Punching (small) holes in landscape

Hey everyone,

I’m completely new to the game. I’m looking to build an ancient city (an actual one after an excavator’s detailed plan) and have begun blocking out buildings, walls, etc. to try to identify as many potential problems as I can before I get too far. I’ve run into a few roadblocks along the way but nothing some Google searches couldn’t resolve.

My question is about standard practice when it comes to small landscape details. I have gutters that run down the middle of the roads that are hollowed out in the middle, so the landscape obviously runs through them:

gutter.gif

How would you go about removing the landscape from within the gutter? The gutter is too narrow to use landscape opacity or sculpting, and it won’t always run neatly along edges:

The only ideas I have would be adding a second landscape on top that is scaled down 50% to achieve smaller polys (I need the larger landscape for the horizon, but having two overlayed landscapes seems hacky), or sculpting the landscape down in those areas and using a custom mesh with virtual texturing around the gutters for a seamless transition.

So my post basically boils down to two questions:

  • How would you go about solving the issue?
  • Is there a way to get more detailed landscape meshes without scaling the landscape down (the most detailed I could achieve was 1 meter per quad)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Please let me know if you need any more information. Thanks in advance,

Carl