Yes, if you reorder the edit layers, then whatever is at the top, will have the full weight. But painting on it doesn’t erase anything from it’s bottom layers.
You can see this by reordering again.
If you for example make a grass layer, then a rock layer, then a dirt layer, in that order.
You paint rock selecting it’s edit layer (2nd in order). It works.
You then select dirt layer (3rd in order, so the top layer), and paint dirt in the same place. It works.
Now try reordering them again, making rock a higher layer. You will see that the place where you had previously painted rock, still has that rock, so it wasn’t erased.
Or instead of reordering, you can just erase your dirt (holding shift). There will still be rock underneath.
If like you said, selecting the correct edit layer erased layers underneath, then the rock should have been erased.
The way it works right now - is dumb. If we wanted this kind of behavior, we previously had the option of alpha layers which did exactly this. Normal weight blended layers shouldn’t behave this way. It makes the workflow hard, complicated, tedious.
And probably affects performance too, because now in the same place you might have 5 layers painted, when you only need the top one to be visible.
Is there going to be a fix for this in 5.7.2?
Weight blended painting has been in use for years, and people working on landscapes for years need this feature in 5.7.
Can we get a response from Epic Team please?
No you can’t get a response, and like I must have said a billion times stop using the useless landscape system.
Or use it in 4.something, make meshes from it, and use the meshes. But really just don’t use the landscape. Many dcc do a better job then the engine ever will be capable of, and PCG means you can add grass better than the landscape grass ever allowed.
Thank you so much, it worked perfectly for my use case. I have been looking for a solution to this for several weeks already, and you are the first person to share one.
They changed the workflow. I’ve just figured out how to paint and erase the layers.
Painting is the same, but erasing the layers you need to select the layer you want to erase and paint while holding SHIFT.
Yes, it works.
You must have one edit layer for each layer of your material. For example, if your entire landscape is painted with grass, and that is your first layer, your first edit layer must be grass. Now imagine that you want to add soil. Your second layer must be soil, and your second edit layer must be soil. Now here’s the trick: if you select your soil layer and your soil edit layer and paint the terrain, you will see soil, but if you want to paint grass again, you can’t. You have to keep painting soil but press SHIFT, otherwise, if you paint grass on top, you won’t be able to paint soil there again.
I don’t know why they did it this way, and I’m not a fan of it, but it works.
When I said it doesn’t work, I explained, that yes, you can paint the layer you want and have it be visible, but you still have to use Shift to erase the other layers, or you run into a bunch of other problems, one of which you also mentioned in your reply.
This means it doesn’t work, because this is not the intended functionality. It can’t be, because of how bad it is. This complicates the workflow, adds a lot of problems, but adds exactly zero benefits over how it worked previously.
Basically just refer to my previous reply which gives much more detail about the problems.
Realistically. You probably just set things up wrong. You have alpha weighted layer and non weighted layers.
One type automatically deletes the rest when you paint it. The other does not.
That has been the case since forever with the landscapes. It’s also why alpha blend requires a layer 0 to be present.
In any case. Unless you made the material yourself and avoid using the landscape nodes, the performance is s*it. The shader is literally told to paint a full layer and then remove parts of it (and no, it’s not wrong, it’s one if not the only way to do it unless you pre-compute things).
And although I’m 99% sure it’s your fault for just doing things wrong, one can’t discount that other 1% that’s Epic’s incompetence driven changes… maybe the engine is bugged. Idk. I don’t really care. No point using landscapes anyway…
@MostHost_LA The problem in this post has been confirmed by multiple employees to be a bug in 5.7.1, and confirmed that a fix is in 5.7.2.
Every single time I see your replies in this forum, it’s either wildly wrong, wildly guessing, or wildly hostile. Sometimes all 3.
Those kind of replies, especially when said confidently, are very harmful to beginners, who will see your high post count, and assume that you know better, which you clearly don’t.
I did state that it’s a 99% chance it’s your fault and a 1% chance it’s Epic’s fault.
Turns out that 1% is the case, if what you state about the bug is true.
Except with your attitude I’m sure that the 99% was not “overly inflated" at all… very likely you did near everything you could just wrong and since you ignore advice anyway you’ll never figure it out.
However, this is a topic about the issue with your lack of understanding that the landscape shouldn’t be used anyway, not your other shortcomings.
The problem and various solutions have been amply explained and expanded on.
I’m sure that anyone with half a brain reading this will correctly surmise that “not using landscape” is the only real “solution” anyway. For the obstinate ones like yourself, update the engine.
@John_Har Not really. Testing on 5.7.2 and there are still obvious issues, I don’t understand how something like this is allowed to be broken …
Using the new “Advanced Weight Blending”
The only way to get it “working” is by having one Edit layer FOR EACH Paint layer , And have all the Landscape Layer info “Blend group" set on the same group. If you don’t do that, you get a mix of each layer.
Issues :
You have to select both the correct edit layer and paint layer to do your paint … which is anoying and prone to mistakes
Edit layers’ order mater. If you have your dirt Edit layer ABOVE the grass Edit layer for exemple, if you paint dirt, you can’t just paint grass again and let the “weight blend” do its job of balancing weights, the dirt is above the grass, so you have to remove dirt for the grass to show up, instead of just painting grass where you want grass again.
