These have been really inspiring, Maximum! Your materials look great, and I think you sell the scale of your landscapes really well.
I do have a couple questions about your UE4 material set up:
1. Are you mostly using the splatmaps you gathered from WM to drive your material masks, or are you also using a slope-angle based approach for rock/sand/etc (or any other techniques?)..I've been trying to mix these techniques with mixed results.
2. Are you using any techniques for material distance blending for near and far textures?
3. Are you pairing your landscapes with any world normal map or diffuse maps from WM, or just using the individual landscape layer materials?
1. At the moment I am only using splat maps from world machine. That doesn't necessarily mean those maps are good enough right out of the bat. It's a really bad thing when people generate a flow map, wear map etc. from world machine and then import them in engine right away. The result is so similar to every other terrain textured this way. Personally I hate it when I can clearly see a flow map pasted on top of other layer. It instantly makes it feel artificial. To prevent that I do a lot of tests in Photoshop on these masks before using them. Making them more natural looking.
The slope based alone isn't a good idea in my opinion. When using masks we have total control. But when using a slope based approach it's too hard to get a good result. (Not every 60-90 degree slope should be using a rock material. right?)
But I never gave it a try to combine both approaches. That sounds like a good idea and I'm sure incredible results will come out of it. Sorry for the long text. (Breathing...)
2. Yes I simply fade the near texture into a less tiled texture in distance. But one common mistake here is people often fade it into a very less tiled texture like 0.25 for the near texture and 0.001 for the far texture to prevent any tiling on the landscape. It does a good job at getting rid of the tiling but when features in a texture become so large it kills the sense of scale and it would not be believable anymore. Having very close to reality scales helps a lot.
3. I used to do that. In Battlefield 3 they used base texture on the terrains and then fading into material layers as player goes near. But I'm not doing it anymore.
Thank you.
Here is a WIP of the new map.
I have a LUT applied there but I'm definitely going to redo it since it was just quickly done.
Your landscapes are lovely but what I feel they miss and wouldake them much more difficult and powerful would be some human element. A sense is scale beyond the natural could take these to the next level
A small hut a set of tracks a peice of discarded clothing caught in some veg. This would immediately take it from baren to telling some sort of story.
@Mant1k0re, Not sure if I correctly understand the question.
Sorry if it wasn't clear, I meant those rock formation in the distance have such a steep slope, close to 90 degrees, that you shouldn't have been able to get them from a displacement map generated in WM, so I was wondering if you painted them with the landscape tool in UE4 directly. Every time I try extreme slopes like this in WM it ends up creating lots of issues un UE4 when importing the displacement map.
@atomander, I'm glad you like them. My materials at the moment are really big and all over the place. Once I get to clean them up I'll make sure to give you some screens.
@armagon, Gnomon and 3D motive I think, have WM tutorials. Not advanced at all. I don't know why there are only beginner series but, that does a pretty good job covering all the basics.
By the way this is submitted to Epic already, I'm going to do some tweaking on everything until they ask for the files.
@armagon, Gnomon and 3D motive I think, have WM tutorials. Not advanced at all. I don't know why there are only beginner series but, that does a pretty good job covering all the basics.
Gnomon tut is from Dax Panhdi, who is behind GeoGlyph plugin for WM. It's true that it reads "intro" but it goes beyond beginner stuff imo. Very good material.
3D Motive one I would avoid like the plague. It's super dupper basic and on top of that full of errors and approximation when the dude start importing his stuff in Unreal.
There is a third option that I liked a lot but you have to be able to stand David Lesperance style, the dude talks like a machine gun and jumps all over the place, and likes to play some heavy metal during the timelapse parts of his tuts. But you learn so much from all the clues he puts here and there, I think it's totally worth it. Plus, I'm a metalhead anyway.
These are really cool ^^ I'm currently trying to learn how to make landscapes in Unreal 4 do you have any wiki's or tutorials etc.. on how you got these down ? My WM creations tend to be off scale when imported into unreal 4
@Mant1k0re, Good stuff on David Lesperance's link. Going to buy some stuff from there now thanks.
@HashBrownHamish, I don't follow anything specific really other than looking at Battlefield 3 maps sometimes as a source of inspiration. (God AK maps are the best open world maps ever...)
You should really take a deep look into these games and try to figure out how stuff are done. Most of my knowledge comes from there.
Also make sure to check out the new star war's maps those look like a totally new workflow than the old world machine and splat mapping and done! workflow. There's a lot to learn there.
And the scale, well, worst things of all that is. There is nothing in world machine to compare the scale with so you don't have a solid understanding how this will play in engine when you spawn on it. Currently the only way is to go back and fourth until you get it right.
