Landscape Grass | 5-Minute Materials [UE4]
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- Опубліковано 25 чер 2024
- SUP SUP! Today we're looking at the Landscape Grasstype asset and the Landscape Grass Output node. I explain how to set up a grass asset that can be procedurally spawned on specific landscape layers, and we also look at the Landscape Layer Sample node and how we can use it to tell the Grass Output to spawn certain assets on certain terrain layers.
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Programs of choice:
Unreal Engine 4 - (Game Dev)
Blender 2.8 - (Animation and Modelling)
OBS - (Video/screen capture)
Davinci Resolve - (Video editing)
Adobe Photoshop - (Graphics and Texturing)
Quixel Mixer - (Texturing)
ProTools 11 - (Compositions and mixing)
OldSchool Runescape - (Chillax time)
Filmed using:
Sony A7s2 body
Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 GM lens
Yonguo YN360 LED's for colour
Yongnuo YN760 chip LED w/ Godox softbox for key
My lovely cats names are Boycat, Girlcat and Ladycat :)
![Landscape Auto-Cliffs | 5-Minute Materials [UE4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0j4WLDyy6uc/mqdefault.jpg)
![Landscape Auto-Cliffs | 5-Minute Materials [UE4]](/img/tr.png)
![Landscapes | 5-Minute Materials [UE4]](/img/n.gif)
*Another tip:*
You can also make a layer that erases this procedural foliage.
This can be done by creating an alpha landscape layer (let's call it RemoveGrass), taking its sample and substracting it from the other layer samples that place the grass meshes.
If we paint this RemoveGrass layer onto our grass landscape layer, it will remove the grass at this location. Super useful!
Indeed! Could even use an Alpha layer to create an "alternate" foliage type by multiplying them together.
I can't get it to work sadly, would you be so kind to post a screenshot on the discord ?
Taking the same approach, you can sample a texture for player buildings or roads, wild fires, terrain manipulation, etc.
If you can "paint" the texture at runtime, you can use it to remove or add grass at will.
A minimum node right before the output will make this much simpler, unless you want to filter out tough shrub grasses or for some reason need a layer to ignore it, but then that layer can be lerped in afterwards.
The only note I'd like to add on this approach is that without UE5 and decent runtime virtual texture support, you'll have to consider linking the texture to the player's location on a timer, and focusing the rendering around them.
I wouldn't even link it directly to the player, rather snap and update every second or several and have it then affect only the local landscape and grass layers.
With RVTs, you can honestly be pretty excessive in terms of texture size so this isn't as much of a concern.
Thank you for your instructions! I've seen a lot of comments about the grass not showing up on the landscape, I had it as well. When creating a landscape in unreal 5 you get a group of LandscapeStreamingProxy children. You need to set you material to every child
Yeah, it looks like you can also select the "Landscape" actor, clear the "Landscape Material," and then re-select it (drag the material back in) again. That should work too.
Awesome tutorials! Can't wait to see what's next!
Glad you're liking them :) Excited to get around to the really hectic stuff!
Thank you for this video! Really brought my school project to life :)
This was a game changer for my project, thank you!
Thanks once again for your awesome tutorial
Really nice video, also I didnt know about that you can paint foliage only on a certain landscape layer, so thats really cool :). Thanks!
It's a banger! Haha
Hi, I just find yours newest video to say thank you. You made amazing job! Thank you! :D
Thank you! I'm glad you're finding the videos useful
Nice work!
Thanks m'dude
So beautiful
Haha NO U
Disappointed you didn't say "schmeebly deebly" in this one. I really like that.
Thank you mister !!
Thanks for watching :)
This is fun!
I may be suggesting this prematurely, but a tip I learned from an evangelist:
Redundant layers for LOD density and distance scaling.
I use 5 layers PER grass type, more in some regions. I clump an absolute truckload of extremely dense grasses around the player, and span really wide but sparse models out into the horizon, and the layers allow me to have the appearance of lush grass as far as the eye can see while in reality, 90% of it is within 20 meters of the player and it's just mixed to "overlap" scaling with reduced density as it gets further away.
