Painting foliage across a large map

Development World Creation
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1

I’m working with a large map (2048x2048), and I’m attempting to cover the majority of the ground with grass.

The problem I’m running into is that there doesn’t seem to be any efficient way to paint foliage on an area this big. Even using the paint tool in its largest size (65,535) doesn’t put a huge dent into the map (and also result in a lot of overlapping, which is noticeable in-game).

I’ve experimented with procedural generation using the blueprint found here ://www.michalorzelek/blog/ , but even this doesn’t provide a large enough radius, among other issues.

Is there any way that I would be able to apply foliage to a map of this size, procedurally or not? Is there some better way to apply foliage that I’m unaware of?

2

Im pretty sure there is a paint bucket tool that fills the entire terrain with your vegetation.

3

Atm you can just fill it with the foliage brush. There are no other ways -> use a small brush to avoid lags :slight_smile:

4

There is, but it’s disabled for terrains (can only use on static mesh/bsp)

Is there a way to re-enable it, or am I going to have to paint the entire map by hand? I’m trying to avoid that route not only because of the time it will take, but also because painting produces gaps and unequal coverage which are noticeable in-game.

5

You can paint huge, huge areas with the foliage tool. When I place foliage, I typically have the radius set to 60k, and I predefine all of my foliage actors and their quantities. I also use masking, and define foliage by landscape material - flowers, weeds, grass only appear on certain layers, rocks and debris on others, and then fill in the gaps with a smaller brush later. In general, when it comes to creating any sort of content, large strokes first, detail elements later.

Additionally, I’ve used this method for 8k x 8k landscapes – it should only take a couple of clicks to fill a 2048 map.

6

We are working on some procedural foliage placement tools. The stuff is still very experimental, but it’s available in the master branch on github. It should be out in experimental form in 4.8 but you can always play with it now.

Note this is still very early days and is bound to change a lot. There is tons of polish work left and optimization etc…

7

Sounds great , I hope 4.8 is around the corner ?

I’m having the same problem. I tried using the Paint bucket, but to my surprise, and quite funny facial expression (when the paint bucket did nothing on the terrain when I clicked on it), it didn’t work… lol

Adding screenshot…
www.jaxastudios

I am also seeking sponsors so that I can get out of my day-job and focus on this full time, but lacking support here in South Africa… I wonder why… lol

://www.jaxastudios/images/gamescreenshot_tunnel.PNG