Hi, it seems procedural foliage only works based on volumes. Instead I would need to use a grayscale map or a splat map to indicate where to spawn. What would you suggest?
Can we at least restrict the procedural placement to a given landscape layer? If so that could be used as a workaround. Thanks.
The procedural foliage tools already allow you to restrict them to certain landscape layers.
Thanks jonimake, that’s good, however I will try to build my own procedural generation code as the built-in one is a bit restrictive.
you can limit where things get placed based on landscape layer, yes. In the foliage types itself, not the big box you make. There is a + button for adding what layers you want them to be on.
Edit:
Thinking on this, if this is open world and you are looking to save time using the proc foliage tool … please dont. I went from 120FPS to like 40 using it. Then when i painted i went right back up to like 80’s. It was terrible. If its a small section, why are you not painting it? You get the best results from that.
You can move foliage around using the paint tool as well. Click the little “select” in the painter and you can do what you want with the actor. Just a suggestion and a heads up on the foliage tool. Takes more time but the end results are well worth the extra time spent.
I will paint some things, move them around where i want them, paint some more (maybe like a 300 radius with a few items i want like a couple trees and couple bushes), move those around into place. rotation and such can be done.
This is strange because the foliape paint and procedural foliage should be both using the same classes in the end, that is instanced meshes, they only differ in the way they are proceeding to populate these. Are you sure you are not mixing up with the grass tool? This one has regressed in 4.15 and has now very poor performance (see Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker (UE-43093))
Anyway in my approach this will be procedural but using the paint tool, I mean my code will drive the paint tool in the same way as if it was manual. I need to populate large areas and put in some dependencies between foliage items, doing this manually could take a lot of time.
I am sure 
I was running to major issues with the proc foliage setup. They should be using the same classes, but, something seems to be “off” with the proc foliage itself … not sure what. Anyways - setup by layer works well.