Isn’t the point of this node to allow for procedural coverage of physical materials on top of the ones used by the landscape layers? The landscape already has its reference to my Rocks and Gravel physmats based on the painted layers, I just want the material to specify where the puddles are on top of that.
Doesn’t work that way.
You have to output the layer into the physmat if you want to be able to overwrite via a texture.
It’s just like the Grass Output Node. Think like that.
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Hm, in that case, is there just no way to do what I’m looking for? I want the material to apply a procedural layer of physical materials over the ones which are determined by the landscape layer info. For things like dynamic procedural coverage with water, snow, sand ect. Is there no way for it to be selective like that? It has to either be entirely determined by the landscape layer info, or entirely determined by this material output?
… maybe you never did it…
Right click, type layer.
Use the node. Call it the right thing. Plug it into a physmat output.
Done.
Here’s a tutorial on how to use Physical Material Node.
Skipped to the later parts of the video for some material & blueprint-related work.
Also, try to check the “Generate Collision Events” checkbox in the landscape & restart your project.
2 and 4 were easily done for me. Mathwise, I can’t seem to make a cheaper heightblend vs what comes stock in the engine, but it’s performant enough for my needs and I only call once per layer used, thus #3 is a non-issue for me.
#1 I’ve tried to work with but I don’t seem to be able to wrap my head around it. I kind of get what you mean by scaling the UVs based on distance and controlling what you see that way (which is really ideal in almost all cases as the UV math will be cheaper and further upstream), but in practicality, I can’t seem to make it work.
Would you have a direction or example on how this works? I always seem to get a seam. I then had the thought to use 2 samples and offset the distance-math so the transition of one was hidden by maximally blending the other, eg: for that one/few pixels where the UVs change for sample1, those pixels would only be sample2, which blending on distance away from the camera would mix back to 50/50 and then to blend out sample2 vs sample1, rinse/repeat over distance and increasing levels of scale in the UV math.
Sounds simple and elegant, right, but I couldn’t figure it out.
That aside, it seems like you will still need 2 samples/samplers to make it work, is this a correct conclusion? If I already have an effective solution based on 2 samples per-layer (micro/macro w/some decent blending), does what I described above gain anything (assuming I’m on target…)?
Doesn´t help…
It´s not a real tutorial, just a payed one, because you need to buy a plugin ^^
My current steps are the same like 6 years ago, doing all by blueprint traces, getting angle of the terrain…
Same. So far as I know that’s the only way (to still) do it, but IANAP so, take with a grain of salt.
The phys mat and the traces are related in terms of end functionality.
You have to run a trace to get a result with physmat in it.
The difference is that prior to the output, each layer of the terrain had to assigned to a specific physmat.
You then had to Paint the terrain.
This made it impossible for auto materials to be able to provide different layers of physmat, since they are based on algorithms and not on actual painted layers.
In come the direct output option, where you can plug in a layer to each entry and get the same result you would when painting (Would have been great to have this in something like 4.18).
UVs usually have a seam.
What I ended up doing is creating a section that covers the seam by fading up/down on top of the material. The cost is higher than I’d like, but it makes it look Ok while keeping almost everything in the UV pass.
Realistically, once you have grass and stuff in the scene, you wouldn’t notice a full seam unless it’s in a screenshot… something to consider actually.
Also adding some proper UV shuffling helps hide the seam too.