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Landscape Procedural Ecosystem - Seasons - Vol. 3

Mathew81 - Environments - Sep 25, 2022

Next Gen procedural ecosystem with seasons changing

  • Supported Platforms
  • Supported Engine Versions
    5.0 - 5.3
  • Download Type
    Asset Pack
    This product contains an assortment of Unreal Engine assets which can be imported into a pre-existing project of your choice.

VIDEO OVERVIEW

VIDEO QUICK START

VIDEO - SEASONS CHANGING

Open World Template + Landscape Procedural Ecosystem Vol. 3 (this video shows you what you can achieve if you combine this pack with the pack Open World Template)


This UE5 pack preserves all the characteristics of my previous landscape ecosystem packs and beside this, it is specially designed to transform itself from a summer landscape into a winter landscape with a single mouse click. So by adjusting a single parameter, you will be able to add or remove snow not only on the landscape but also on the grass, trees, rocks and every static mesh from this pack. The parameters can also be adjusted during gameplay so you can gradually increase or decrease the ecosystem snow level. It can also be transformed into an autumn or spring landscape and to achieve this, all you have to do is to change a single parameter into every material instance of the static meshes.


Everything is automated so it comes with a landscape smart auto-material and procedural foliage spawners to help you procedurally add trees and rocks into your map. Everything you see in this video is part of the pack, including the heightmap of the landscape which is a 64 square km, real-world heightmap created from Digital Elevation Model with 1 meter horizontal precision. The resolution of the heightmap is 8k. All foliage static meshes (grass, flowers, trees) come with LODs and the rocks are NANITE enabled. The last LOD of trees is a 2d billboard with only 2 triangles so the pack is very well optimized.


The assets are as optimized as possible but, let's not forget that Lumen is real time global illumination system, so for lower end computers, there will be performance issues. For those cases I recommend the following changes into Project Settings - Rendering:

1. Disable Lumen

2. Disable reflection or change it from Lumen to Screen Space

3. Replace Virtual Shadow Maps with Shadow Maps (this alone will give you at least 10-15 fps more). As soon as foliage will be nanite enabled in Unreal Engine, all those optimization issues will disappear.

On the other hand, if You want to use the pack at it's full potential, I recommend using Lumen. In order to enable Lumen (if it is not already enabled) you should go to Project Settings/Engine/Rendering and make sure you have the following setup:

  1. Dynamic Global Illumination Method - LUMEN
  2. Reflection Method - LUMEN
  3. Shadow Map Method - Virtual Shadow Maps


The automatic landscape material is designed in such a way that for all 12 layers, there are 2 level of details: one level which is very detailed, when the player is closer to the texture and another one which is less detailed, when the player is further away from the texture. This way, the player will always see the right amount of details, as it is natural. Using the landscape layers, you can manually add sand, leaves, dirt, cobblestone etc. to your scene.


Populate your entire open-world in less than 2 minutes!


For very realistic results, I recommend using this pack in combination with a real-world heightmap/landscape


Attention: This product is using World Partition to keep everything optimized. When you first open the demo map, the landscape regions will not be loaded and this is why you can not see the landscape inside the editor. In order to see the landscape, you will have to go to the World Partition Tab and select all the regions after that right click on the selection and press Load Regions from Selection. You have to do this only once per project. This is how Unreal Engine works...


If you like this pack, feel free to write a review and rate it. This will keep me motivated to create better and better assets. Thank you!

Technical Details

Features:

  •  Landscape auto-material with automatic slope variation (Layer 1)
  • Transform the summer season into winter in a single click
  • Possibility to transform from Summer into Autumn or Spring (watch the tutorial video from the description)
  •  Another 11 layers to create handmade adjustments (add gravel, sand, cobblestone, cliffs, dirt etc)
  •  all foliage come with color variation which can be adjusted together with other parameters such as wind strength, intensity etc., directly from the Material Instances
  • 6 trees Static Meshes (3 fir trees and 3 oak trees)
  • 7 stones (rocks) which are nanite enabled so you can benefit the high quality without the specific loose of performance
  • 14 plants Static Meshes (grass, etc.)
  • Full dynamic lighting setup
  • 1 Demo level and 1 Overview map
  • 2 procedural foliage spawners (1 for trees and 1 for stones)

Number of Unique Meshes: 27 static meshes

Collision: Trees - Yes (auto generated), small plants - No collision needed, rocks - Yes (auto generated)

LODs: Yes - where applicable (nanite don't need manual LODs)

Number of Materials and Material Instances: 46 materials and material functions

Number of Textures: 138 textures

Texture Resolutions: between 512 X 512 and 4096 x 4096

Supported Development Platforms:

Windows: Yes

Mac: Not tested

Documentation: Please check the videos from the description

Important/Additional Notes: In order to use Procedural Foliage Spawners from this pack, you will have to go to Editor Preferences/Experimental and enable Procedural Foliage. With the 2 procedural foliage Spawner from this pack you can populate your entire world with foliage in just a few clicks.