CullDistance and DecoLayers slipped through the cracks?

[_N_]

Hey, running into a what may be a small slip-up in the UT3 editor here. I've got some terrain with a few hills, and I wanted grass along the edges of the hills, so rather than spend several days hand-placing several thousand grass meshes and rotating them correctly, I used a DecoLayer and painted the grass onto the terrain, taking all of 20 minutes. Problem solved! :D

Well almost :(

Now, there's one last issue: While you can set Foliage layers to cull the meshes past a certain distance, and while you can set static meshes to cull after a certain distance, it looks like DecoLayers fell through the cracks! So far, I haven't found any way to cull decolayer static meshes meaning that these thousands of grass meshes are still rendered even if you're on the other side of the map :eek:.

I've looked around, but it looks kinda grim... Am I going to have to manually place thousands of grass meshes by hand just so that they can distance cull? Say it ain't so! :shake:

[evilmrfrank]

The version I work with at GBX allows culling of foliage although I'm not sure how many of those settings were added by our programmers. I will look into the UT3 editor and see how similar they are. If nobody else has responded by the time I get back I will do my best to help you :P

[Dante]

Well, as far as i know you cannot set CullDistance to DecoLayers. But why use DecoLayer for grass anyway? Foliage layer is perfectly suitable for that, plus it culls and randomizes stuff without any problems.

[_N_]

Foliage layers work differently than deco layers. Foliage layers randomly cover one of your terrain textures with some static meshes. So anywhere you painted that texture, you now have some static meshes scattered on it now.

The hills I'm working with are completely covered by a green grass texture and some are also half-covered by a dead-grass texture. I only want grass (very dense grass) meshes around the large boulders and rocks and near the trees (to help hide the seam between these meshes and the terrain). However, the foilage layer will cover all green grass on the entire map with the foliage meshes, not just the places I want it.

Decolayers were the perfect solution because they allow you to do just that: "paint" your foliage meshes just where you want them regardless of what terrain textures lie underneath. At least, I thought they were perfect :(.

[evilmrfrank]

Ah crap I was thinking foliage layers when you spoke up, dont know much about deco layers, never had to use them. You should be fully capable of painting in the foliage layers as well.

[InAction]

It doesn't work in UT3 and that's a fact. I doubt Epic would release a patch where it works.