@Mant1k0re, Good stuff on David Lesperance's link. Going to buy some stuff from there now thanks.
@HashBrownHamish, I don't follow anything specific really other than looking at Battlefield 3 maps sometimes as a source of inspiration. (God AK maps are the best open world maps ever...)
You should really take a deep look into these games and try to figure out how stuff are done. Most of my knowledge comes from there.
Also make sure to check out the new star war's maps those look like a totally new workflow than the old world machine and splat mapping and done! workflow. There's a lot to learn there.
And the scale, well, worst things of all that is. There is nothing in world machine to compare the scale with so you don't have a solid understanding how this will play in engine when you spawn on it. Currently the only way is to go back and fourth until you get it right.
As for testing your level in world machine, I have an idea that I have not tested yet. If you know the scale of the world that you want to build, block it out in your 3D application of choice. Then create a custom black and white ramp shader, similar to the video below.
Setup up an orthographic top down square render camera that approximately covers the whole landscape. Render out an image and import that file into world machine Now you have a height map that you can combine to visually with your terrain to see to and how you can build around it.
I've recently started working with WM and UE4 to create landscapes myself, I wish I saw your thread prior to starting, lots of great tips and breakdown, but oh well.. learning from mistakes is a good way too :]
This is just an early WIP, need to fix a lot of things and hand sculpt a bit the actual volcano.
I have a question about your lava landscape. I've tried to do something similar, using panners and rotators, but couldn't get the flow of the lava correct, from the volcano outwards. Mind sharing how did you go about it? Also, how many materials do you usually blend? I tried to blend more than 4 once but couldn't since I hit the texture sampler cap in the shader, any way to override it?
Nice volcano. It's coming along! For the lava landscape since my lava is all going from one side of the landscape to the other side I didn't bother doing a complex setup. I am simply making it move using a panner function and that's all I did. In your case however, I think you should try doing a lot more complicated setup since you'd want the lava to flow down from different sides. Or you can just limit the lava flow to one side. The alternative is to do the lava as static meshes with panner so they all move to correct directions.
Amazing stuff, the lava and grass one blew me away. So much talent on here, I wish someone who is good at architecure would place some beautiful castle in one of your landscapes, it would look amazing.
awesome stuff as usual @Maximum-Dev ! and thanks for directing me for a solution for the lava flow. considering either your option, using something like a decal, or ripping the volcano apart as a static mesh that I'll be able to UV to fit my needs. no way I could figure out how to make it work in the shader
Replies
I really can't wait to get my hands on your stuff. You can't possibly have made those spikes with a height map, right...? You painted it in engine?
Sorry for all the questions, your work is really a shining example of the level of quality I'd like to reach myself. So pretty!
@macoll, Thanks.
I do have a couple questions about your UE4 material set up:
1. Are you mostly using the splatmaps you gathered from WM to drive your material masks, or are you also using a slope-angle based approach for rock/sand/etc (or any other techniques?)..I've been trying to mix these techniques with mixed results.
2. Are you using any techniques for material distance blending for near and far textures?
3. Are you pairing your landscapes with any world normal map or diffuse maps from WM, or just using the individual landscape layer materials?
Amazing work, thanks for sharing here!
@amirabd2130, Danke!
@atomander, Thanks for the compliment.
1. At the moment I am only using splat maps from world machine. That doesn't necessarily mean those maps are good enough right out of the bat. It's a really bad thing when people generate a flow map, wear map etc. from world machine and then import them in engine right away. The result is so similar to every other terrain textured this way. Personally I hate it when I can clearly see a flow map pasted on top of other layer. It instantly makes it feel artificial. To prevent that I do a lot of tests in Photoshop on these masks before using them. Making them more natural looking.
The slope based alone isn't a good idea in my opinion. When using masks we have total control. But when using a slope based approach it's too hard to get a good result. (Not every 60-90 degree slope should be using a rock material. right?)
But I never gave it a try to combine both approaches. That sounds like a good idea and I'm sure incredible results will come out of it.
2. Yes I simply fade the near texture into a less tiled texture in distance. But one common mistake here is people often fade it into a very less tiled texture like 0.25 for the near texture and 0.001 for the far texture to prevent any tiling on the landscape. It does a good job at getting rid of the tiling but when features in a texture become so large it kills the sense of scale and it would not be believable anymore. Having very close to reality scales helps a lot.
3. I used to do that. In Battlefield 3 they used base texture on the terrains and then fading into material layers as player goes near. But I'm not doing it anymore.
