been looking abound at this and I have a few question on how people crate there “world” and tips would be good
looking at programs that are terrain generators they all they seem to do is crate the hightmap and the game and textures for UE4, while handy the majority of the work still seems to be in UE4 and your 3d program, that makes some of the programs quite expensive for something you really don’t use much. also these programs make nice looking landscapes they don’t rally look game friendly, buy that I mean you still need more detail in the land scape to make it look nice up closes and practical. witch means you still need to import it to or something like that to crate a really good game Map, so I guess could you import as a hole mesh and texture from your terrain generators to your 3d program to UE4 .
and any
the sculpting tool seems fairly useless when crating a terrain or trying to edit it, it always seems to look like I’ve been at it with the sculpting tool. any Tips?
any tips on high maps would be nice, I can crate a high map in Photoshop using assets that I have had on my PC for 10 years from when I use to play simcity4 and have to make high maps to crate a landscape. but they never seem to work out they always import weird and ever smooth( they look lumpy) I use the 16bit format, but im probably doing it all wrong ant tips?
Generate height texture and mask texture in World Machine to create base for realistic and believable landscape. I call it “Base pass”.
It could be any other software, but World Machine is some sort of “standart” because of low price and great output. In my opinion - totally worth buying if you plan to create different landscape regularly.
It’s important to use “physically generated” masks to make use of generated landscape, masks + height works together pretty well.
Import into Zbrush and create a little bit more detailed landscape with nice “major” features. So called “Beauty pass”.
I use custom made brushes(Like model and sculpt rock, then bake it as a brush) and “projections” of realistic rock/cliff height maps to warp terrain in the form I want.
This guy explains some important stuff about sculpting environment models, including mentioned problem “always seems to look like I’ve been at it with the sculpting tool”
Load into Unreal Engine, make nice shader and adjust with sculpting tool when it needs for the sake of gameplay + paint some diversity with layer painter.
You can use 16 bit format, but I believe that height map was generated as 8-bit and converting it to 16-bit won’t help, because DATA is lumpy.
I personally would recommend you to create your heightmaps in worldmachine or terresculptor (it’s easy and they will look very good) - after I did that, I add more detail with the landscape tool in the UE4. There you always have to use the erosion and smooth tool, because otherwise it wont look good/natural (It takes some time till you can create good landscapes just with the landscape tool)
(It takes some time till you can create good landscapes just with the landscape tool)