This also allows me to have grass shadowing, as I enable it per layer, (aka, only on the closest and densest layer which fades out completely between 15 and 20 meter range.) and of course, use a simplified material for the further away grass... But the blending isn't an issue, since some of the lower LOD grass is mixed in close to the player: It's just always shorter in height than the highest LOD grass so it's hard to tell it isn't shadowing (you honestly can't tell at runtime, but in screenshots you notice it.)
great video, thanks for sharing! can't wait to start making my maps without foliage painting all my blades of grass! xD
So helpful! If you want foliage to react to the player (such as grass or bushes that get pushed a bit when you walk by them) do those need to be placed via the foliage tool or can they be placed via landscape layer?
It depends on the method of interaction - if you're using shaders/render targets (I have a 3-part series about exactly this) then it can be placed procedurally with Landscape or the Foliage tool :)
Is this a follow up tutorial where you need the other part for this to work? I currently am using all this but no grass mesh on the specific material.
you don't make tutorials.. you make lessons. I really feel like im learning and not just being shown just how to do sumthing thx
Thank you :) That's exactly what I aim to do!
This is fantastic. Thanks for the tutorial man!
Just a quick question, how good is the performance hit on a large scale map using this process? Because as you said it's procedural and doesn't have to store any location. So I'm hoping it's actually quite a good setup.
I'm just getting into Unreal again for the first time in about six years or so haha (having been using Unity for the good part of that six years)
It’s extremely cheap for large maps. It also includes distance culling settings so it won’t spawn in more than you can see :)
@@PrismaticaDev That's amazing. Thanks man! Really appreciate your tutorials.
Wow I didn't know about masking off a layer in the foliage tool
It's an absolute life saver haha. Big broad brush strokes here we go!
me either! this is life changing lol
Is there a way to control the layer edges? Meaning, I want a super sharp transition between grass and road (e.g. no grass meshes on my road). I've tried the inclusion/exclusion layer option but I still see grass meshes on my road.
How do you enable custom depth pass/stencil on the meshes generated by the grass node, coz I need to exclude it from a Postprocess mat
Woo!
WOOOO!
Hi, thank you for the guide! I have dne everything, but I have one issue. When I paint or sculpt someting and pree ctrl Z to undo, grass landscape grass data breaks, some meshes of grass flies in the air. I even downloaded another grass mesh to double check that, but it still doesn't work. What can I do?
Hey Dominic De Co Co (italian fingers)
This is a bug that's been around forever - I don't think there is a solution currently other than reloading the map. It can be a real pain in the ass but I'm afraid there isn't a good solution at the moment :(
Very niceeeeeeeeeeee
Cheers John :)
Great video! Hope you didn't break anything at the end :D
Hahaha all remained intact :P
Do you happen to have a video explaining how to colour the mesh you use for the grass and make it wiggle in the wind? I am stuck on figuring this out for a long time and it would greatly help me.
Sure do :) Check out my "Colouring Stylized Grass" and "Simple Global Wind / Simplish Grass Wind" videos
@@PrismaticaDev Wow you are quick mate. I've figured it out. One thing I now encounter as an issue is that to make a nice grass plain, I have to set density to about 800 and that makes the UE5 FPS go to about 40. Would making the grass model larger in Blender on the x and y, so I have to load in less seperate meshes work, or do you have any recommendations on fixing this another way?
@@EddyZorn most likely you need to specify some culling distances - it might be rendering grass everywhere when you don't need to, especially far away from the camera. It would also be worth checking your Early Z-pass settings in the project settings and make sure they include masked materials
I'll leave a like first before actually watching.
Legendary :)
Hi, I'm getting a lot of black on my grass, always showing up on one side, do you know how to fix this? I've disabled dynamic shadows, removed AO, turned on Cubemap Ambient light, recreated the lightmap and reimported a new grass model... still the same black everywhere.
Hey Halleck!! Check the grass in the World Normal view mode - the back faces may be pointing straight down if you're using custom upwards normals. I actually have a video about fixing that exact issue :)
OMG It Here thank you daddy Charlie 🙏🙏🙏🔥🔥
Hope it helped! :)
I have a question about this grass if I have a building system in my project and I want to build some thing at place where is growing that grass, how can I delete grass under this building at runtime? Thanks)
Hey there! You could try using a Runtime Virtual Texture to push the grass underground/make it invisible. Check out my Grass Occlusion video for some ideas :)
I'm trying to work out how to set this up with my Auto material but My grass layer has a dirt layer blended into it to help with texture repetition and I'm not sure if its possible to stop the grass from spawning on the dirt as its technically a grass material.
