(Semi)procedural Landscape Material WIP

[anonymous_user_53f03c13]

@;161094

thanks for the tip, but if I want to stick to my procedural approach it won’t really be useful

to explain it in different words, the idea is to be able to get a nice setup that contains different surface types (soft ground / rough ground / cliff ground / snow), different for every layer. so the paintable grass layer will have [soft grass / rough soil / cliff / snow] while the paintable desert layer will have [soft sand / rough sand / desert cliff / snow], and so for whatever other ground type group I come up with.
this way I only have to paint “areas” in my landscape (just 2 different layers to paint for the 8 textures I described, instead of 8 layers). and also this way I never have to care and waste time about where to paint cliffs vs ground or if it looks natural (cause it’s done procedurally).
what you’re suggesting would not allow me to have such variety of materials, or have nearly as much proceduralness as I want.

plus, using the results of using just the slope are not interesting, as you can see in the image of my second post (the one with the label ‘WorldAlignedBlend * Height’) - if I use purely the slope information I’d get a result like the left part, but (only) the stuff I do in the material allows me to have the result like the right part

sadly though, if at least my PhysicalMaterials answerHub request doesn’t go through I’ll probably have to change my approach

Hey, maybe you miss understood me. My material is procedural :). But keep in mind, if you do it with 8 layers you can use height blended layers like the pictures in the link.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Landscape/Materials/index.html#landscapelayerblendnode.
Do the same with a single layer for grass, rock, mud and so on is much more complicated i think.
You dont need much more time to apply the material. You have only paint 4 layers instead of one. With the biggest brush and maybe a 2k landscape it’s a minutes thing and you can apply your phys material to the different layer infos.

Sorry but dont understand “the left and the right part”. My material aplys to all sides if you meant this.