Thank you.
Here is a WIP of the new map.
I have a LUT applied there but I'm definitely going to redo it since it was just quickly done.
If you ever feel inclined, I'd love to see your landscape material set up or hear more about the techniques you use to touch up masks in PS.
Landscapes like these are such a personal favorite, glad to see them here!
A small hut a set of tracks a peice of discarded clothing caught in some veg. This would immediately take it from baren to telling some sort of story.
Sorry if it wasn't clear, I meant those rock formation in the distance have such a steep slope, close to 90 degrees, that you shouldn't have been able to get them from a displacement map generated in WM, so I was wondering if you painted them with the landscape tool in UE4 directly. Every time I try extreme slopes like this in WM it ends up creating lots of issues un UE4 when importing the displacement map.
@Euphoria, Merci.
@SHEPEIRO, Thanks a lot for the feedback. I put that in my schedule.
@Mant1k0re, Everything you see there is made in world machine. In fact, you can easily create those steep formations using a terrace node.
@sziada, Hmmmm.. hm?
@armagon, Gnomon and 3D motive I think, have WM tutorials. Not advanced at all. I don't know why there are only beginner series but, that does a pretty good job covering all the basics.
By the way this is submitted to Epic already, I'm going to do some tweaking on everything until they ask for the files.
Gnomon tut is from Dax Panhdi, who is behind GeoGlyph plugin for WM. It's true that it reads "intro" but it goes beyond beginner stuff imo. Very good material.
3D Motive one I would avoid like the plague. It's super dupper basic and on top of that full of errors and approximation when the dude start importing his stuff in Unreal.
There is a third option that I liked a lot but you have to be able to stand David Lesperance style, the dude talks like a machine gun and jumps all over the place, and likes to play some heavy metal during the timelapse parts of his tuts. But you learn so much from all the clues he puts here and there, I think it's totally worth it. Plus, I'm a metalhead anyway.
@HashBrownHamish, I don't follow anything specific really other than looking at Battlefield 3 maps sometimes as a source of inspiration. (God AK maps are the best open world maps ever...)
You should really take a deep look into these games and try to figure out how stuff are done. Most of my knowledge comes from there.
Also make sure to check out the new star war's maps those look like a totally new workflow than the old world machine and splat mapping and done! workflow. There's a lot to learn there.
And the scale, well, worst things of all that is. There is nothing in world machine to compare the scale with so you don't have a solid understanding how this will play in engine when you spawn on it. Currently the only way is to go back and fourth until you get it right.
You can read through here and bump the thread for more attention if you see necessary.
http://forum.world-machine.com/index.php?topic=2888.0
Made another landscape for another pack.
But hell, they're all quite good. Keep posting them if you keep making them!
I got more screens.
I would lover Maximum-Dev said: As for testing your level in world machine, I have an idea that I have not tested yet. If you know the scale of the world that you want to build, block it out in your 3D application of choice. Then create a custom black and white ramp shader, similar to the video below.
Setup up an orthographic top down square render camera that approximately covers the whole landscape. Render out an image and import that file into world machine Now you have a height map that you can combine to visually with your terrain to see to and how you can build around it.
As for world machine tutorials, Dylan Yarbrough has a good one at Digital tutors. It is pretty comprehensive.
http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/2313-Building-a-Landscape-from-the-Ground-Up-in-World-Machine
I did another landscape recently.
I've recently started working with WM and UE4 to create landscapes myself, I wish I saw your thread prior to starting, lots of great tips and breakdown, but oh well.. learning from mistakes is a good way too :]
This is just an early WIP, need to fix a lot of things and hand sculpt a bit the actual volcano.
I have a question about your lava landscape. I've tried to do something similar, using panners and rotators, but couldn't get the flow of the lava correct, from the volcano outwards. Mind sharing how did you go about it?Also, how many materials do you usually blend? I tried to blend more than 4 once but couldn't since I hit the texture sampler cap in the shader, any way to override it?
Nice volcano. It's coming along!
For the lava landscape since my lava is all going from one side of the landscape to the other side I didn't bother doing a complex setup. I am simply making it move using a panner function and that's all I did. In your case however, I think you should try doing a lot more complicated setup since you'd want the lava to flow down from different sides. Or you can just limit the lava flow to one side. The alternative is to do the lava as static meshes with panner so they all move to correct directions.
Some moon landscape I have recently done.
On the rolling hills with grass you posted, I would maybe add some variation in the sizes of the grass sprites just for a little bit more interest.
I have recently updated the maps. Feedback is welcome.
keep the awesome landscapes coming :]
New landscape WIP.