Roads on imported landscape

Development World Creation
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1

Hi, I am working with World Machine and i was wondering what is the best way to work with roads in UE4.

1) create the landscape on WM, import and the use the painting tool.
2) create texture masks on WM and use it on the landscape material.
3) Use olnly splines.
4) a combination of 1, 2 and 3?
5) others?

What I need to do?
Some streets for a little town, and a road to other points on the landscape. The roads could be a walking path (example: dust) or a vehicle path (asphalt).

thanks in advance and i’m sorry for the generic and open question. :slight_smile:

2

It depends on how good the result should be :wink:
You can either
-use the spline tool with meshes and textures
-or just paint the path on your landscape -> then you will have to edit the terrain in the ue4 or wm + you will have to place some meshes with the foliage tool (so that it looks more realistic)

3

Thanks , always responding :slight_smile:
Ok, I will try and see what i get. Right now I am having a fight with the landscape material, trying to get good looking stuff… no luck yet :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Landscape materials are pretty difficult to create -> just study the materials from other games (e.g from skyrim) so that you get an idea how they did it (e.g in day z they use many different green colour textures for the grass material in the distance -> looks like there are grass patches) ://oceanofgames/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DayZ-Standalone-Free-Setup-download.jpg (in the distance you can see it) :slight_smile:

5

Thanks again , currently i’m working with splatmaps exported from WM and layer blends, but i’m getting all mixed textured result even if I tweak the preview weight . Yeah, materials and art in general are not my speciallity.
I don’t really know if using splatmap is the best way to go. Any workflow tip is welcome :smiley:

6

Have you already followed a tutorial that explains you how to use the splatmaps? -> normally they work pretty well :slight_smile:
Otherwise you could also paint your terrain manually -> but the result wont be so good + it takes some time

7

Well, actually my splatmap is working, the problem is i cant find a fine tuning to the weights in order to get clean results.
Explaining my self a little better:
I have 3 layers, grass, rock, snow (R - G - B). But i cant get 100% grass where I want, i get some mixed textures, some grass (90% for example) and snow ( 10%).
So i play with the weights values in the material, and when i finally get 100% grass where i want, i get my mountains full of it too, and i don’ what that neither.
Maybe my splat map from world machine needs some tweak too.
(I can post some screen when i get back home).

Anyway i will need some more experimentation and learning, maybe i was overtaking the question worrying about the roads, but i thought was opprtune ask now because I am actually working with the material.

Adding info to the post i am giving a try to this WM UE4 macro:
https://www.world-machine/library/index.php?entry=86&focus=1

I get lots of outputs from it. I think is good, someone tried it?

8

You can have more than 3 materials. if you for 1 change the sampler (You need to search this) you can have a 128 textrue samples. And if you follow the folowing, you can make as mutch as you want.

I just follow this tutorial for textrues that is the best way. I saw that the landscape demo als uses this.
https://wiki.unrealengine/World_...In_Depth_Guide

This part can be conuseing to short if a bit down. First export the spat maps als hight output and then select PNG. Make the material show in this tutorial. then look at this picture.

https://wiki.unrealengine/File:L...deComplete.png

You will se that and then you right click on one of those layers/elements, Then you will see a option for inporting inport that PNG splatmap. there you go.

And a tip you can use more than 16 texture’s tou need to search it. you you can make a massive material. and you use that as landscape material.