If you fast-forward to 5:46 in the Youtube video you’ll see when they sculpt it looks like it used to when I sculpted. In the image you’ll see what it looks like when I sculpt now. My sculpt now looks square and clunky. Their’s looks circular and neat. Been having this issue for a week now and it’s rendered my project essentially unworkable. It’s happening in every engine version, and landscape painting also doesn’t work properly. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Looks like your landscape scale is quite large. Not the overall dimensions, the actor scale. Can you select the landscape in Place Mode (Shift+1) and post s screenshot of the transform section of the details panel?
Also, it looks as though you are working with landscape tiles and you have reached the edge of the current tile. Sometimes you need to use a large brush with detail smooth just to fix them up.
But to be honest. I think this is more of a problem with perceived scale. The landscape looks fine to me, just that you are very close to it.
Each one of those squares on the default material should be 1m in X and Y. Which directly relates to the topology of the landscape mesh.
Have you tried dropping in the UE4 Man to the scene so you can get an ideal of the scale of the world you’re looking at?
My scale is 300 X/Y. Which the only reason I scaled it that much is because I’m using a heightmap that didn’t look good until I scaled the landscape. I also have created new projects altogether with smaller landscapes and scale at default and the problem still persists. The problem is that my landscape isn’t being sculpted or painted based on the size or location of my brush. The only way sculpting or painting works is if I get close enough to the corners of those squares you see on my landscape. If my brush is just small enough to fit in the square and not touch a corner nothing will happen. If I move it slightly one way and it touches a corner of the square then it’ll start sculpting or painting but it won’t be a circle like the shape of my brush. It’ll be a point like the shape of the corner of a square. Somebody said this is how it should work but I’ve put at the least, hundreds of hours into working in this engine and I know that it’s never worked like this before. What I also don’t understand is how this happens in every single engine version and with new projects with different specs. For me to consider this fixed the painting and sculpting should leave a circle if I hold in my left mouse in one spot. Lastly, there was one thing that used to momentarily fix this and that was taking all of my layers and painting over my whole landscape with them. That used to fix it for a short moment but now not even that helps. I hope I’ve provided enough information for a solution because I’d really like to get back to work but it seems not too many people have run into this problem or understand what the problem is. Thank you.
Just to provide more info on how sculpting works for me which isn’t how it used to. If my brush is in the center of a square and is barely touching a corner of a square it’ll sculpt but only at the corner of the square. Which if my brush matters that shouldn’t happen because the center of my brush is in the center of the square. There’s barely any part of my brush touching the corner of the square but that’s where it sculpts and paints and it’s not circular. Painting and sculpting only works at the corners of those squares. In theory that wouldn’t be terrible if there were maybe 2-3 times more squares
Yeah, I am struggling to understand what exactly the issue here is.
A landscape at 300% x and Y is quite low resolution. You have basically said, one quad should cover 3 meters instead of 1.
So that alone will make it appear blocky.
Would it be possible for you to record a short clip of what’s happening with OBS or ShareX?
You’re right. That’s the issue. Since I’m scaled 300 those squares are huge so it’s making the landscape harder to sculpt and paint. So then I have to ask, what are my options? I made a heightmap in World Creator and it didn’t look anything close to what I made until I scaled X/Y 300(Which was recommended to me). Is there any way to make my heightmap look good without scaling it?
Cool. At least we know that is the issue.
Obviously the more detail you want, the nearer to 100% scale you want. I find 100% works well in most cases. That said, in a previous project at mine I used 400% scale, as the landscape was basically a canvas to be covered with other objects. If you take a look at games like Arma, particularly Arma 2, you will see that there landscape resolution is very low. Yet still able to achieve very realistic results.
Anyway. In order to get the correct scale in UE, you need to know what scale you are working with in your heightmap authoring software. (I have never used world creator but the same principles should apply.)
So you need to know how big your landscape is on XYZ.
Imagine your landscape is roughly 8kmx8km. You would set the export resolution to be 8129x8129 and in world creator, set your landscape X and Y extents to be 8129 meters. (assuming your landscape in UE is at 100% X and Y).
Then you need to figure out the altitude extents of your heightmap. Note this isn’t the extents of the actual landscape, but the range of the entire heightmap can extend to.
To save some headache, you need to know what 100% on Z axis is in UE landscape. I happen to know that this is 512meters.
So, say for example, you want a landscape that can reach a total altitude of 1km (or 1024 meters to keep math simple), you would set the Z% in unreal to be 200%.
Again, I have never used World Creator. But I imagine it is able to tell you the maximum vertical extents it will allow in your current projects settings.
Alright thanks for the information. Definitely some things I’ll have to consider. I don’t find the resolution of the landscape to be terrible and most of it was sculpted in world creator so it looks good. I’m trying to build trails and paths but it’s making it pretty hard when I can only work on the corners of these large squares. I suppose I’ll have to figure something out. Thanks for the help though I appreciate it
I suggest you look at the Landscape demo on the unreal learn tab.
Generally speaking you use a mixture of spline meshes and static meshes to detail the landscape and add smooth roads and such.
