Should I make my terrain in UE4 or in a program like 3DsMax?

Development Programming & Scripting
1

I was wondering because I don’t like how UE4 landscape editor paints my terrain. It paints it in a grid-like fashion, and I do not know if is normal or something you hide with foliage,rocks, and other meshes.
Or if it is fixed by generating your terrain and heightmaps in another program.

2

I would recommend you to use the landscape tool, because it already has a good lod system + you can always modify it directly in the engine. But you could also create a heightmaps + weight layer with world machine/terresculptor and then you can import it over the landscape tool.

Take a look at the grass material in the starter content -> you can use material for your landscape, then it wont look so “grid like” (otherwise you will see the texture repeating over the entire landscape)

3

Have you Built the lighting after making changes to the terrain? that should get rid of the grid like shapes. See if that helps!

4

Thank you for the suggestions.

5

I do believe I am subscribed to you on YouTube. You have great videos and many awesome techniques, so keep up the good work.

6

Thank you! :slight_smile:

7

I’ve had a lot of success with World Machine. Check it out, I believe there’s a free edition or demo.

You can export the resulting terrain as a heightmap and use it to populate a landscape object with height data.

8

World Machine is a good solution to get some detailed heightmaps for your terrain! We use it here at Epic for some of our terrain creation.

If you’re wanting more open world be sure to check out our documentation on the World Composition tool.](.unrealengine/latest/INT/Engine/LevelStreaming/WorldBrowser/index.html) There is a in World Machine (not sure if it’s the free version or paid) that allows you to export your heightmap as chunks. will give you greater detail for your terrain and using World Composition you can piece them together for a more open world experience. :slight_smile:

9

Thanks ! Thats what I needed too LOL…terresculptor work the same?

10

I’ve not personally used Terrascupltor but I did skim through a UDK/terrasculptor tutorial and it should work about the same. If you take the heightmap and import that into UE4 you should be set. :slight_smile:

11

Terresculptor works nearly the same -> :wink:

12

Does anyone have any recommendations for creating terrains on OSX? Is Terragen my only option? I was hoping for something simpler like world machine

13

Thanks and :smiley:

14

I have a quick question, I’m trying to get a few things setup for Mudbox and 3ds for outputting heightmaps. Is there a way to calculate the number vertices needed in a plane in 3ds (cut by segments) in order to match the same number of vertices that we’ll have in Unreal 4 for a given size?

That probably doesn’t make much sense:

If I want to make a terrain that uses a 505x505 resolution heightmap with 63 quads per section and 4 sections per component with a component size of 126x126, how would I be able to calculate the vertices needed on a plane in 3ds to match the same number of vertices in Unreal 4.