint layer to use as an alpha map in the material or anywhere else.
For Painting the landscape, most professionals will use a GIS program to produce a black/white PNG generally based on terrain incline, which then gets sliced up into tiles to load into each level as the mask for the paint layer.
Thats trivial to do when you have the good heightmap source file(s) saved externally and a general understanding of the workflow.
And probably really hard to understand if you don’t even know what a GIS program is.
You may find some tutorials for ue4 on this by using the word “spat map”.
99% of what you find is questionable at best, so
Thanks for the comments. I know it’s a convenience thing I’m asking for, but it might be nice to have. My map is less than 2km, but it exports about 15 PNG files, which I don’t want to merge into one image each time I make a change in landscape sculpt mode. But again, I can get around it, and I probably should be looking for other solutions. It’s probably just a nice to have. I will check out the spat maps. Thanks!
There should be a option to export as single file in UE5.3 if i remember correct.
But you could also import the tiles to something like GAIA-World Creator-World Machine and then export it back out as one file…
But hostely, if you landscape is larger then 4033x4033 either 8129x8129 or larger. Then you should keep it as tiled. To create a texture mask you can just import the heightmap tiles as .PNG to photoshop or GIMP as separate layers to a new “Image/project” that is the same resolution as your total resolution of the tiles (Landscape) They are named X_0_0 up to something like X_3_3 that equals a total of 16 tiles. Then if one of the tiles are 512x512 your total resolution equals to 8192x8192. It can also be a total of 8129x8129 And each til would be 508(9)x508(9) You would have to look at the png files details under the file properties.
So make a new image in GIMP/PS at the exact resolution as your landscape in unreal (Under landscape and manage you will see what the resolution is)
Then add each tile to it’s own layer, and start with 0_0 and 3_3(your last) on the bottom.
Now drag them to out so they are placed in the correct order in the canvas window.
This example is 4 images at 8192x8192px each. Total image size is 16258x1625px
0_0 is upper right corner. 0_3 would be upper left corner. So 1_0 under 0_0 and so on.
Then when done you can merge all layers together into one image, and then export it to PNG at minimum 16bit grayscaled.
Now you can just paint your mask on top of this as a new layer, and export it at the same resolution. As long as only the area you want to mask is white. Then it will only cover that area. Might be good to use a non weight blended material layer. if you intend to mask/paint only that area first, and perhaps use another mask to add more. But if not use weight blended so you can also handpaint later and export it as a weightmap mask for later.
