I would like to share the way I did this. I am modeling some realistic terrain with lakes and wanted to use the NOAA depth charts to match the depths on my landscape. For context, I have my landscape and then a plane that is the water/waves.
Here’s my process:
- Download the image you want to use.
- Import into your content (wherever you want to store it, doesn’t matter)
- Create a new material with an easy to remember name (e.g. M_Lake_Depth_LakeName)
- In the material, add a Texture Sample node and use the image for the texture.
- Connect the RGBA output to the Base Color input.
- (Optional) Add a parameter to change the Opacity.
- In your scene, create a basic Plane object.
- Set the texture of the Plane to your new texture.
- Scale the plane to match your terrain.
- Show/Hide layers as needed or change the Z height of the plane to intersect the landscape. You could also raise the plane above everything and change its opacity.
Hopefully this helps others with an extremely simple way to use reference images!