UE Landscape Grass Type Material Application Issue

Development Asset Creation
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I’m creating a landscape grass system for an asset pack and have encountered a material application issue between UE versions.

In UE 4.18, my landscape material would automatically be applied to the grass type meshes defined within it, overriding the default material assigned to those meshes. This made creating variations simple as the landscape material parameters would affect both the terrain and the grass instances.

In newer UE versions, the grass meshes are stubbornly using their default material (defined in the mesh settings) rather than inheriting the landscape material. I have to manually set the landscape material as the default material on each mesh for it to work properly.

Is there a way to force landscape grass type meshes to use the landscape material they’re defined within, rather than their default mesh material? This would significantly simplify the end-user experience for my asset pack, allowing users to create variations without requiring them to change multiple connected assets.

Has anyone found a solution to make landscape grass meshes automatically use their parent landscape material like in earlier UE versions?

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Been using Unreal since, well since before it had an actual number after the editor… But for UE4, since 4.20.

For my experience having a landscape-material automagically applied to a grass mesh has never been the behavior. Unsure it’s intended in 4.18, but I’ve never seen what you are describing, so I am going to go out on a limb and say ‘no’. The landscape-material is for the landscape and it can define where meshes might spawn in the foliage-system, but those meshes are just meshes, each with their own defined material.

Suggestion is to create a manager where you can define the landscape material and then have it trip through all the associated meshes and update their default-materials, or use something common between them like a material-paramater-collection (MPC).

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Interesting. It is definitely working that way in 4.18, and it was quite handy – just assumed that was how it worked.

I will have to work with the way it is supposed to work, I guess.

Thanks!