# Sculpting landscape without moving the foliage

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-landscape-without-moving-the-foliage/367390>\
**Category:** World Creation\
**Tags:** sculpt, unreal-engine, Foliage, Landscape, heightmap, question\
**Created:** [August 17, 2016, 12:41pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-landscape-without-moving-the-foliage/367390 "2016-08-17T12:41:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Pseudocorpus](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/pseudocorpus/32/453689_2.png) [@Pseudocorpus](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Pseudocorpus)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 12:41pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-landscape-without-moving-the-foliage/367390/1 "2016-08-17T12:41:37Z")

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Hello there,

I am currently designing the landscape for my game. When I am sculpting, the foliage always moves up and down with the newly sculpted heightmap.  
Most of the time that is a desirable result. But now I want to “wrap” my landscape around the rocks. To do so, I need the foliage to stay where it is while sculpting. Is there an option for this?

Thanks in advance

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**Author:** ![anonymous\_user\_0bdbc566](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@anonymous\_user\_0bdbc566](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/anonymous_user_0bdbc566)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 2:50pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-landscape-without-moving-the-foliage/367390/2 "2016-08-17T14:50:50Z")

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I think the order you are doing things in could be problematic. Why don’t you sculpt the landscape first BEFORE adding the foliage?

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**Author:** ![Pseudocorpus](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/pseudocorpus/32/453689_2.png) [@Pseudocorpus](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Pseudocorpus)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 4:02pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-landscape-without-moving-the-foliage/367390/3 "2016-08-17T16:02:21Z")

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Thanks for your response, tetsumi.

That is indeed one way to go. And I could easily sculpt, select the shifted piece of foliage/rock and move it into place.

But my level contains thousands of rocks and it would be much faster and easier if I could tweak the transitions between rocks and landscape by doing it the other way around (“wraping” the landscape arount the rocks).

…like in this video of the UDK:

[![](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/d/d/2/dd2c4f5021de18b3e502346f384383572b16f2e3.jpeg "UDK terrain editing preview") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ord1W3GPZ7Q)

Of course the rocks in the video are simple static meshes and not instanced static meshes, but maybe it also works with instances?

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**Author:** ![Xosh\_project](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@Xosh\_project](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Xosh_project)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 5:09pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-landscape-without-moving-the-foliage/367390/4 "2016-08-17T17:09:21Z")

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I don’t think they are a way to do this. You’ll need to sculpt landscape, place your rock (static or foliage) if it’s static you’ll be able to sculpt without changing the position of your rock.

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**Author:** ![Pseudocorpus](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/pseudocorpus/32/453689_2.png) [@Pseudocorpus](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Pseudocorpus)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 5:41pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-landscape-without-moving-the-foliage/367390/5 "2016-08-17T17:41:09Z")

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That is disappointing. Thanks anyway, Xosh!

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**Author:** ![lick1234567](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@lick1234567](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/lick1234567)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2024, 11:08am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/sculpting-landscape-without-moving-the-foliage/367390/6 "2024-04-14T11:08:46Z")

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If you are using asset streaming and Procedural foliage generation you can unload foliage and generate foliage after landscape edited