Hey Kyle! If you’re blending the dirt using a Lerp with some noise going in to the Alpha slot, simply take the same noise and subtract or multiply it before the landscapegrasstype node, depending on if the dirt is A or B
@@PrismaticaDevHi. I'm using a Material Function for my Grass/dirt blend, In the material function I'm using a blend material attributes node to blend two textures with the dirt's Make material attributes node in (B) and the grass one in (a). The texture sample with the noise is connected to a multiply, power. Then the power is clamped and the clamp is in the Alpha of the Blend material attributes node which is connected to the Output result node. The only Lerps I'm using are the ones that are connected to my distance blend and multiple texture samples before the Make material attributes nodes of both textures. Was it a mistake blending two textures together in a Material Function? Would it be better to blend the separate grass and dirt Material functions together in the Auto landscape material?
Hey ! How can i do, if i want add a maximum angle for my "landscape grass type" ? i know there is a function in the foliage tool, but in the landscape grass type i don't find an option (even in the material) :/
Great question! You’ll need to do it inside the landscape material by using VertexNormalWS node and creating a mask based on the Z axis (B channel)
Check out my video about vertexnormalWS and you should be able to put something together :)
@@PrismaticaDev Thank you very much for you answer ! i'm going to check that ;)
@@PrismaticaDev It's working ! ty bro !
can you do this on non landscape meshes?
Just going to post this comment to share something that made me lose abouuut 5 hours of my time yesterday, in the hopes it might help someone else who's (somehow) going through the same issues as me :
• I followed this video to make foliage on my landscape, BUT I first wanted to create my own foliage models on 3DsMax. Made grass, poppies, ferns, and imported them as static meshes in UE5,
The 'Landscape Grass Type' thing didn't made a pip when I fed it static meshes, so I assumed I did it well. BUT I hadn't realized that it actually wanted 'Foliage actors' instead of 'Static Meshes'. Just a simple formality which made the whole thing crumble.
• ALSO, there is a glitch in UE5 where the landscape material often goes 'nope' and disappears on you, leaving your landscape with that grey checkered texture instead of the dirt/grass/sand.
Combine that with the foliage not working, I was losing my marbles.
The fix was to change the 'Sampler Source' value of every 'Texture Sample' in the Landscape Material to 'Shared: Wrap'. And yeah, it did fix things for me.
Hope that helps anyone! Good luck!
I'm digging into trying to get thick animal fur on a material, but not having much luck. Is it possible to get foliage "grass" to show on a skeletal mesh?
That would be something you'd need to go manually in blender - there are a few great plugins for adding hair cards to meshes. You could also try using a "shell" fur method
How would I go about implementing this on a landscape automaterial?
Hey man where did you get the Grass from?
I maked it
mate can you give link to download the Static Mesh for the Grass , rocks , Bush and Trees (the ones that you are using in this video) ... I cant find good stylized landscape and foliage assets . Thanks in advance both for assets and the tutorial .
Hello! I'm not able to share the assets since they're originally from the marketplace, although I've edited the textures and colours to suit my project
@@PrismaticaDev oh its fine man , thanks again . One more thing I might have messed up something , I did everything as you showed in the next video (auto landscape one) for some reason my surface texture (green as in grass) is black completely and its not doing the auto landscape either when I sculpt .
Hello! I was directed here from the creator of the Blazing Highlands pack to setup automatic grass on my painted landscape. I'm following along with your tutorial, but nothing is working. I'm editing their M_LANDSCAPE_MATER material (which looks slightly similar to yours) however, when I attempt to temporarily connect the Landscape Layer Sample to the Base Color and save, it goes black. I see that you then detach it (is it supposed to just be free floating in the material graph editor?) If I plug their existing Landscape Layer Blend back to base color, my painted landscape reappears. *WHEW* I'm using UE5.2 btw. Has anything changed/updated since you last post this video? Really need to get this to work for a client gig, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thx!
The Landscape layer sample is just a black/white mask of where the layer has been painted. You'll want to put that in to the landscape Grass output, not base colour output. The base colour output it for Colour haha
@@PrismaticaDev Yes, i get that. I was following your example to see the mask, however, my entire landscape turned black. Once I hook it back into the Landscape Grass Output, the originally painted landscape returns. It is all grass with a path road painted in. I can’t seem to get it to work. Again, I’m working from an already existing master landscape material that I’m trying not to corrupt. I’ll attempt to make a screen recording tomorrow afternoon and post for you to review. Thx.
