Introduction

This was the second lesson we had using Unreal Engine 5. Recapping on the previous lesson, to create a new level, open the content browser by pressing Ctrl + Spacebar and navigate to your levels folder. Then, right click and select “level”.

Creating a Sun in the Sky

Instead of adding a ‘sun in sky’ actor to the level, I created a sun in a sky by adding these actors to the scene:

• sky atmosphere
• directional light
• volumetric clouds
• sky light
• fog

Creating a Landscape

To create a landscape, at the top left of the screen I changed mode to landscape mode. Then, I enabled edit layers at the left of the screen in the landscape’s settings.

This lesson introduced my class to the alpha brush. This brush uses a texture as the brush stroke rather than a shape like a circle or square. It can be used to make more realistic looking landscapes.

Perlin Noise Texture

One texture in the alpha brush that I used to create a landscape was the Perlin Noise texture. Here is a screenshot showing that:

Creating a Landscape Material

I opened the content browser (Ctrl + Space), created a new folder and named it ‘Materials’. Then, I created a folder within that folder called ‘Landscape’. I then created a material in the Landscape folder by right clicking, and named the material ‘Landscape’.

I double clicked the landscape material to edit it. Then opened the content drawer once again and selected the content folder. Then, I searched T_Ground_Grass in the search bar which gave me a grass texture. I loaded it into the workspace and then loaded another texture called T_Rock_Slate. I then positioned the diffuse and normal grass textures above the diffuse and normal rock textures.

I right clicked to add another node, and searched ‘landscapelayerblend’. on the left side of the screen, I added two layers to the layer blend node and renamed the layers to ‘Grass’ and ‘Rock’. I then copied and pasted the node with Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V..

I connected the RGB node of each grass and rock layer to the layer blend nodes. I connected the layer blends to the ‘base colour’ and ‘normal’ options in the material result node. I hit the save button.

Once again, in the landscape editor, I used Ctrl + space to open the content browser.

I right clicked the landscape material and created a material instance with the ‘_mi’ name suffix, to differentiate between the material and the material instance.

I added that landscape material instance to the right side of screen in the landscape settings.

On the left side of the screen, I added those grass and rock materials to layers in the paint tab in the landscape editor. I was then able to paint in grass and rocks where I wanted them.

Here is my finished painted landscape:

Conclusion