Simple Landscape test map

[DGUnreal]

If anyone is interested in walking or driving around a few simple 5km x 5km Landscape maps that were algorithmically created in minutes using the soon-to-be-released TerreSculptor software, you can download the UDK maps and see screenshots on the dev blog here.

The first map blog page is here.
The second map blog page is here. <- much better vehicle map.


P.S. This post is simply to inform you about some free udk maps that are fun to drive around on, it is not a blog advertisement.

[Zomy]

really awesome.

[musilowski]

How much will TerreSculptor cost?

[DGUnreal]

How much will TerreSculptor cost?

PM'ed since this thread wasn't meant as an advertisement.
FYI there will be a free version for non-commercial use.

[DGUnreal]

I added the blog page link to a second map in the original post.
The second map is much better than the first map for driving vehicles in.
Enjoy!

[UnWheelModeller]

Very nice work David. Watch out, or you may get swamped with questions on the new Landscape system;P

Steven

[TheAgent]

looks good, ill prolly start using landscape soon.

[DGUnreal]

Very nice work David. Watch out, or you may get swamped with questions on the new Landscape system;P

Steven

Hi Steven!
I hope everything is going well.
You can PM or email me any time if you have questions or need a custom terrain.

looks good, ill prolly start using landscape soon.

Feel free to download the maps and mess around with the Landscape in them.
Note that there are still a number of Landscape bugs, so I wouldn't personally use it in a development environment yet. Give Epic a month or two to work out the kinks.

[SageHunter]

Looks good. Though it gives me the mass effect feel of the unexplored planets in the first game. It's cool to begin with, but then you get more and more annoyed at the lack of foliage. Still, cool.

[DGUnreal]

It's cool to begin with, but then you get more and more annoyed at the lack of foliage. Still, cool.

I agree. That's all there is for 20+ minutes of work.
It was simply an asset test and I didn't have time to spend hours or days creating a completed map.

If anyone wants to mess around with either map and add a water plane, trees, grass, buildings, maybe some scripted animals, foley, etc., feel free to do whatever you want with the maps.

[amigoface]

very nice !!!

I was looking for something like this for long long time

2 questions or requests

- can you make a little tutorial explaining how to use the new landscape engine especially the texturing part

- can we merge (maybe with streaming) several landscapes maps to get a really huge map for flight-like games or simulations

good day

[DGUnreal]

can you make a little tutorial explaining how to use the new landscape engine especially the texturing part

The Layers were created automatically with the TerreSculptor software and then a Material like the one on the Landscape Material UDK page was used. That was it. The power was in using TerreSculptor to create everything, so no hand-painting was done. The Heightmap and all Layer weightmaps were imported at the same time in one step as shown on the Landscape Creating UDK page for importing.

can we merge (maybe with streaming) several landscapes maps to get a really huge map for flight-like games or simulations

AFAIK no. From my understanding, streaming is still limited to the 10km x 10km maximum Unreal World size. For example Distance streaming and Volume streaming properties are still based on the Persistent Level, and the Persistent Level can't be larger than 10km x 10km (524288 x 524288 unreal units).

The only scenario where streaming is useful is on smaller platforms like consoles where a standard map has to be split into smaller pieces to fit into the system's limited CPU and GPU memory.
On the PC there is sufficient memory and power to typically create a 4033x4033 10km Landscape map so long as you are not expecting additional foliage and staticmesh poly counts to exceed what can be rendered (~500k to 1M polys in the frustum).

One really big issue with using Landscape right now, is that it does not have any method for painting foliage layers (there is no mention of this on UDK or a hint of whether it is under development).
So if you have to manually place grass and bushes on a 10km x 10km terrain by hand, it is going to take you weeks to do that.

[amigoface]

ok from your point of view ,can we make a very large landscape map like i said for a flight style game with the landscape engine .... let's say 200kmX200km ?

[DGUnreal]

Nope.

As I mentioned, the Unreal Engine is limited to a maximum world size of 10km x 10km.

Streaming is also limited to the maximum world size, in other words, if you created 9 streaming sub-maps as a 3x3 layout, they all still fit into the master persistent level's 10km x 10km area. So each sub-map of the 3x3 layout could only be (10km / 3) = 3.3km x 3.3km maximum size.

The only way that the Unreal Engine world size can be increased is if you purchase a license for the engine and change the engine code. Then you can change the Engine Scale from 1 unit = 2cm to 1 unit = 4cm, and maybe change the engine world size from 524288 x 524288 to 1M x 1M.
Both of those changes would get you a 40km x 40km map. And you can't change the engine size much more than that through code without serious work or issues.

[siimvuss]

tho you can always scale player and everything down so the world will feel bigger than it really is ;D