UDK layer masking?
Hi all, I have recently downloaded UDK and I'm loving it so far. Although I can't work out how to do one thing...
I need to apply a detail texture to a terrain using a mask, so it will paint in the rock layer texture automatically based on a grayscale map generated by worldmachine.
I have been able to apply a general colour texture to the whole terrain, I had no problem with this, I just don't want to have to paint by hand all the detail layers.
I know there will be a way to do this as UDK has by far the best material editor out there, google searches came back with nothing.
If this IS possible, can it also be used to apply vegetation?
Hope you all can help.
EDIT: I realise that I mistakenly double posted, this is because I didn't think my thread yesterday was successfully submitted as I was a new member, sorry.
I need to apply a detail texture to a terrain using a mask, so it will paint in the rock layer texture automatically based on a grayscale map generated by worldmachine.
I have been able to apply a general colour texture to the whole terrain, I had no problem with this, I just don't want to have to paint by hand all the detail layers.
I know there will be a way to do this as UDK has by far the best material editor out there, google searches came back with nothing.
If this IS possible, can it also be used to apply vegetation?
Hope you all can help.
EDIT: I realise that I mistakenly double posted, this is because I didn't think my thread yesterday was successfully submitted as I was a new member, sorry.
Replies
that method cannot be used to apply vegetation though, but neither can the "painted layers" method.
to apply vegetation it must be placed using the Foliage tool, and all relation there is to the landscape layers, is that you can tell it to only place vegetation per layer when you do place foliage meshes
So basicly you paint Rock on your landscape with large brush, but you don't need to worry were you paint as the mask takes care of everything.
How would set to up? Is this possible?
If you find a solution can you let me know. thanks
If you need a Lerp? how would I connect it.
as I said read the page UDN - Materials Compendium to learn how to use it
And as promised this is my World Machine Preset:
You'll need the Coastal Overlay Plugin to make it work !
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/17204989/Island%20Preset.tmd
I dont know how placing foliage via mask would be possible, but doing this by hand via the foliage tool is really quick and easy and you have a lot of control on instancing and culling distances, which will be an important issue with big and open terrains.
Also be warned that very big landscapes will eat up your memory like crazy while running lightmass !
For Example i used a 4096² heightmap and when i applied foliage etc. , lightmass would have needed something in between of 512 Gig to 1024 Gig of Memory ! Only solution was to Export the Landscape to Obj. , use Meshlab to down res, then reimport as a Mesh.
So when you have a big landscape you could export it as OBJ and then use meslab to optimize it.. then re-import it back. Can you then still edit the landscape. Guess its mesh then. So it speeds upo render time using lightmass? Is there any info on this online? How did you workout how much ligtmass would use? thanks
Also a good thing to know is, that if you're using a standard Landscape Material and Paint in the Detail Layers by hand, that you can export this as greyscale masks to be used like in my material example and then use it for the mesh version of you're terrain.
And yeah it speeds up render time tremendously when you convert it to a mesh and it also helped me to gain more performance ingame.
I just started the lightmass calculations and then checked the log files after it crashed. Also some other guy on this forum has had similar problems and even had two 32gig pcs on this task and still failed. The Numbers where rather guesses, but it still boils down to you wont be able to render lightmass on a huge landscape without a render farm.
I now have a plane with my heightmap assigned to it. (using displacement)
The mesh (fbx) was very high, but i got it under 50K poly. I'm wondering if that's
still to highpoly for 1009x1009 landscape map. It looked fine to me.
I did noticed that it was very small in max,, so i needed to scale it up.
As you said if its a mesh I can't paint on any detail textures. I also
have a colormap (4096x4096) for my 1009x1009 (worldmachine). I still find it alot of work if you need
to paint in all your detail textures by hand. Escpecially if you have a large map.
I was hoping you could use a very large brush and then paint away on your landscape
just painting in detail you want (using a mask methode) so when you paint rock for
example it only affects the regions you have defined in your mask.
But I understand this is not possible.
If i understand correctly you can't really use lightmass on a large landscape with foliage (unless you have renderfarm).
as it require alot of memory. So what other options are there?
So with my Setup you dont need to paint any detail textures per hand at all. But you could still edit the Masks in Photoshop or something similiar.
Also keep in mind that the Material i posted is to be used with landscape but you only have to change a few nodes like the terrain coordinates nodes to make it work with a mesh.
A 1009x1009 Landscape might be useable as it is, as i was talking about a 4k landscape in my case. Just make a quick lightmass test with some props in etc. and see if your computer can handle it.
I'm no Pro with UDK and there might be better ways to deal with big landscapes, but for my project this works just fine.