00:00Hey, what's up, creators? Today, we're going to show you how you can sculpt landscapes inside Unreal Engine 5
00:06We're going to demonstrate how to import your own custom height map into the engine with a pre-generated landscape, whether that be from real-world geometry or something you've made in external programs like World Machine
00:17If you are completely new to landscapes, this is the video for you
00:22With that being said, let's go ahead and jump in and get started
00:29[Music] So, starting off, we're going to introduce you to the Landscape mode inside Unreal Engine
00:34We can access this by going to the top left-hand corner, clicking on the Select Mode, and choosing Landscape
00:41You can also press Shift + 2 to activate this
00:45Inside of here, this is going to allow us to create a new landscape and define all the properties, such as the material, the resolution, the size, and more
00:55What we're going to do is create a brand new landscape from scratch
01:00If you're not in it already, go ahead and press the "Create New" tab
01:02Here, we will show you how to create a landscape using a custom height map later on in this video
01:11We can use the section size to change the size of our landscape
01:16We can also adjust a few of the other properties over here, such as filling it to fit the entire world
01:23For now, though, we're just going to go ahead and press "Create," and give it a couple of seconds for it to generate a completely flat landscape
01:31Landscape that we can work with
01:33Once this is loaded up, we're going to be able to see all of the different tools that we have available to us
01:37Don't worry, we're going to go through these, and we're going to start creating our own landscapes in no time
01:41Let's hop back in
01:44So, first things first, we're going to be navigating the viewport, just like we did before
01:48When it comes to landscapes, one thing to note is you might want to set your camera speed to a slightly higher value
01:54Up in the top right-hand corner here, I like working with speed around 5 and 6 when it comes to working with landscapes
02:04Now, let's go ahead and start sculpting
02:07To do this, inside our sculpting mode, we can see we've got our tools
02:10The first one is Sculpt
02:13Really straightforward
02:15What I can do with this is, with my brush, I can run over and hold down left click
02:18This is going to raise the terrain, and we can do this to create things like mountains
02:24So I can just keep going on, sculpting those
02:30I can also use Shift and left click to start indenting into the landscape to make things like rivers
02:34Now, that's really simple
02:38We can use this to build the foundation of our landscapes
02:42We can also adjust our brush size on the left-hand side here to control the size of our brush, which allows you to add lots of detail
02:51We can also adjust the brush falloff to increase or decrease the smoothness of that brush
02:57So, if I make this brush nice and big, you can see we've got..
03:02If we decrease that falloff, you can see the brush is going to become very, very smooth with this falloff
03:15If I decrease it, it’s going to be a very harsh brush
03:19You can see there’s no smoothing on that, whereas if I increase this all the way up to one, it’s going to be a very, very smooth brush
03:22We’ve also got our tool strength to control just how strong of an effect this tool is going to have
03:26We also have a whole variety of different brush types that we can explore, if that’s something you’re interested in
03:32If it is, just let us know in the comments down below
03:35That’s the sculpt tool
03:38What I want you to do is just play around with it, get comfortable, make some mountains, make some rivers, and have some fun
03:42Now, what we're going to do is..
