Hey modders!
I’m very new to ark dev kit so I hope this makes sense to you… But I’m having a hard time making a static mesh paintable… I’ve watched a couple youtube videos but not getting anywhere… I’m trying to paint like cave walls… I’m able to drag the static mesh of say something like “Cave02_OptimizedMesh_RB75” unto my landscape but I need to be able to resize/move it around ETC… seems the only way to do that is if there’s a setting file attached to the “Not using Shared Setting” thingy. that seems to be the only way to make a mesh paintable. If there’s another way to make a mesh rotatable/movable I’m not seeing how.
ALSO…
How can we have more materials listed in the “Target Layers” section? It seems that if we choose Mat_Theisland(blah blah)Something(Instance) it only shows about 20 textures, mostly Sand/Pebbles/Beach, but NO snow/Ice ETC… If I drag snow/ICE type textures to the landscape, the ENTIRE landscape becomes snow/ice. But it seems that’s the only other way to get more textures loaded in the “Target Layers” area to choose from. Is the only other choice choosing multiple landcapes and somehow linking them(Streaming?) together?
That is the only way to make a mesh paintable on the landscape. The foliage settings are required, it’s a quirk of how Wildcard have implemented their system. You can still move and scale individual instances though if you click the select button (the arrow) in the foliage tab. Then you can manipulate/translate/scale etc. the painted meshes like any other static mesh.
As for the landscape materials, that isn’t how they work. The landscape material used is actually a instance of the actual landscape material, which is itself a material blueprint. The material instance, being a copy of the original material, holds how the shaders work, what textures to use, etc. However in the master material you can set almost anything to be a parameter, ie. something you can modify by simply changing the setting the the material instance instead of the master material. If you double click a material instance it will have a box on the top that says “parent.” This is the parent material. Scrolling down you can see all the variables exposed in the master material as parameters.
If you click the magnifying glass next to the material sphere shown to the right of “parent” the content browser will find that material (in this case the master material.) Dbl click the master material and you can see how the material itself is set up. If you want to (I’ve done this myself) you can add more landscape materials to the master material, though I would copy the master instead and use the copy. Note that ANY changes made to the master is going to cause the entire material to recompile, which can potentialy take a really long time.
I would familiarize yourself you materials in general and landscape materials if you want to modify them - it is somewhat complicated process and hard to explain.
Ok thanks for replying to my post 
The only thing that confused me a bit was when you mentioned “You can still move and scale individual instances though if you click the select button (the arrow) in the foliage tab.” When I try to paint a mesh seems there’s very little meshes that actually have settings. and even then those can’t be manipulated from what I can see. I’ve kind of given up on the Ark dev kit, I have a pretty good Gamer PC and everything crashes/lags so bad, even loading small levels from TheIsland that I think it’s too painful to deal with, it’s clearly not optimized just like the game… So for now I think i’ll wait and see if ever it gets optimized.
Well performance will be an issue no matter the computer. Not because of optimization, but it’s just something you have to live with when doing these sorts of things.
All meshes can be manipulated, you just have to make a foliage settings file for them if they do not have one.