I have been working with creating terrains and then add trees etc… to it. I have found what I belive are a few bugs:
When using ‘lasso select’ and painting selection, polygons starts flying around. Eventually crashing the GPU (Nvidia GTX 760)
When approaching an object from one end it may suddenly ‘pop’ into view at close distance, even though it is set to disappear at a much greater distance. (And why can’t I fade in objects. Why is it ‘popping’ in and out? )
Clusters of objects may pop into view over a distance that is much lower than the limit to disappear (probably related to the single object popping issue in #2 as well.
When painting objects it may end up underneath the terrain. Especially if there is a larger object underneath the terrain. For instance if that object plays the role of a ‘sea’
Some areas of the terrain (possibly when crossing sections) the player may suddenly be thrown into the air. And when falling down, gain such momentum (and if landing on an angle) that the player continues through the terrain.
I am using version 4.2.0 because I am also using Substance. I don’t know when 4.3 will be available that is (afaik) going to have Substance included.
Thus far I have been unable to reproduce these events. Can you provide reproduction steps for them so I might be able to produce these on my end? Thank you!
Ok I can try. i am a bit at a loss why you cannot see them. I don’t know if this is because I am using version 4.2 from the Substance release. But here it goes:
I used a rather simple tree that I grabbed from Blender. Nothing special about it, except having been made in Blender that is. For the sake of the test I used a larger brush, and a rather dense setting. So the amount of trees generated is quite dense (Beginners mistake, I used a tine fraction later but still saw the problem) and then when I clicked on the lasso option and started to drag randomly around (a.k.a not a very good ‘lasso’ attempt) I began seeing flying polygons. And soon they amounted to so many the GPU crashed. I used an nVidia card 3071MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 (not 760 like I said… sorry about that. Forgot I changed the card a few weeks ago)
I have noticed that when approacing an object placed by the painter on the terrain. In my case I used a small bush, again done in Blender. It popped into view when I came quite close to it (from one direction) On the other side I turned around and stepped backwards and now it both popped in and out from a much greater distance. Almost as if the bush had an ‘offset’ from a middle point, and was actually placed near the edge of a corner in a visibility sphere. Causing the visibility to be so much smaller at one end, but not the other. Where in fact it seemed much greater than I set it to.
Is similar to the step above, but affects larger groups of let’s say a bush. I think it is the same issue.
When I did the dense painting mentioned in step 1. I noticed (after having moved underneath the terrain) that trees, pieces of grass etc… had been painted on an object I had placed underneath the terrain, Not many, but the fact that they were even there was surprising. I also see shadows etc… from objects in the terrain on this object as well, when it should either be black, or preferrably not have shadows at all (it is after all in shadow already)
This one is trickier to reproduce. What I did here is that I took a heightmap that I had painted in Photoshop, and created a terrain. Some parts had quite a lot of frequency in it so I smoothed the terrain. When I then walked across the terrain and came to a cliffside. I was suddenly trown into the air and because I was now falling down the hillside I gained a bit of momentum. When I then touched down, I instead passed through the terrain and kept on falling.
I will see if I can make a video about these things. Then I will post it on my site, and give you a link here.
Btw. I have noticed two things.
For #2 I noticed that If I used Epic settings the popping in happens at a much greater distance, and nearly looks normal. It is however at an offset. If I use minimal settings, the popping in is very close to the object on one side.
I also noticed that using Substance as a material in a terrain at epic settings seems to be a very bad idea. The performance drops like a stone. I know this is not your product, but since it is going to be included you might hear about performance issues. Just though I’d mention it… just in case
Anyway. I’ll look into making a video that might be of help.
I did some snapshots of the cases. I don’t have a video recording tool installed. But I hope these help at least show the cases. The paint through terrain seems to be very hard to replicate. So I am unsure if even I can replicate it. It seems to have gone away when I smoothed the terrain in the editor. The same goes for being thrown into the air. However, I still fall through the terrain at steep angles.
I hope these snapshots help though:
(EDIT: I had to remove these links as the pictures are now gone.)
Check the Z-offset on your foliage tool as well as the culling distance, that may be the reason for the floating objects as well as the distance popping you describe. Further, if you make changes to the landscape and the trees stay floating it is because the foliage tool does not automatically conform to changes made to the landsacpe, you have to repaint it. For falling through the landscape please check both your pawn and your landscapes collision settings.
Thanks. The Z fixed the attachement issue nicely. As for the popping it turned out to be the cluster radius (or so I think) because when I decreased it and repainted the terrain (after cleaning it) the popping of whole sections went away. Now it culls nicely from the back distance as expected. I am still wondering if it is at all possible to control the “fade in” and “fade out” distances?
But of course I’ll consider the matter solved. Many thanks for the help .
Much appreciated.
You should be able to control the fade in and out through culling distance. If not, it may be something that is hard coded and you will have to go into the source to affect it. I will look around and see what I can find.
