Hey guys, i just made an auto landscape material in 5.4, and the second i added the landscape layer blend node, the entire lanscape went black.
Ive made this exact material before in versions before 5.3 and had no issue. When i remove the landscape layer blend node, its fixed. But i of course need that node.
In the previews, the material looks fine in the material itself, but broken in the instance. When i apply either the mat or the instance to the landscape, neither work.
Ive searched online and seen this problem but hsven’t found a solution that works.
Im hoping you guys can help me out because I’ve exhsusted my own knowledge at this point.
Hi, did you check the weightmaps? So you could try to fill any of the weight maps (in landscape mode, “right click → fill layer” I think, cause if they are all empty you should get a black landscape). You could also try to export the weight maps for the three layers (from the landscape mode) and check that they are not all black.
Also if this is a material that you have used before 5.3, maybe it got corrupted in the update (in 5.3 all the existing landscape layer blend nodes from previous engine versions seem to have been corrupted, so maybe 5.4 is also not backwards compatible to before 5.3). Then you would have to recreate all the weight maps, and also rename the layers.
Nice that it works now! My guess was just that it might have gotten corrupted in the engine conversion process, since from 5.2 → 5.3 all existing landscape layer blend nodes got corrupted. If that was the issue, then since it works now it should not break again.
Do you mean layer data? I have the layer data setup and ive tried recreating it a few times.
When I updated from 5.2 to 5.3, then recreating the layer data did not fix it. I had to rename all the layers in my landscape material, and then create new layer data for those newly named layers and then reimport all the layer data that I exported from 5.2 (I wanted to keep using the existing landscape and level).
But since that landscape/material/level works now, it should not break again if that corruption was the issue.
Ah ok cool. Glad you knew that. Sorry for the delay. Got a lot going on. Seems to still be working like you said. Thanks for the replies! Have a great day.
Ps. I figured id ask if you wanted to speak on Discord? Couldnt heart to broaden the network. If not, totally cool. Ill check as soon as i can in case you reply to this.
Generally speaking, landscape layer blend is about 10x more expensive than re-producing the effect yourself.
Its useful basically only for cinematics and stuff you don’t want to put time into.
Otherwise, take the layer sample, do the math on each of them with subtractions additions etc, and usr it as the alpha to lerp between the different textures you need.
As a byproduct, on top of better performance, you become “immune” to epic’s fallacies.
Do you know of a video on this? I’m definitely not good enough with materials to do this without a guide. But really good to know this. I had no idea. Thank you!
No guide, but i sugfest experimenting.
Most layer operations you need are straight up adsitions and subtractions.
Yes, they can get crazy complex in term of sequence, but it all essentially boila down to an easy to visualize White/Black twxture that can be directly output into the base color for development purposes.
Just pay attention to what you do;
Base layer > subtract grass Layer
Is likely the same as inverting the grass layer.
Then again the cost is arguably similar between the two options.
Anyway, you can easily prototype the math needed to power basic lerps, which is kind of the point there.
And you can also learn more about materials, since you will no dobt end up doing more complex things…
