One of the first things that we will need to do to work with build terrain is to create a landscape through Unreal Engine's Landscape mode, so let's get started!
Before we start working within the Unreal Editor, we will need to have a project to work with:
Cookbook_Chapter4
). Once you are done, click on Create Project.Now that we have our project set up, let's get started with building a landscape:
SM_Template_Map_Floor
mesh and delete it by going to Edit | Delete or pressing the Delete key.You'll know that we're in the Landscape mode when you can see a green grid showing up inside the level.
Under the mode image, you'll notice that the properties have changed to show three modes, with two grayed out and the first one, Manage, selected. When selected, the Manage mode allows us to create new landscapes and modify the properties that we have already created. We will learn about the other modes later in this chapter.
Right now, we'll only see the New Landscape section. Now, we don't actually have a landscape created yet, but let's first set up some properties to make this seem more realistic:
StarterContentMaterial
folder. Once here, drag and drop the M_Ground_Grass
material into the Material property under the New Landscape section. This will make our landscape use this material on all of the terrain, by default. Alternatively, you can also select the material in the Content Browser tab and then within New Landscape, click the arrow to the right of the Material variable and apply the material to the landscape.It's possible to have multiple materials in your landscape to help create cool effects. For details on this, refer to https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Landscape/Editing/PaintMode/index.html.
There are a number of properties (that we can change at this point), which will alter the landscape such as Location, Rotation, and Scale. There are also some new properties that will affect the size and quality of the landscape. The default values are balanced for quality and build time, so we're going to use them for the most part.
For more information on the New Landscape properties, refer to https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Landscape/Creation/index.html#creatinganewlandscapeusingthelandscapetool.
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to place it below our character's starting point (the Player Start object that looks similar to a hole in one with a gamepad controller to its next).This is alerting us to the fact that we should add Lightmass Importance Volume around the important parts of the level. Being a warning, it is something that we could technically avoid. As game developers, it's important for us to remove warnings wherever possible. To fix this, follow these steps:
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. To check that everything is contained, restore the viewports and maneuver as needed to get the yellow lines to fit in your level.In my example, I made the volume as big as needed to fit the terrain, but you may make it smaller to fit with just what your level contains.
For more information on creating landscapes and what all of the properties mean, check out the Unreal documentation at https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Landscape/Creation/index.html.
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