About that I think with 5.3 there is something done in that department you can now import big files for landscape and it manages to chunk it as needed…
As for other ideas I thought of those two :
making a landscape material somehow aware of the color informations from a satellite imagery : shading and coloring ground and foliage so that from a distance it could simply display the satellite colors, and having it nicely transition to coloring meshes in a coherent way.
But satellite images contains shadowed area so that would be problematic (a side idea would be to use heightmap info with satellite image to reconstruct the shadow map from the heightmap, calibrating the correct sun position to match those two, and use it to somehow cancel those from the image… But with full black areas that would be a challenge)
another crazy but fun idea would be to forget about landscape, that is leveraging the huge mega scan library and managing a “landscape 2 mega-assembly” process : using landscape heightmap information, Satellite images color information, reconstructing the landscape by assembling loads of nicely detailed meshes how fun is that ?
That’s it for those silly ideas.
But the good news is I plan to spend some times with your plugin this Weekend
About that I think with 5.3 there is something done in that department you can now import big files for landscape and it manages to chunk it as needed…
Oh nice you’re right:
We updated landscape import/export to support very large landscapes/resolutions by leveraging World Partition and splitting the import operation into several successive batches.
Then you could try to directly download the tiled heightmaps from here and import them in Unreal:
making a landscape material somehow aware of the color informations from a satellite imagery : shading and coloring ground and foliage so that from a distance it could simply display the satellite colors, and having it nicely transition to coloring meshes in a coherent way.
The landscape material in the plugin supports to have an “Overlay”, which can be satellite imagery, but it has to be downloaded externally (for example using QGis). Then you can set the transparency of the overlay. You could try adding a transition to the material using linear interpolation, between the overlay and the automaterial (using the distance between Absolute World Position and Camera Position).
another crazy but fun idea would be to forget about landscape, that is leveraging the huge mega scan library and managing a “landscape 2 mega-assembly” process : using landscape heightmap information, Satellite images color information, reconstructing the landscape by assembling loads of nicely detailed meshes how fun is that ?
Very fun But I wouldn’t be sure how to start! Could something perhaps be done using PCG? The plugin has a node to filter out point based on areas of interest in OSM (such as forests). So once the landscape is spawned, in your PCG graph, you spawn trees in the filtered areas, and you can spawn megascans cliffs either from satellite imagery or from the Cliff layer from the landscape automaterial.
By the way now that tesselation is back, you can have the geometry of the texture (for instance a cliff geometry) deform your nanite landscape (without the plugin).
Some new features with Landscape Combinator 0.6.4:
Create Decals from satellite images (in LandscapeTexturer and in LandscapeSpawner actors)
Support Mapbox for heightmaps and satellite imagery
Create a georeferenced world map from the LevelCoordinates actor
Support any WMS and XYZ service for downloading heightmaps and satellite imagery
Can now specify coordinates for these services using a bounding actor such as a location volume or a cube (you place the bounding actor on the world map, and then reference it in the LandscapeSpawner or LandscapeTexturer or SplineImporter)
Spawn landscapes from an actor called LandscapeSpawner instead of a plugin tab (the plugin tab was removed).
Importing splines is now done using an actor called SplineImporter
Buildings can now be created from splines without interiors, which makes generation much faster when you need to spawn hundreds, or thousands of buildings.
A new website for documentation!
And plugin is on sale for the holidays (and still free for personal use)
Hi,
I copied and paste the LandscapeCombinator-main folder download from Github directly into the Plugins folder for UE 5.3.2. Enabled the plugin and upon restart I received this message:
The plugin source code needs to be compiled, but this cannot be done in the Engine folder. You need to put it instead in your project folder: MyProject/Plugins/LandscapeCombinator (and in that folder you should have Content, Source, etc.).
You need to create a Plugins folder if you don’t have one in your project folder.
Hello…I am trying to run your plugin in UE 5.3.2, but when I copy plugin files as you say 2 posts earlier I got an error and UE don’t run, even maunal rebuilding in Visual Studio don’t help but I am not advanced in this.
Hello! Can you try with a blank C++ project? Looks like your project is Blueprint only?
And can you try by renaming the folder “LandscapeCombinator” instead of “LandscapeCombinator-main”?
Thanks!
Hello, i just successfully installed the plugin on unreal 5.4.2, having to build the modules mentioned by the same warning message than you; here is a few hints (I am a newbie as well):
On the project Github page download the appropriate release (i used the “LandscapeCombinator-v0.6.5-rc2-UE5.4.zip” archive):
I placed the plugin in my project folder while respecting that hierarchy (i renamed the unpacked archive created folder to “LandscapeCombinator”) :
(I didn’t need to do it but) in your project *.uproject file you can manually add and enable a plugin using this syntax (with or without the final comma depending where you paste that part):
To build plugins / modules for your Unreal engine version you may need to install Visual Studio 2022 Community (it’s free) -along the relevant building libraries/tools- and set it all up for use with Unreal engine; I did so a few weeks ago by following that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDskHVw1to
It’s basically what @SensiN23 said. Just to add a small thing, you might need to create a C++ project in Unreal Engine 5.4 (instead of a blueprint project) for it to work (not sure).
And there’s a new version v0.7.0 coming, I’ll make a post about it later in the day with a tutorial.
I’m releasing today Landscape Combinator v0.7.0 RC1 which adds a new plugin window that makes it easier to spawn landscapes with forests, buildings, satellite images all in one go. It makes it easy to reuse the same configuration for importing several places. I’m open to feedback for this workflow, so feel free to suggest improvements and new features you want to see.
It’s freely available for personal use on GitHub and available for commercial use on the marketplace.
how fun is that ?
But I wouldn’t be sure how to start! Could something perhaps be done using PCG? The plugin has a node to filter out point based on areas of interest in OSM (such as forests). So once the landscape is spawned, in your PCG graph, you spawn trees in the filtered areas, and you can spawn megascans cliffs either from satellite imagery or from the Cliff layer from the landscape automaterial.
(and still free for personal use)
