Landscape and packages

Artaekos_inactive

Hello folks, I've got a quick question about landscape and packages in UDK.

I've started a new scene, and I notice that in the editor any 1 of the 4 components of my landscape disappear depending on the camera angle. This has me worried about progressing further into my project before finalizing this landscape with world machine etc.





Could it have something to do with the fact that I created and saved my .UDK file first with my landscape started, and then created a .UPK package after when I started bringing blockout assets into my scene? This confuses me because only my original .UDK map file name* in the content editor holds the texture samples and materials/instance constants created by my landscape.

I noticed that after I created my new .UPK package for the scene to import blockout meshes into, that my landscape began to have strange lighting errors in the editor as well. I transferred the landscape's maps and texture samples into my new package, and applied one of the default material instant contants into the material slot, and it removed the lighting errors, but when I save and start up UDK again, it's back to that issue, and landscape components still disappear depending on viewing angle.

It's early enough for me to remake my landscape if I have to, but I need to understand packages in UDK and how landscape works with them before I start getting committed to this project...

wes.sau

I don't know if I understand correctly what you're doing with the packages, but you should not manually move or delete any of the textures or materials inside a world file package that the landscape system creates for itself (weightmaps, shadowmaps, heightmaps, lightmaps, component material instances, etc). However you can copy or move the landscape Actor object between level files and it will create/remove those assets after saving the files and rebuilding.

I haven't come across the disappearing landscape component issue, but it sounds like a hardware/driver issue, or something out of sync in the level file. Does the issue go away when you build lighting and save the file? Does the issue show up inside the game when running it? (not in PIE but PC cooked)? Changed any visibility settings?

Artaekos_inactive

Hi Wes, thank you for your reply. What I ended up doing was exported the landscape's height map out, deleted the landscape and all associated files texture and material files from both packages, and recreated my landscape with the height map and scaled it back down to the approximate size it was at, leaving it to remain as part of the .UDK file package. Like you said, turns out I realized that transferring the landscape texture maps from one package to a new one for my assets was a bad idea. I don't have the disappearing components anymore either. That might have been caused because I didn't build lighting.

Now that we're here though, is anyone familiar with how to properly export a landscape height map to be run through World Machine? I want to put my UDK Landscape through an erosion filter in WM, and then bring that new height map and possibly some additional ones created from the process back into UDK... I've seen some guys get excellent results from that without even touching Mudbox/Zbrush..

Artaekos_inactive

World Machine is reading the .RAW and .R16 height map formats as very flat in the program, opposed to how it is in UDK...

wes.sau

Are you seeing any elevation changes at all in world machine? Typically importing 1009x1009 up to 4033x4033 RAW files with all default WM settings usually show up pretty well for me. You may have to adjust the "maximum elevation" size in the project settings, or change the width/length of the render extents to be smaller as well.

Artaekos_inactive

It has to do with the "maximum elevation" size, when I toyed around with the settings in world machine it brought it much closer to my height map's true size, but I am not sure how exactly to discern what is proper in WM for my UDK Landscape. Something tells me the answer is here though...

http://forum.world-machine.com/index.php?topic=2151.0

I'm just worried because the Draw Scale 3D settings of my Landscape are not base 2 anymore since I scaled my landscape down several times to create a higher mesh density for my landscape. I hope it doesn't cause problems for me.