Max Landscape Layers per Component

[sanford87]

It breaks when I paint more than 3. Is it the number of instructions I have?

[Sitrec]

@Chosker;167558

atlases are also tricky, and far from being the best solution.
the first thing is that mipmaps have seams so you must spare some extra instructions in nodes to fix this.

secondly, you’re still limited to the amount of textures from *different *atlases.
with a 2048 texture that’s divided into 4x4 you get 16 512x512 textures, and this is barely in the limits of ‘good quality’. if instead you divide your 2048 texture into 2x2 you get 4 nice 1024x1024 textures, but then again it’s only 4 of them, which forces you to use multiple atlases.

now let’s imagine you want 16 materials in your landscape and you’re using a 2x2 atlas setup, which means you need 4 atlases. now if you paint 4 layers -each from a different atlas texture- you’re still using the 4 atlases into one component. since you’re using diffuse+normal+spec this adds up to 12 texture samplers of 2048x2048 textures. hardly optimal and you’d already break the rendering of that component.

different scenario. let’s say you can increase the editor’s limits and allow it to use 4096x4096 textures (should be doable in a config file, IIRC), and you still want your 4x4 atlas setup. this means you get 16 1024x1024 textures which should give you ‘good enough’ quality (unless you’re aiming for AAA graphics). I’d say this setup would be the ideal one, but if you ever need more than 16 materials then using a second atlas might make it too expensive

While it’s not convenient, I do think it’s the best available option. I have gotten mine to tile perfectly without any seams what so ever.
There are threads on the forum and answerhub posts on how to do it.
Nothing prevents you from using 4096² default in the engine, that’s only 13 mip levels, if you want 14 (8192²) you’d need to edit the config files.
I’m using three 8192² sheets with 2048² textures (will probably scale it down to 4096² though as there isn’t any significant quality improvement unless you get really close.
With that I get 16 materials with Base Color, Alpha(for blending), Normal map, Roughness, Heightmap and Ambient Occlusion with the cost of only 3 sheets, you should be able to fit anything you need in that many channels.

This could easily be increased by using 1024² textures in an 8192² sheet giving you enough space for 64 materials.
If you think you can afford the texture size you can easily go higher than that by adding more sets of 3. Both static and dynamic light lets you use 13 samples if you don’t use translucensy, which gives you enough space for 256 1024² textures or 64 if you go with 4096² atlases. I think that should be enough. I know it’s not convenient and you spend some instructions on removing bleeding caused by atlasing and the Frac node but unless you paint tons of layers in the same component each section shouldn’t be very heavy. I think the engine saves your vertex/landscape painting in texture samples though so you might want to only spend 9 or something to be sure, would need to hear about this from Epic though.

[VeganApps]

I think the maximum layer limitation of three is just not up to date!
( I use a material with seven layers with diffuse, height, specular and normal map for each layer. )

My landscape uses seven generated maps from World Machine and on most places all maps are within one component.
And I want to use the layer maps to plant foliage automatically, so I just can’t use atlases.
Please support eight layers to paint the terrain any time soon…

Do you have a link to the Trello card where I can vote for more layers ?

[anonymous_user_be2b0fc6]

It’s also important to have various different layers to support many different physics materials.

[VeganApps]

I have created a feature request.
Please vote for it if you like this idea. Thanks!

[anonymous_user_cbaeb5bb]

@Hourences;27488

These are advanced tricks not easily covered in a forum post.

The way that I have found of combining grey scale textures is with Gimp. The simple explanation is here:

Optimising Textures using Gimp

[Mikevandoorne]

@JohnJ;41277

I noticed on the new Roadmap that Epic has it planned to move to the SM5 sampler limit of 32.

“separate textures and samples, increase SM5 limit to 32”

That would be a welcome change.

Still not changed to 32 or are they planning it or not?

[Mikevandoorne]

status

@JohnJ;41277

I noticed on the new Roadmap that Epic has it planned to move to the SM5 sampler limit of 32.

“separate textures and samples, increase SM5 limit to 32”

That would be a welcome change.

Still not changed to 32 or are they planning it or not?

[cyaoeu]

@Mikevandoorne;741226

Still not changed to 32 or are they planning it or not?

Using shared:wrap or shared:clamp in the texture sampler settings you can use up to 128 unique textures.

[rYuxq]

@cyaoeu

Using shared:wrap or shared:clamp in the texture sampler settings you can use up to 128 unique textures.

Please elaborate! Can you please give us an example?

[hhgemalmaz]

not very relevant to the subject but can you help me with that? I am wondering how objects are defined in materials when painting with materials in paint mode like this. When you paint the ground grass material, the grass comes out. How is this done? What do I need to investigate? Thanks

[Armenian_AK]

@hhgemalmaz Though this may be a late response, it could help anyone who reads it. I think what you’re referring to is texture depth. There is an albedo texture (the base colors) , and usually a normal map and sometimes a specular, detailed normal, and ambient occlusion (+ a few others that could be there I believe). If I’m not mistaken it’s the normal map that gives the texture the illusion of depth, even on a flat surface. The normal maps are usually a bright faded blue colored version of the original albedo texture.

[Armenian_AK]

Also for everyone else,

To avoid the problem - I suggest a simple fix. As was stated before the Unreal Engine has its limitations. This simply means you cannot place more than x amount of textures into one landscape component.
Yes, component! I just gave it a try myself and ran into the same issue. Now my simple fix is it just not use that many textures on one component. Honestly it isn’t really necessary.

Textures on landscapes are generally utilized to paint the background behind meshes such as foliage grass or water from lakes. If you think about it, most of the landscape will not be seen by the players. Their attention will be directed elsewhere. It is simply good measure to put an appropriate color / texture underneath the given meshes to match the environment. Otherwise there is very limited visibility to the actual landscape textures.

I hope I’m not off on my statements, and I also hope that this helps people

[cyaoeu]

@rYuxq

Please elaborate! Can you please give us an example?

There’s not too much to elaborate on. In the material if you click on the texture samplers there’s a setting somewhere to change the sampling from texture asset (or something) to shared:wrap or shared:clamp, it will solve errors where the landscape material stops working (turns into a grid material). The only negative is that the global mip console command stops working when you use those.

[PolyNext]

@cyaoeu

There’s not too much to elaborate on. In the material if you click on the texture samplers there’s a setting somewhere to change the sampling from texture asset (or something) to shared:wrap or shared:clamp, it will solve errors where the landscape material stops working (turns into a grid material). The only negative is that the global mip console command stops working when you use those.

It really works! Thank you so much!