We all know about the stepping issues with UE and its landscapes, but that was fixable in 4.0+. In 5, it’s a miracle if I can even get it to make that mistake!
If I generate a heightmap of the frankly esoteric restrictions (2017x2017 px 16 bit color depth grayscale png or raw) you will discover many things. First of all, UE won’t even acknowledge the existence of raw files, second if you imported the png into your project the landscape won’t even render. Instead it gives you an error that the “pattern” is wrong, or the image isn’t in grayscale, and other unhelpful or patently wrong notifies.
The only way I can get it to even let me generate a landscape is if no .uasset exists for the png file (a bug I discovered when debugging by changing the png file name over and over in the file explorer until the asset and uasset desynced). However, you still get a warning stating the image isn’t in grayscale and the result won’t look like the image- which is half true. Whether you use photoshop, GIMP, or krita, exporting the image in grayscale does nothing, and clicking import results in a landscape stepped to high hell.
From what I hear, 5.0+ is bugged up the ■■■, but this particular issue has been a splinter in my urethra and I’d rather learn a workaround than wait for answers from the support team.
I think you just dont know what you are doing - but then again, you said you worked with 4, and got it working, so that seems wierd…
Theres no reason to import the image into the project separately - files within the projects can’t be used since the system is NOT runtime compliant.
You simply select a png16 and only a png 16, whoever said raw files are ok deserves to be stabbed once eveytime someone used a raw file on landscape creation.
If you choose to manipulate the files with any program, you better know what you are doing.
15bit +1 is not the same as 16bit.
values matter.
On a range of 0 to 65535 you wont see stepping.
On a range of 0 to 255 you most definitely will.
Next up as a leading cause of stepping, is the Z scale of the landacape.
At a value (default) of 100 the landscape will distribute 65535 value on Z in a 0 to 100m range (or whatver the default is, may be 10. Check landscape docs for how to work out ratios).
If you extend the Z far enough (over 65535/2 ) you will start to get stair steppings which cannot be fixed. No matter what.
Any value below that, will allow you to use the soften tool to correct the stepping.
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Now, there’s nothing in the above that says the engine works - I haven’t tested it. Dont really plan to.
If you indeed are suffering from a bug (ei: selecting a valid png16 on creation results in stepping, but the file was really not compressed/fubar by something like Photoshop) then, you should really just file a bug report.
I haven’t checked your file, but you can test it by picking a few pixel at random. If the value is a multiple of 365535/255, then you likely irrecoverably messed the file up in some way.
Better yet, just try the smooth tool on the landscape. If it works, the file is bad.
So
Tldr:
Stepping is either cause by 0 knowledge of the process and incorrect files - and can be seen by being able to use the smooth tool to fix.
OR
0 knowlege of the value range to use - and will not be corrected by the smooth tool.