Foliage questions.

[Stabz]

I'm reading the update notes for the June version of UDK and it appears there is a new foliage system. I've generally been making my foliage in SpeedTree, which I've heard can be wasteful on small objects like grass. I was wondering if it were better to make static meshes for things like grass, but my main concern is having them sway in the wind, or move out of the way when a player runs into them. I had this kind of effect before but it was done through the material editor and was a bit glitchy. I am wondering what would be the best option for me to accomplish this without totally killing performance? I don't care much for the foliage to cast any kind of shadow, except maybe the larger trees.

Any help would be much appreciated

[ambershee]

Make a static mesh, and use interactive foliage actors. There's a page on the UDN with sample material setups.

[Stabz]

Is there a way to have the new foliage system place the interactive ones instead of just static ones? The new system places the foliage really nicely and easily. It would be kind of tedious to have to manually place each plant to have them interactive. Any ideas?

[JackPorter]

Unfortunately there is no way to add interactivity to the new instanced foliage in the June QA but it's definitely on the todo list.

[Stabz]

I've been hoping for something like that to work for quite some time now. Hopefully it gets added soon

[Spoondog]

You could use the wind actor in the vertex shader and attach a wind point source to the player. If you do it right, fairly subtle, you at least get some movement there. Not as nice as interactive foliage but its movement..