03:44We're going to hop over to some of the other tools, including the smooth tool
03:47Using the smooth tool could not be easier: we just simply click it, and then, with this, we can find an area we want to smooth, run over this, and press our left click
03:59This is going to smooth our landscape for us
04:01Really straightforward
04:04We've also got the flatten tool
04:06This is going to do exactly what it says on the tin
04:09If I choose an area and then hold down the left click from that point, it is going to flatten our terrain to that point
04:19The next tool we're going to cover is our ramp tool
04:20With this, we can choose two points and then press add ramp on this to build a ramp between those two points
04:28We can also adjust things like our ramp width and our ramp fall-off to change how that
04:35The ramp is going to look just like any landscape or most objects in Unreal Engine
04:40They're going to have collision, and if I were to go over to my ramp by pressing Play, I can actually run up that ramp and use it to traverse my level, which is absolutely fantastic
04:52So, you can see my character here perfectly running up this landscape
04:59The last few tools I want to introduce you to are the Erosion Tool and the Hydro Erosion Tool
05:04These are just going to simulate erosion from soil and rainfall
05:12We can try this by simply clicking on it and then using left click to simulate that erosion, and you can see we get a really nice effect there, similar to what you would see in an actual mountain, where soil is flowing down
05:27You've also got your Hydraulic Erosion tool, which is going to simulate erosion caused by water
05:33The difference between this and the soil-based one is that the erosion effect you get from this is going to be much smoother
05:39As you can see there, it looks just like water
05:42You can, of course, adjust all of the different settings for these erosion tools to get the look that you want
05:52That's it for a quick introduction to the landscape tools inside of Unreal Engine 5
05:56What I'd like us to do now is to show you how you can import a custom height map into Unreal Engine 5
06:05Again, doing this is really straightforward
06:07Let's go ahead and create a new level, and we'll do this
06:09To create that new level, we're just going to go up to File, then select New Level
06:13And we are going to be using this basic template again
06:15If you want, you can save your work from there
06:20In this new level, I'm just going to delete the floor, and then I'm going to hop back into my Landscape mode in the top left-hand corner
06:26Now, what I can do from here, instead of creating a flat landscape, is import from file
06:33Most importantly, what I can do with this is choose a height map file
06:40For me, I've got a height map that I've included with this video; you can download it from the links down below
06:45I select my height map by simply choosing it and then pressing open
06:53Then, what we're going to see is our landscape is slightly curved here in the preview
06:58If you can't see that, don't worry, it's totally okay if you have a high..
07:07With the height map, you're definitely going to be able to see it here
07:15But if I go ahead and press import on this now, it will generate our landscape, and we will see all of the detail that comes with it
07:23So, now that this is loaded, I can slightly see I have my landscape down at the bottom there
07:29If I go and fly towards this, you can see I now have my landscape with all of the detail that it should have from that height map
07:35With this height map landscape, what I can do is I can actually take this and start adding additional sculpting or information onto it using the sculpting tools we've just used
07:41So, let's say I want to add a little more erosion to the side of this mountain; I can take that brush falloff
07:48You can adjust it; the same goes for the size, and with that, I can then start simulating that extra erosion and begin shaping this myself
07:59That is simply put, how you can take a height map and bring it into Unreal Engine
08:03You already know how to use the sculpting tools—take that height map, play around with it, and have some fun
08:10What we're going to do for good measure is to show you how you can quickly apply a material to our landscape and then get rid of some of this fog because, well, there's a lot
08:15So let's go and do that
08:20We're going to exit our landscape mode again by going to the top left corner and selecting our select mode
08:25This is our default editing mode
08:28Then, under my landscape material, I'm simply going to set this
08:34To something like grass, really straightforward
08:38We're not going to be showing you how you can have different layers right now, but what I did want to do is just show you how we can get a simple material on there
08:46And now, when I press play on this and start running around, at the very least, we've got some grass
08:53We can also choose things like rock and apply this to our landscape by simply searching for that rock material, giving it a couple of seconds to update
09:04Now, you can see we've got our rock on here
09:07Now, let's go ahead and get rid of some of this fog, because there's a lot
09:09I'm going to take the Exponential Height Fog in my World Outliner, in the top right-hand corner, and then I'm just going to turn that fog density down until we get..
09:19To a level that is comfortable for me, so that's it—really straightforward
09:24Let's hop in and see what we've got
09:29So, we can see here we've got our landscape; we can run around on it, and it's got lots of detail
09:34What we're also going to do is add an additional video to show you how you can paint this, setting up different layers for things like rock, mud, grass, and more
09:41If you're interested in that, again, be sure to let us know in the comments down below
09:44That's it for this video
09:47I hope you have enjoyed it
09:50By now, like I said, you're going to have that landscape and lots of detail
09:54I'm really interested in seeing what you are able to create using your own sculptures or using those height maps that I showed you
09:59Be sure to go
10:03Ahead, and share those in our Discord server to get some feedback, or just share it with me
10:08Also, if you'd like to support more high-quality training like this, be sure to check out our Patreon page and unlock exclusive perks such as live mentoring, early access to our videos, and easy-to-use game templates like our FPS or RPG games, full of code
10:23As always, stay awesome, keep creating
10:27Fertis signing out
10:34[Music]