Using the Weight blending Legacy “Fixed” in 5.7.2
In the 5.7.2 they mostly fixed the weight blending legacy, and it now behaves almost like you’d expect it, but there are still issues :
Splines no longer work. If you have a spline with a Layer name specified to paint, it will mix the paint with whatever is bellow it (because splines are on a separate Edit layer) so you have to manually repaint over your splines …
Smoothing behaves weirdly. Let say you fill your landscape with grass. You then paint a big patch of dirt and then you paint a patch of sand inside. You want to smooth dirt and sand together, smoothing will bring back grass instead
I’m not sure what the intention was with the “Advanced weight”, I see interesting stuff with the Blend groups, but as it is, I see only issues. The fact that you can’t paint layers on the same edit layer and have them balance out correctly, which currently leads to one edit layer per paint layer (meaning order matter and no weight balancing while painting …)
And legacy being broken with splines still + the smoothing weirdness
We’re not talking about an experimental tool here, it’s the landscape painting, it shouldn’t be broken in the first place. Sorry for being salty, I like unreal a lot, and we wouldn’t be able to do this without it, but this is not the first time Epic breaks something functionnal when reworking/adding something, and in the meantime, you have to deal with time consuming workarounds (if any).
Anyway, I hope this get fixed soon (if there is a 5.7.3 maybe ?)
I’am curious, what other solutions are there if landscape should not be used ?
If you’re building a handcrafted exterior map with some nature, I don’t see much alternative.
You mentionned DCCs and pcg grass but :
Working on your map when you often need to edit the landscape, you have to jump back and forth with whatever DCC tool you’re using. Unless there are better “Landscape” tools that are plugged and editable directly into unreal ? otherwise, it is tedious
Last things I saw about PCG gpu grass (a few months back, haven’t tested myself) it was still heavier on performance than the landscape grass
Try Hudini by sfx. But blender works too. You edit the mesh, export to fbx and re-import in engine. The changes apply immiditately. The loadong is near instant. You have more control, etc.
Re the pcg. You have to set it up correctly. You can’t expect to have each blade of grass as it’s own instance. You can’t expect the meshes to cast shadows. You have to understand the difference between what is realistically possible and what is computationally outside the realm of possibilities for anyone - epic most of all.
The proper way to do grass would be a custom shader that is fed a properly packed value of points to build the mesh from as the base. This isn’t possible in engine unless you know how to write your own USF and build the engine from source with other major changes.
Therefore you have to stick with what both you and the engine can realistically do. A simple mesh with transparency and sum 1k vert count is probably “the best” you can realistically do if you intend to plaster 1b instances all in the same screen. GOOD Lods and a properly set draw distance before extintion along with no shadow casting is going to make it possible to have decent scenes - think RDR2.
Anyway, this is a topic about landscapes. As much as grass matters within that realm, if you need more detail search up older forum posts on the subject. There is plenty of info, including how one should write better USF for it.
Back to the landacape paint.
From what you are saying it’s worse than it has ever been. Kind of amazing.
I think whatever they are doing is being done to retroactively get nanite to play ball - rather than to improve anytnig.
You see, epic has decided that the landscape is unfixable - and it truly is. It was badly made since the start. It uses unoptimizable ways to draw and non analytical reductions that cause extreme quality loss on LOD computation. They know the only way to make it work is to start from scratch and they don’t want to because the team working fortnite is “happy" with it…
Yeah thats what i did. I see people online saying this is just how it is now.
I dont like it.
Why they broke it? I cant understand. And I dont know how in the world something like this gets pushed on to everyone … it doesn’t make sense.
”So you’ve been driving our car for a while. Here’s an updated car. Huh theres no wheels? guess we didn’t notice. Oh well.” ← Thats basically whats gone on here with landscape paint.
You can set the layer to use the legacy method by opening the layer > Edit > Blend Method > Weight Blending Legacy. The blending method will be the same as in previous versions.
Hi, I had this problem and I finally found it’s not just me. So I see 3 potential solutions:
Use legacy blending - this leaves odd square-y edges
Remove the layer below with shift and then paint - that kind of works but you have to be very precise at how you paint - you have to basically erase and then paint exactly at the black spot.
Have one Paint Layer per one Edit Layer. I’m sorry, I’m new to landscaping, how do you do it? I currently have two Edit Layers, two Paint Layers but when I use the other Edit Layer nothing happens and I don’t know how Paint Layer to it
Also I noticed that for methods 1 & 2 it leaves the foliage from lower layers intact, even when erased & painted over, I’m not sure if this is the issue for solution no 3.
Legacy is fine, you just have to blend it right when you paint . I’ve got 3 layers all blended here, it’s like you have to remove the other layer first using shift.
I had problems with the landscape, such as when i painted on other layers, the edges looked like uv stretching. then from others suggestions, switched the painting method to weight blending (legacy) and also turned off the substrate from the project completely because it seemed to be interfering with the old system. after then it fixed.
