Landscape from Blender to Unreal - Which Method is Best?

Development World Creation
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Hi, I am new to Unreal and trying to understand the different methods for creating landscapes to use in Unreal. Sometimes I need to import a landscape or an sculpted object from Blender into Unreal while other times I may only need to sculpt in Unreal. So I have a few Questions

  1. If I create a detailed sculpted sphere or terrain in Blender and want to import it into Unreal what are the best ways to do this? What do the pros use? I am trying to determine if I need a low poly mesh etc.
  • Do I leave it as is and just import it as a nanite mesh in Unreal?
  • Do I create a normal map then import the low poly mesh.
  • Do I bake the Displacement and use that in Unreal?
  • Do I create a height map, then use that in Unreal?

There are so many ways to do this and I am trying to determine what the best method is. If someone can please offer this newbie some constructive tips and or links I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

1 Like
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Hi Lm1,

Good questions, I haven’t worked much with landscape or ‘landscape-size meshes’ in a while, so my knowledge is incomplete but I do have few thoughts.

High level: There are optimizations built into the landscape system. (Enable wireframe and watch the tessellation as you move camera around) , World Partition (for really big worlds) looks to rely on stitching landscapes together BUT from what I can tell, you could use meshes in these grids instead.

Nanite mesh as landscape is an interesting idea, but may be considered an inadvisable workflow. Collision testing (your feet on the ground) and cost of rendering far-off tris are in my mind. (I’d try this with the “Detailed Sculpted Sphere” you mentioned though, sounds like a planet)

For normal maps, this would be handled in-engine with materials (your grass/rocks would have their own normal maps in material editor)

I don’t think “displacement” (like vertex offset/world position offset) has any place in a conversation about landscapes.

Height-maps would be a great path forward if you’re more comfortable sculpting in Blender. I’ve seen many ‘landscape generator’ tools that use this pipeline. This would probably be considered the ‘best’ method since you’d end up using the UE system that’s purpose built for landscapes.

Hope that helps!

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Thanks very much. Yes I am thinking height maps might be the way to go. I just wasn’t sure if overhangs would be captured in Height Maps etc.

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Overhangs cannot be captured with heightmaps, also it is not possible to sculpt overhangs into Landscape, but check this classic thread for some ideas. (Making holes in landscapes and using meshes, smaller landscape actors that have been rotated)