# Sculpting alpha brush does not work **URL:** \ **Category:** Pipeline & Plugins\ **Tags:** sculpt, unreal-engine, editor, UE4, question\ **Created:** [September 6, 2018, 2:54pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312 "2018-09-06T14:54:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![YouKnov\_original](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@YouKnov\_original](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/YouKnov_original)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2018, 2:54pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312/1 "2018-09-06T14:54:37Z")
Hello, I am currently working on a landscape, and I want to use the sculpting alpha brush tool to make some mountains and hills, but when I tried dragging the image onto the little pannel where you drag & drop your images it shows up green BUT when I release the LMB it is just the DefaultAlphaTexture and not my image. ![252948-3.jpg](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/4/e/e/4eeb22b01078f087440e0d61a2eab3b3fe203fa0.jpeg) So I tried another image, wich is also b/w and this works. ![252949-1.jpg](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/6/2/5/6258a9384ea5ad834d051471ffcc324a348d5766.jpeg) I checked the “description/details” of both images and they’re identical. ![252950-2.jpg](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/a/e/2/ae2c45d438f8b20307bc90b1c203f364337d31a4.jpeg) So I don’t know what is wrong… Could anyone help me? (I apologize for my bad english) thanks 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Eaves2016](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@Eaves2016](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Eaves2016)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 9:44pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312/2 "2018-10-25T21:44:28Z")
I’m having the same issue. If anyone has a solution please let me know! ---
**Author:** ![guitarguy109](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@guitarguy109](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/guitarguy109)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2018, 3:36am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312/3 "2018-12-24T03:36:17Z")
I also am having this issue. Hope they can address it soon. ---
**Author:** ![FilipeG](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@FilipeG](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/FilipeG)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 3:00pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312/4 "2019-04-08T15:00:01Z")
You must save your alpha as 8 bit before importing to UE4. ---
**Author:** ![FilipeG](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@FilipeG](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/FilipeG)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 5:24pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312/5 "2019-04-08T17:24:38Z")
You must save your alpha as 8 bit before importing to UE4. ---
**Author:** ![DanielStrickland](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@DanielStrickland](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/DanielStrickland)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2019, 1:44am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312/6 "2019-08-02T01:44:05Z")
The texture must have the following qualities to be used as an alpha for sculpting landscapes: - RGB, or RGBA. Greyscale does not work. - 8bit. The image format is not restricted to TARGA (.tga). PNG and JPG works too. Non-Square resolutions work as well. The compression format does not matter. I personally use substance designer for texturing. In this case, you would make sure that the output format is “C8.” ---
**Author:** ![Mazarine.Yang](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/mazarine.yang/32/468225_2.png) [@Mazarine.Yang](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Mazarine.Yang)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2022, 2:25am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312/8 "2022-02-16T02:25:02Z")
Hi. I was using UE5 and try to create landscape with alpha. And i’ve got the same problem. I’ve tried two days, finally I realized if you import a .png file to UE5, no matter how you set the picture format, whether if it is a 16 bit or 8 bit , RGB or Gray, it just doesn’t work. But if you import a .jpg file it will magically work. Maybe .tga file will work too? I didn’t tried that. I’m not sure about if it’s working on UE4. Cause I 've never noticed someone mentioned this. So I believe this is a bug. ---
**Author:** ![AJ\_Graphix](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/aj_graphix/32/1194669_2.png) [@AJ\_Graphix](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/AJ_Graphix)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2025, 8:10pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-alpha-brush-does-not-work/433312/9 "2025-05-16T20:10:49Z")
It turns out that PNG files do **NOT** work as alpha brushes, but TIF files do. I had 4K, Grayscale, 16-bit Non-Linear Integer images that were not being recognized in Unreal 4.27.2. Re-exporting the same image from GIMP with the **exact same settings** as above but as a **.tif file** (using “Deflate” lossless compression for the smallest file size) allowed Unreal to use the image. Sadly, regardless of export settings, Unreal appears to only interpret Landscape brushes as 8 bit, regardless of texture compression settings, so setting to **HDR** or **Half-Float** appears to makes **no difference** compared to just using **Grayscale** or **Alpha** presets. Thankfully, you can smooth the result afterwards. Setting the “Filter Kernel Radius” for the Smooth brush to 1 and checking “Detail Smooth” and setting that to a small value like 0.01 works great for smoothing out blocky noise details.