Is Converting a Landscape to Terrain possible?

Adrian Pieroni

I did some research and found that apparently Landscape is superior to Terrain, so that's what I used to make my single component plot of land for a level assignment. Here's the problem, my level has caves and will need both an entrance and exit, but apparently only Terrain allows you to cut out sections of it so you can insert a separate cave mesh.

Therefore, as it stands, my only options seems to be that hopefully I can convert my landscape into a terrain so I can do this. Is this possible in any way? Or does anyone have any alternatives proposals given the details I have provided?

I may be doomed.

Mik2121

You can cut holes in meshes in Landscape mode. Forgot the exact name of the tool, but if you have any version of UDK made during the last... half year or so, then the option is there.

Adrian Pieroni

Yeah we're using the July build right now. Hopefully you're right and someone can elaborate.

Santewi

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LandscapeEditing.html#Delete Landscape Components

ambershee

I suspect you could export the heightmap and reimport it to use it as terrain?

Adrian Pieroni

Santewi, as I said my landscape is comprised of one single component. This was to my teacher's advice. Even if it wasn't though, an entire landscape component in any situation would far overshoot the small opening needed for a cave. The method actually seems very crude, and surprises me.

Santewi

Oh. Well then I have no idea.

blankslatejoe

You could try to extract the heightmap data from the landscape, as per ambershee's suggestion, but be prepared for a headache. In past builds you could only export the heightmaps as some arcane format called .g16 or something like that. (Maybe the Landscape system has updated that a bit? I dunno)

An easier route might be to carve the FLOOR of your caves out of your existing landscape, and then place a "cap" mesh for the mountain above and cave ceilings. You could even use another landscape object as the 'mountain on top of the cave' (but be sure to put any new landscapes/terrains in another sublevel for easy hiding/unhiding).

Pluses:
-faster iteration, since you're editing the floor layout in editor
-Seamless floors, since its all that ground terrain. Floors are where the camera is pointed a lot of the time, so seamlessness here goes a long way.

Minuses:
-Two terrains can be hard to edit at once
-You can't really have the terrain fold over itself for complex vertical cave layouts, cave bridges/tunnels, etc. (unless you do the overlapping with added meshes)

Anyway, Borderlands used this trick for pretty good results in its caves, iirc.

Blubberblase

you can create a hole in your landscape by using the visibilty tool in your landscape toolbar thingy (it only works when you apply a material to you landscape, the default one doesn't work) ctrl+ leftclick will delete quads, ctrl+ shift+ left click will let them reappear

Adrian Pieroni

Thanks guys, I used a variant of blankslatejoe's second suggestion, where I pulled the floor of my landscape down really low and filled the space in with a terrain so I can make cave openings now.

My level design teacher said landscape's visibility tool doesn't work properly.

Xendance

/\drian wrote: »

Thanks guys, I used a variant of blankslatejoe's second suggestion, where I pulled the floor of my landscape down really low and filled the space in with a terrain so I can make cave openings now.

My level design teacher said landscape's visibility tool doesn't work properly.

Doesn't work properly? It seemed to work properly when it was implemented into UDK?

Santewi

Xendance wrote: »

Doesn't work properly? It seemed to work properly when it was implemented into UDK?

They've managed to break a lot of things afterwards.