Is there a way to “snap” or sculpt Unreal Engine’s Landscape to match the curvature, and geometry of a static mesh such as an imported topography/landscape like you see here? Sort of like shrink-wrapping it. I’m trying to get the general shape as close as possible using UE’s landscape.
Thank you!
Normally people do the opposite because the landscape system doesn’t really work…
But yea, throw the mesh in blender, output a heightmap from it by creating a exr texture.
In short:
Add mesh. Make new material. Color ramp world height from 0 black to 1 white.
Place a camera in orthogonal view above the landscape.
Render to export as OpenEXR in half float mode which should be 16bit (May need to try full float too).
Open the file in any program that natively supports 16bit after making sure you set the program to 16 bit mode - examples are Krita and Gimp definitely not photoshop.
Then save in png16 format.
And you can subsequently import it into the engine.
Why not Photoshop?
When you say people do the opposite do you mean like the Landscape system doesn’t work well for projects like this that have hard edges?
Photoshop does not work with 16 bit. Their idea of 16 is actually 15+1 leading to corrupted data / visible terracing.
And people use meshes because the landscape system is bad in all ways. From how it works to performance. Its a pice of tech thats been stuck in the early 2000s for 20 years…
That’s weird! Good note on Photoshop, so thank you for that.
I think in 5.4 there supposedly will be some updates for it which should be good. It lacks the precision that some projects need for creating hard edges (for paths or bordered planters for example), which I find annoying. However, I also find the mesh workflow for landscapes just as bad because you end up having to create so many meshes with terrible topology (if it comes from CAD originally) and it’s very inflexible should you ever want to adjust anything.
Just out of curiosity - when using terrain mesh, what is the best workflow to paint materials on it? Would EasyMapper be a good option?
Depends on what resolution you need and the size of the terrain.
I find quixel mixer was pretty decent - but im not sure of its current state or the licensing of things you make with it as of new year.
Substance painter is somewhat decent even it got bought and is being killed by Adobe.
Aside from this.
More bormally i just geberate splat maps based on slope values in Qgis and use them as a packed (4 channel) texture- which essentially replaces your labdscape layer paint.
Hello… I’ve been trying to create a massive photo-realistic terrain using a static mesh that I imported from Maya. I am finding no tutorials for creating textures / materials for this kind of thing in UE5.
If the landscape system is not very usable, then how does one create a massive terrain if not by importing a model made in another program? And, how do you texture it?
We’re flying ~500 feet or 170 meters over the surface, about 15 miles in two minutes.
Thanks.
You have to slice it so that you can cover the surface with 2k size textures at most.
Then you paint it up in any dcc.
Its not hard, nearly everyone does it…
Thank you. I’m querying the forum to see if there’s a way to convert the mesh to a landscape actor, preferably a fast and accurate way 
Not that i know of.
But use Blender to bake a heightmap out ofbyour mesh, then import heightmap to generate the terrain…
Its work intensive.
Which unfortunately is an issue since time is increasingly of the essence.
Alright… thanks.
I think your “splatting” idea is the way I’m going to go – and hope that it works. I started looking for PBR textures tonight for landscape textures. I’ll try to make maybe 3 layers, more if I see a need for the variation, and then create alphas to mask out each layer.
Thanks for the various suggestions.
Hey, I may be late for the party, but I have met the same problem and decided to create a tool for it, you can check it out if youre interested:
May I ask you about this? I’ve been trying this “splatting” method for my static mesh terrain (as I understand it), but the third material layer is wiping out all the ones under it.
For two layers, I have what might turn out to be a working terrain texture, but I’d really like at least two more layers over the base two.
Unfortunately, when I bring in my third material layer blend instance into the layered material instance, it wipes out all textures from my terrain. All of the checkboxes are on, I have a mask for this third layer, and its eyeball icon is checked on. However, I’m only seeing the default, pixelated material on my static mesh terrain. When I turn the third layer’s eyeball icon off, the lower two layers reappear.
Any ideas??
Oh. Simple. You need to set your texture samplers to Shared:Wrap.
The reason you aren’t finding stuff online as solutions likely because it’s the “default grid material” not a “pixellated material”…
Anyway, that’ll sort it.
Ha… thank you! Not sure I’ve ever seen a shared>wrap option, but it’s probably right in front of my face LOL
I think I’m in over my head with this project. I had a year to work on it, but with only 5 or 6 hrs/week to spare, and the entire thing being one big learning curve, I’m concerned I won’t make it.
That being said, I appreciate the help.
A few hours later…
I found it 
And, it’s working 
