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Creating your own heightmap and weightmap formats for importing landscape data is accomplished by writing a plugin. The plugin will add your new format to the engine, as well as importing the data from your files.

Writing A Custom Importer

• In order to create new importers, your plugin should create instances of objects implementing ILandscapeHeightmapFileFormat and ILandscapeWeightmapFileFormat , and register those objects with ILandscapeEditorModulemodule::RegisterHeightmapFileFormat and ILandscapeEditorModulemodule::RegisterWeightmapFileFormat , respectively.

• Implementing the ILandscapeHeightmapFileFormat interface in a plugin requires overriding the following functions:

  1. const FLandscapeFileTypeInfo& GetInfo() const : Returns type information indicating which file types this class handles, and whether or not exporting is supported.

  2. FLandscapeHeightmapInfo Validate(const TCHAR* HeightmapFilename) const - Validates the named file, or rejects it and returns an error code and message.

  3. FLandscapeHeightmapImportData Import(const TCHAR* HeightmapFilename, FLandscapeFileResolution ExpectedResolution) const - Actually imports the file.

  4. void Export(const TCHAR* HeightmapFilename, TArrayView<const uint16> Data, FLandscapeFileResolution DataResolution, FVector Scale) const - Exports the file, if this format supports exporting (see the return value from GetInfo ). This is the only function that doesn't need to be overridden in order to compile. However, if it is called without being overridden, it will call check .

  5. (Destructor) - Classes that implement this interface should use a virtual destructor, as they will be deleted via a pointer to the interface class.

• Implementing the ILandscapeWeightmapFileFormat interface is nearly identical, with only minor differences in some return types:

  1. const FLandscapeFileTypeInfo& GetInfo() const - Returns type information indicating which file types this class handles, and whether or not exporting is supported.

  2. FLandscapeWeightmapInfo Validate(const TCHAR* WeightmapFilename) const - Validates the named file, or rejects it and returns an error code and message.

  3. FLandscapeWeightmapImportData Import(const TCHAR* WeightmapFilename, FLandscapeFileResolution ExpectedResolution) const - Actually imports the file.

  4. void Export(const TCHAR* WeightmapFilename, TArrayView<const uint16> Data, FLandscapeFileResolution DataResolution, FVector Scale) const - Exports the file, if this format supports exporting (see the return value from GetInfo ). This is the only function that doesn't need to be overridden in order to compile. However, if it is called without being overridden, it will call check .

  5. (Destructor) - Classes that implement this interface should use a virtual destructor, as they will be deleted via a pointer to the interface class.

• For further information and examples, you can see the interfaces in LandscapeFileFormatInterfaces.h , the .PNG implementations in LandscapeFileFormatPng.cpp and LandscapeFileFormatPng.h , and the .RAW implementations in LandscapeFileFormatRaw.cpp and LandscapeFileFormatRaw.h . All of this code is in the LandscapeEditor module in the engine.