I was having the same issue but you just need to add the landscape material to the landscape streaming proxy layers in the scene hierarchy
I tried using this on an auto material (auto cliffs material) and the grass is spawning on the cliff faces? How do I get this to not spawn in the cliff face? I have my cliff face set to a completely different texture sample from what the Landscape sample is pointing to
You need to use the Slope mask you've created and combine it with the Grass layer before plugging it in to the Grass Node
@@PrismaticaDev I have the same problem as them, but I don't have any slope masks. I used the auto material from your "Landscape Auto-Cliffs" video. I need help, because this is really getting on my nerves.
For some reason none of the trees and rock I place using the brush have collision. IDK what I do wrong...
You need to enable it in the foliage settings on the left side :)
@@PrismaticaDev It works! Thank you so much!
OK, so how many broken pieces of glass did you have to collect?
Nothing broke! It was just my cocktail shaker that made the noise hahaha (we do shots of water on stream)
My grass looks good up-close but its clumpy in the distance. how can I fix it?
Is there anyway to have procedural foliage on just static mesh? Unreals landscape system is a crashing nightmare... especially in a streamed environment in 5.3.2
You could use PCG for that :)
is there any reason why the grass mesh would not be displaying?
Try plugging in a “1” value to the grass output to see if that works. If it doesn’t, double check that you’ve assigned the right GrassType to the node in the landscape material, and if it’s still not working just double check that the GrassType itself is set up correctly and the culling distance is high enough
@@PrismaticaDev thanks for getting back to me. Maybe because I am using UE5, but the Grass static mesh is not displaying in the mesh selection for me. is this one you have created yourself or a preset of UE4. cheers
I did this some time ago, and it worked very nice, im trying it again and nothing happends, the grass or the rocks never appears on the landscape and I have no idea why
Tried to fix it for 4 hours or something like that. The issue was that the landscape was on X axis on 100, and it was not producing anything. Changed to 1 and produced results. Changing it again to any other value keeps the grass types but it deforms the meshes to that corresponding value.
The grass isn't spawning for me. I have been troubleshooting for days and am unable to fix this. Any suggestions?
Make sure your landscape material is an instance. That fixed my issue.
@@SphireUK thanks but I’ve already did that. I gave up on that project a month ago but thanks.
Hello,someone know how to change the Instance Material Parameter of a Grass from a Landscape Grass Type? i need to change the color of my grass during the day and night. thanks!
Hello hello - you’ll need to use a material parameter collection (my latest video)
@@PrismaticaDev Yes i found it yesterday late night, thanks.i'm now able to modify my Grass Parameter :P thanks for your work.
Can you make a quick Grass tutorial hard to get grass that will work well with your tutorials many bugs for me :(
Hey there :) My friend Marpetak Dev has a great tutorial on how to model some grass in blender, otherwise you can use my grass model here :) www.dropbox.com/s/zf6cuzrjz9hhsyk/PrismaticaGrassLongUpwardNormals.fbx?dl=0
@@PrismaticaDev DANKS G U A REEL 1
@@PrismaticaDev Literally came to the comments for this. I love you
@@PrismaticaDev I just used this and it looks nothing like your grass. Did I do something wrong?
I dont understand why my grass is so much more spaced out, I made my own grass model in blender and it seems properly sized, yet the spacing on each one is huge and I cant get dense fields of grass.
did you fixed that? same thing happening to me
@@lucasberhends1141 Ohj, sorry, I never did get it fulkly fixed, I just learned to use the foliage brush to pack them tightter wherte I wanted.
It doesent seam to work with (hight materials) automatic painting of Rock,dirt... if hight is high
How to add wind in the grass and trees ?
Hey Meow! You can check out my global wind tutorial here :) ua-cam.com/video/27Gr2RRhtNM/v-deo.html
My trees don't have collisions when placing them like that, what am I doing wrong?
Landscape Grass can’t have collision - you’ll need to use the foliage tool or use foliage volumes for anything that needs colliders
@@PrismaticaDev I just missed the option in the foliage tool haha, thank you for making these. By far the most entertaining ue4 tutorials
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A 7 minute video of a 5 minute tutorial
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