I know I need to learn how to use certain software/ hardware in order to achieve my desired output and learn the skills required for this project, therefore I must try them out and experiment for myself so that I can get a better understanding.
What software/ hardware will you need to learn in order to achieve your goals of intent and output?
The software I will primarily need is Unreal Engine 4. I am also going to look into external software such as World Machine.
From the video tutorial [Source 1], I tried to have a go myself and test it out, to see if it would be useful for my own project:
I used World Machine to create the heightmap for me to export to Unreal. This was a very node-based software and took a while for me to get my head around, but once I watched a couple of videos, I found it particularly simple to understand.
I did notice a few issues with this, such as; The resolution was set to a much higher setting on the tutorial video, as I only used the free version of World Machine, it means that I could only use the max of 515 for the resolution, meaning that my attempt would not look as good, and I had to figure out the right sizes and measurements to make my map accurate. This was very confusing as nowhere would explain what to do for the free version of World Machine. For some reason when I inserted it into the unreal game engine, I could not understand why the height map spawned really low down, meaning it was really hard to find. Also, the colors turned out very different from the youtube tutorial. Therefore I decided to look at another video, as this was not the result I was looking for. I also found this difficult to understand, as my questions were not answered.
I decided to give the Video Tutorial [Source 2] a try:
So, I finally found out how to make the size fit the Unreal engine when I import the file, I decided to keep the World Engine default settings and not play around with anything to see if it is able to be used in Unreal, it just means that the resolution was not as good as the tutorial which is disappointing. For some reason, I followed the steps exactly as the tutorial shows, yet my final outcome was very different and the color was grey and looked very strange with the lighting, not how it should look. This was very stressful as I had not found a successful outcome which I liked yet. But I am determined to find the result I am looking for.
I also gave the Video Tutorial [Source 3] a try to see if it was a more effective outcome/ result:
I definitely found that this was a very time-consuming process, although the result was more of what I was looking for, as I learned how to create the snow/ sand and grass elements and make it look more realistic.
I also watched part 2 of this series where I learned how to create the painting landscape tool and layer nodes etc. The number of nodes needed for this was very intimidating, but I took it a step at a time and figured out the material setup to recreate it. This means that I could paint rock/ sand and grass to make it look more realistic.
I also downloaded a grunge texture so that I could paint with the texture so it looks more realistic:
https://www.brusheezy.com/textures/13939-grunge-texture-by-krist
Experimenting with Unreal Engine:
Asset packs I used:
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/procedural-nature-pack-vol
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/17c2d7d545674204a7644c3c0c4c58ba
I tried using the Open World Kite Pack from the Unreal marketplace, but the assets were too large and were taking over 20 minutes to load into the game engine, this was worrying as it meant that the whole process would take hours and hours. Therefore, I found a tree pack that was smaller in size, and this was very quick to load and looked fairly decent.
This experiment was very educational and I will continue to explore methods of creating a landscape within UE4, so that I can find a way that suits me best, and which I am fully comfortable with.
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