[UE4] - Procedural Nature Environment
polycounter lvl 14
--- Update 07/21/2015 ---
I made a post in the comments below, but just to keep things clean I am adding the video up here in the main post as well
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gut5ermayK4[/ame]
Original Post
Hey guys,
So maybe some of you have seen the progress of this scene along the way, and maybe some of you haven't. I've been working on an almost entirely procedurally generated Nature Environment. So far it can create rivers, tree's, vines, and plenty of stuff that I haven't even thought of that I'm sure its capable of haha
There is also procedural moss placement on assets, like the rocks and tree trunks, procedural color variations of grass and leaf textures, and some vertex painted moss as well. The branches can be adjusted by - the number of branches, the angle of the branches, the angle variance of the branches, twist of the tree trunk, the amount of wind applied to them, and the ability to select seperate branch models for each spline i place in the scene.The branches will randomize their position and rotation so no two will ever be exactly the same
The rivers are all spline generated as well with a material that increases the speed of the river based off of the normal angles of the geo and adds foam to the water at the tops and base of any water falls which is calculated using the tangent angles of the spline.
I'm hoping to have time to make a video here pretty soon so you can see the environment in motion. Will most likely post it here and on my facebook as well.
www.facebook.com/purepolygons
The scene has wind, including the spline branches and of course the river moves and flows, all of the grass n such is moving and a little garden gnome says hi sometimes if you look closely. Watch it for hours when i release the video... you'll see him eventually. I want to try to find some time soon too to be able to expand on some of the techniques with the splines and materials that I used for this to share it with you guys. In the mean time, I hope you all enjoy the work and like what I've done with it so far
For the rocks, it's actually only one rock model in the scene throughout the whole thing. I just set it up with worldspace color overlays and normals so that I could scale and rotate the thing without any distortion of the material. When I was designing the rock initially I tried to come up with a very unique shape that I could get a lot of variation out of it. Here is a very simple early sculpt of the rock, before I finished it up and detailed it.
Example of the Procedural Splines used to create the environment
Here is the simple spline model that im using for all of the trees
Some youtube videos that I made along the way while I was working on the scene.
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jec8Fe5K7Pc[/ame]
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPkVBx7snVc[/ame]
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfahXmHF4V8[/ame]
I made a post in the comments below, but just to keep things clean I am adding the video up here in the main post as well
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gut5ermayK4[/ame]Original Post
Hey guys,
So maybe some of you have seen the progress of this scene along the way, and maybe some of you haven't. I've been working on an almost entirely procedurally generated Nature Environment. So far it can create rivers, tree's, vines, and plenty of stuff that I haven't even thought of that I'm sure its capable of haha
There is also procedural moss placement on assets, like the rocks and tree trunks, procedural color variations of grass and leaf textures, and some vertex painted moss as well. The branches can be adjusted by - the number of branches, the angle of the branches, the angle variance of the branches, twist of the tree trunk, the amount of wind applied to them, and the ability to select seperate branch models for each spline i place in the scene.The branches will randomize their position and rotation so no two will ever be exactly the same
The rivers are all spline generated as well with a material that increases the speed of the river based off of the normal angles of the geo and adds foam to the water at the tops and base of any water falls which is calculated using the tangent angles of the spline.
I'm hoping to have time to make a video here pretty soon so you can see the environment in motion. Will most likely post it here and on my facebook as well.
www.facebook.com/purepolygons
The scene has wind, including the spline branches and of course the river moves and flows, all of the grass n such is moving and a little garden gnome says hi sometimes if you look closely. Watch it for hours when i release the video... you'll see him eventually. I want to try to find some time soon too to be able to expand on some of the techniques with the splines and materials that I used for this to share it with you guys. In the mean time, I hope you all enjoy the work and like what I've done with it so far
For the rocks, it's actually only one rock model in the scene throughout the whole thing. I just set it up with worldspace color overlays and normals so that I could scale and rotate the thing without any distortion of the material. When I was designing the rock initially I tried to come up with a very unique shape that I could get a lot of variation out of it. Here is a very simple early sculpt of the rock, before I finished it up and detailed it.
Example of the Procedural Splines used to create the environment
Here is the simple spline model that im using for all of the trees
Some youtube videos that I made along the way while I was working on the scene.
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jec8Fe5K7Pc[/ame][ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPkVBx7snVc[/ame][ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfahXmHF4V8[/ame]
Replies
@ dzibarik - Everything that I created has the functionality for it in the editor. I just used blueprints and the Unreal Material Editor in unison to create the necessary procedural attributes.
@Tobbo - Thank you! Yeah I started off with this idea simply to create some ropes and hoses and cables. Then while working on it, I had the idea for some nature related tools, so I expanded on it
@BlvdNights - I really have no idea I am sure just how endless the possibilities are for this. I think I will continue looking further into splines and blueprints
Awesome Stuff!
It is only using that one spline model for all of the trees and then I am simply applying different tiling texture values within the blueprint, different branch values, rotations, amounts, scales, etc. Then once you make one tree out of the splines I basically just copied and pasted it and could make quick adjustments to the splines to make it look like a completely new tree
Hi Obscura,
It doesn't actually calculate it every frame, it's a checkbox in the blueprint to tell it only to run when changes are made. I get over 30FPS with this in the Engine and that's with most things tessellated in the scene and 8k/4k/2k textures throughout. It's all about the LOD's and tessellation fade that I have setup on the assets and I am sure I could optimize it even more when I continue looking into the technique. I really think once I get this fleshed out a bit more that it could be a real way of working on games in the future. I'm excited about it! Worst case scenario, it's easy to export the models created with the splines as an FBX and re-import it as a static model back into the engine. I hope to get the video finished up for it this weekend
I think it's possible for sure
For those interested I put together a video finally of the Procedural Nature Scene!I show off some of the tech a bit more, not in extreme detail, but there are a lot more beauty shots of the environment throughout. I hope you all enjoy!
[ame]
Very nice.
The most of the users doesn't even have a card to handle 4k textures properly when they are used heavily.
I still like the approach, I just don't think that an ordinary user's pc could handle a whole game like this. Maybe in the close future.
I would be really interested to see others opinion too. Maybe I'm just worrying too much about performance, and underestimating the ordinary user's hardwares.
@Warren - Thank you! A few times I almost gave up, thinking I couldn't do it, but I pushed through and it makes me happy also
@Obscura - It definitely isn't the most vast audience to run everything at highest settings, but I definitely think in a few years it will be the standard. I am already seeing 2k becoming standard in some PC games and 4k and 8k popping up here and there. My machine isn't anything special and it does a pretty good job rendering everything. I'm sure if I really went deep and optimized more, especially on lighting, that it would run pretty smooth on what people would consider a common machine.
Thanks for the comments everyone! I still hope to make a tutorial somewhere down the line, it will happen, it will lol
(A tutorial could work too!)
It looks really impressive. The water blueprint is awesome and definitely great, and same with the tree with splines and branches too. It's great. Amazing work, really.