what programs would be a good purchase for forest scene with flowing water and caves?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

trying to create a high detailed forest environment with flowing water and caves,
with illumination off the surface of the water and projected across the cave’s interior walls.

what other programs compared to the following
list are also recommended?

for Height maps/ World machine, L3DT

for Foliage/ Speedtree, S.krezel Interactive Tree Creator for Ue4

for Water caustics/ Caustics generator

im unsure which programs would helpful,
so could someone please advise me what else would be a good purchase?

2

I think a good question to ask is; what programs do you have at your disposal already?

I mean, WorldMachine is great for hyper detailing terrains (and other models in general) and adding noise, but it’s also going to cost you anywhere from 100 dollars or more to get that detail. Depending on what 3D applications you have now, you may be able to create some heightmaps that will meet your needs without Worldmachine,

As for trees, Speedtree is very affordable and practical. I personally use Megascans for foliage. They have a huge library of high detail foliage. (This is what Disney used for there live action movie The Jungle Book actually)

I can’t comment too much on the water caustics though. Haven’t used it too much myself, but I’m sure other members can chime in on that.

3

You would have to fake the water caustics, the engine can’t render that so you’d have to do some stuff in the materials to make the effect.

4

Here’s a video on how to make water caustics, though having a ready texture is needed for this vid:

5

just use a animated material in a decal to throw the waters reflection on the inner cave.

6

thankyou everybody for your input, ill definitely look at that caustics tutorial.

7

Heightmaps - World Machine with the Geoglyph plugin if it’s in the budget.
Foliage - Speedtree for trees, your DCC tool of choice for everything else.
Caves - ZBrush for most things, maybe Agisoft Photoscan or Realitycapture if you happen to be near a cave and have a ton of lights.

8

thankyou for the information Zero-Night.

9

@Zero-Night “Agisoft Photoscan or Realitycapture if you happen to be near a cave and have a ton of lights.”

For some reason this made me laugh out loud.

Houdini’s a good shout if you can be bothered to learn it :slight_smile: It can do everything

10

I’m not entirely sure, as I haven’t researched this myself, but you might want to check out Houdini. You might be able to use Houdini’s water caustics for the effects you are looking for. I don’t know if this can be done in real time though. I read in this article that, that is what Crystal Dynamics did for Rise of the Tomb Raider: Rise of the Tomb Raider Graphics & Performance Guide | NVIDIA

To quote the article:

“Of the many additions, Crystal Dynamics’ use of Side Effects’ Houdini software is the most impressive. With this package highly realistic water effects and avalanches were created offline, recorded as Bink videos, and dynamically merged into real-time cutscenes to display visual effects that would be otherwise impossible to render. Less accurate effects could be rendered in real-time, though they wouldn’t appear anywhere near as dramatic or thrilling.”

What do you guys think, is this a possible approach as well?

11

I cant thank you all enough im new to UE4 forums and have just started learning how to use the program, im inspired to start creating water caustics myself. I’ve just been following some youtube tutorials online and so far have just created my first water scene. im keen on testing out these various programs mentioned in this thread, i’ll try out some free versions of these programs then eventually buy the ones i feel are relevant to what im trying to acomplish. im sure with hard work and repetition i can make something really beautiful, so thanks again everyone it really has given me allot to think about and work towards.