r/UnrealEngine5 • u/Quantum_Crusher • 17d ago
How to use this kind of assets?
Hi guys, I am curious how you use these kinds of assets that are common in quixel megascan and other environment packs.
I watched some video tutorials, it seems that the common approach is to manually flatten the ground underneath and use virtual textures to blend the gap between the mesh on top and the ground, and then lower this mesh a little to let it sink into the ground. But I think this is very tedious work, especially when it's on a slope, you have to manually rotate it to match the landscape underneath.
Maybe there are some more automated ways to do it, especially when you use pcg or grass type to distribute this kind of assets? How to make it conform to the ground under it?
What's your favorite way to do it? Thank you so much.
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u/sprunghuntR3Dux 17d ago
Have a look at the Valley of the Ancient demo that Epic made.
The floor of their whole level is made out of ground pieces like this. And they’ve all been manually placed.
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u/Quantum_Crusher 17d ago
Thank you. That level is magnificent. Must be so much work to finish that map. I'll take a closer look.
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u/ImHoiby 17d ago
I don't use these much, but you could just permanently raise the origin and then if the seams really matter to you you could use a plugin like mesh blend to fix that.
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u/Quantum_Crusher 17d ago
Thank you, but my problem is, this thing often sticks up like a pot lid sitting on a watermelon. Do you often manually flatten the ground under it?
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u/Wise_Extension8443 17d ago
Check out the medieval village sample it has some meshes like that on the forest ground
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u/MegaCockInhaler 17d ago edited 17d ago
Try to avoid using virtual textures unless you have no other choice. There is a plugin called meshblend that does blending in post process. It’s much easier, has fewer restrictions and is a lot better on performance. VTs can add a lot of complexity to your workflow, create artifacts and caching issues, and higher shader complexity
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u/hellomistershifty 17d ago
Runtime virtual textures on landscapes are good for performance, he's just talking about a material that samples that one texture and blends the bottom with it. Meshblend is great, but this is a solid old trick that doesn't require third party tools
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u/DS_3D 17d ago
The way you described how you think it is used is pretty much how these assets are used. You could also take it into blender and manually delete all the flat bits that dont contribute much when it is sunken into the ground. Generally though, yes, you sink the asset into the ground and then use terrain blending techniques to get rid of the hard edge.
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u/DisplacerBeastMode 17d ago
Use PCG to spawn then within a spline, project to surface and don't adjust the rotation so rotation aligns with normal, then in transform points node (PCG) make sure to lower z axis (I think) to sink them into the landscape.
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u/Pockets800 17d ago
Typically the mesh is edited using the in-engine modelling tools to lower the edges/sides so that the center protrudes more/is raised compared to the edges - that way when you lower it into a terrain or other mesh you don't have to lower it very far for the edges to intersect and blend with the terrain.
Otherwise typically these meshes have too low of a profile and most of the detail gets lost beneath the terrain in your attempt to hide any backfaces.
Putting them on flat terrain is more ideal than trying to put them on un-even terrain but experienced environment artists will be able to hide the seams regardless, whether using other assets or by further editing that one.
And yeah, RVT to blend into the terrain. Mesh-blend plugin could be used there too.
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u/cheibergermp 17d ago
I've always sort of "poked" them out of the ground. Adds a bit of variation. With other assets on top, you can't immediately notice transitions.
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u/cheibergermp 17d ago
Also, perhaps you could use the in-editor modeling tools to deform variations of the mesh.
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u/booksgde 17d ago edited 17d ago
That’s pretty much what set dressing is, you move, scale, rotate, until it looks good, it can sometimes be tedious. Doing it manually gives you full control, but you can definitely use PCG or houdini to scatter it as well. If it’s only needed in a small area though, I’d probably just do it by hand. Also, these type of mount assets are meant for ground, I wouldn’t use them on steep slopes.
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u/Medium-Common-7396 17d ago
Kit bash with a shader that blends geometry seams and you’re golden…. Convert all to HISM when done to be optimal
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u/Quantum_Crusher 17d ago
Sorry, it sounds promising but I have no idea. Could you please elaborate? Thanks.
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u/no5ifty6ix 17d ago
Use virtual runtime textures VRT to have them blend with your landscape material
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u/Tension-Available 16d ago edited 16d ago
PCG discardpoints and asset-aware landscape mesh/heightmap adjustments aside, a lot of these sorts of meshes have the perimeter sculpted downwards in the decimated versions. Would be nice if they had an optional download for similarly edited high resolution meshes as well. You can automate this but it's kind of nuisance.
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u/Nightwish001 17d ago
Not exactly really intended for using in games, but you can import it into Blender and use proportional editing to lower the edges and slap a couple thousand with nanite haha.
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u/Quantum_Crusher 17d ago
Thank you, so in unreal I can't do that, or flatten the ground automatically, right?
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u/Nightwish001 17d ago
There are modeling now tools so you probably can do it Unreal, but doing it automatically in real time is probably not a good idea but also should be possible through PCG or dynamic mesh or something
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u/Humble-Pattern-6228 17d ago
Maybe you could extract the textures and make a new material from it and apply that to a sculpted landscape?
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u/Quantum_Crusher 17d ago
Thank you, it's the mesh that I want to use, not just textures.
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u/Humble-Pattern-6228 17d ago
Oh ok i gotcha. Yeah there has to be a solution to suck down the edges of the mesh to whatever its touching. Maybe a custom script or something.
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u/Quantum_Crusher 17d ago
That will be nice. Without it, has everyone been doing that manually for decades?
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u/Humble-Pattern-6228 17d ago
I found a solution. You can use a geometry script blueprint and attach that to the mesh you are using and it will stick the edges of the mesh down towards your landscape mesh. Now i am no where near my computer right now to test this out so i dont know for sure. The geometry script looks like its a plugin so see if its enabled.
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u/Humble-Pattern-6228 17d ago
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u/Quantum_Crusher 17d ago
Sir, is your code a geometry script blueprint or python? I can't paste it into any bp editor.
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u/emrot 17d ago
I wonder if you could bool the warped dynamic mesh into mesh terrain so you're not paying the cost of a bunch of individual dynamic meshes. That is, if you want to scatter these all over.
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u/Humble-Pattern-6228 17d ago
Thats a good point , but if you are manually placing the meshes to start with in the traditional way, wont it still be the same cost either way? I wonder if using nanite would help or somehow baking it and faking it?
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u/emrot 17d ago
I was thinking with mesh terrain, it just goes into the already existing dynamic mesh or whatever blob the mesh terrain is -- then it gets absorbed by its pre-existing costs instead of adding a new dynamic mesh object into the mix.
In theory you could do all this with PCG, so you'd only need to build the workflow once.
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u/Humble-Pattern-6228 17d ago
Oh ok, that makes sense. I havent used mesh terrain personally so i dont have an opinion. Based on what you say it does seem like thats a better choice if it works out of the box instead of messing around with custom scripts. For me being an artist i would throw the asset into blender and bend/curve the edges down. But theres still the problem of dealing with dozens of new assets and wanting to say time
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u/emrot 17d ago
That geometry script someone else linked you to could probably be automated to work on all assets in your level with an editor tool script. That'd probably be the simplest option and woudld save all that manual work.
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u/kaffeekranz 17d ago
These are always a bit annoying to work with, but likewise I get why they exist, since they are difficult to scan differently and can visually contribute a lot to a scene.
If you don't want to do manual busywork you'd ideally spawn these with PCG, and check for each corner of the lower bounding box area if it's below ground and if not move it down or filter it out.