I just want to add rivers and lakes to my landscape. Lakes are no big deal as I can usually get the water to work one way or another. Rivers and streams,. however, are an entirely different story. I’ve tried the water system and although that is GREAT for surrounding my landscape with water (img 1) I can not get it to work on rivers unless my landscape is basically flat. (Kansas!) As you can see, I’ve marked and sculpted areas for rivers and a lake (img 2) but the river tool spline is useless as it does not create a separate body of water from the main water body. Therefore the water for said river appears far under this elevated portion of the landscape. I’ve tried WaterBody Custom but can’t get it to rotate or angle to compensate for a downward grade (img 3)
Can I just use a normal spline tool and use the water material to create a river? Logic says yes, but I have zero experience with splines so I am not certain.
If anyone has any great ideas on how to make these rivers and streams, and/or has a link to a tutorial that they found resolves this issue, I’d be greatly appreciative!
Hey there again @RLK_III! I was hoping we got your water woes sorted before but it seems they’ve returned in the form of misbehaving rivers! They should be conforming the landscape to them just as the other water types that we got sorted before. Do they have affects landscape turned on and do they recognize the water zone?
We got lakes working, which is great. But in looking for a more realistic, detailed landscape, I am looking for rivers and streams as well. Edit layers is on, my water zone encompasses my entire map and as you can see by the image, the river tool is not affecting the landscape for some reason (despite that feature being activated.)
As far as recognizing the water zone, they should. Nothing’s changed there. However, I am still concerned that this feature will not work as I would like with a sloped landscape as the WZ seems to be a level plane set at a certain depth, meaning I’d have to dig into the landscape to that depth to hit water, which isn’t realistic when coming to rivers and lakes. i.e., a river flowing down a mountain towards the coast would flow along the surface, not cut into the water zone.
I’ve tried using a plane system but as I mentioned before, it is difficult for me to get the plane to slope with the downgrade of the landscape.
I know there’s a solution but I’ll be buggard if I can find it on my own LOL. Which is why I really appreciate your help. <3
It’s acting a bit like the river isn’t recognizing your landscape, as the scenario you described is exactly how the river system is intended to work. The river must not be applying itself to the landscape brush layer, since if it was working as expected it would react like this:
Head back to a fresh level like we did before, and try spawning in a new landscape with edit layers, an ocean, and then drop the river in and try to manipulate it like I do in my video, does it have the same effect?
If so, we might need to see why it’s not affecting the landscape at all. Once that’s sorted I’m certain you’ll be able to maneuver them the way you need.
When we left off last time, which method did we go with to make your ocean not affect the landscape, was it unticking affects landscape or did I have you move your heightmap to another layer, or did we just change the blend mode?
Ok - I created a test level (had to do this anyway as it allows me to create merged static meshes to import into my main project) and YES, the river feature affects the landscape. I would share a video but I use 2 displays and my NVIDIA control refuses to record anything but its own display for some reason.
One thing I noticed and would be wondering if you could check out - does the water system work on a partitioned map? We know it works on a singular landscape, but in dealing with largescale maps it might have a problem?
Ideally I would LOVE a singular landscape but it doesn’t provide me with that open-world feel.
EDIT: I just used another recording software so… yay! However, I re-created the landscape with the basic plane, ensured ‘edit layers’ was checked and… now it’s NOT working again!!! I have no idea what’s going on.
It’s reacting so inconsistently for you, yet I can’t replicate any of the inconsistencies! The only way I can get the same issue is by disconnecting the water zone and brush from the landscape. I did a large scale test of a bigger WP map with just fresh dropping the river in (and the river spawned in the waterzone and brush when it came in), and it reacted normally as expected (video below). In your water zone does your water texture info show the river? (in my example it’s just a curvy line)
No, it doesn’t. In fact, my water zone doesn’t show the same info of “water info texture” as yours does. It shows ‘velocity’ texture. I can’t seem to change it.
I wonder if something went askew when importing the heightmap. I can try to delete the landscape and re-import but I’d rather do this as a last-case as I worry it will fark with my other SMs and procedurals already in place.
Oh wow that’s interesting! The water mesh override having any effect is wild, considering it wasn’t changing the terrain beforehand. I can’t replicate these issues for the most part, so working with them is gonna be a tough one. It seems there’s some odd inconsistencies with heightmapped terrains in world partition, but I can’t force it to happen on my side regardless of configuration.
Is the water layer above or below any other map inside the landscape tool?
Hmmm… I had a different issue yesterday that I finally figured out was due to ‘world bounds’ being active. My character was refusing to spawn regardless of where I placed Player Start on the landscape. Since the player bounds option was selected, UE refused to spawn the character anywhere that was beyond its scope of where the bounds should be
I wonder if this is affecting the water system. Not that I can turn world bounds on or off to correct this issue, but that the landscape is so far below where UE thinks the boundaries should be that it is refusing to allow the feature to work correctly.
I think I’ll create a new project and import my landscape. Instead of lowering the player to where the landscape spawns, I’ll move the landscape UP to where the default player spawns, then try the river system. It’s literally the only thing I can think of that is causing this issue.
I’ll get back to you soon with the results (if any)
Nah - still weird. Even though the water zone is encompassing my landscape, the river system still refuses to work.
But I also noticed I don’t have the water layer in this map, either… grrrr
I think I am going to have to try using splines… which I am crap at but I guess I can learn LOL It’s just frustrating that there is a tool that can make my life easier that I can’t seem to use…
Bounding issues can cause a great number of problems, but you weren’t able to have the water function even before runtime, so I’m thinking that’s not the case. I’m unsure why your water layer didn’t generate when you installed the water plugin, as it should for any map you place any water in, as long as edit layers is enabled when you place the water object in.
Could you try deleting the water systems (the brush, the ocean, the waterzone, and the rivers, all of em), and try reintroducing them. Does it make the water layer? I wonder if it has to be generated on launch or just have the name Water in this case. let’s test that out.
Worst comes to worst, (and if you’re comfortable with it) I’ll take your heightmap, make a project, get the rivers/ocean working, then pass it back to you. It’s not ideal but in this case, I can’t narrow down why it’s failing for you.
Good news. Splines work. I can custom make the rivers and just sculpt around the water.
Bad news… I have absolutely NO idea why this is suddenly happening, but I went to paint some river rocks along the river and, well… THIS happened! I can’t seem to reverse it.
The lake tool should be raising the water, to wherever it is, that’s not intended behaviour. It’s defaulting to the water zone base water height instead of using it’s own. The link to the water zone is the possible problem, but that happens automatically. I’m not sure if there’s a force relink debug, I know there’s a couple of commands. Working on testing them to verify now.
Did the texture artifacting only occur while sculpting manually? This should be temporary while it re-renders but apparently not. Does it change when you change map and come back?
Yeah, the water feature has ALWAYS worked that way for me. Makes me think it’s a setting somewhere but I’ll be damned if I can figure it out. Everything I’ve researched pretty much tells me it should be plug n play.
I have no idea why part of a landscape partition lost its texture but I did manage to fix it so yay! I had to re-create the material instance for some reason… a pain in the ■■■■ but as long as it works I’m happy.
Understandable, if at all you’d prefer me to dig into the project itself I could do that, or even set one up. Do you want to keep working with the splines?
