UE3 - UT3 Does UnrealEd's "automatic" terrain texturing actually work?

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Asura

New Member
May 3, 2008
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Does UnrealEd's terrain texturing actually work?

Been stuggling for about half an hour now. I've got my three layers on my terrain, in the terrain tool viewer, underneath the height map in the display. I have a seperate layer for grass, soil and bare rock.

I've been trying to get this thing working where you can have it control the texturing for each layer via the angles of the surfaces in the level; I want the grass to be between 0 and 15 degrees, soil to be in the next 15 over that and then rock to fill the rest of the range up to 90, but it just isn't working at all.

I'm changing options in the layer properties concering the mixslope/maxslope, changing the noise values, checking and unchecking the boxes, and nothing is actually happening.

Is there some almighty ENABLE ALL AUTO TEXTURING FUNCTIONS checkbox somewhere in the terrain editor that I've missed?

EDIT: In fact, in general, I find the terrain editor to be incredibly unresponsive and obtuse; I mean I just don't follow how it works. Sometimes I'm painting onto the terrain, and a different layer is being painted onto the one I have selected. I've re-checked to be sure the right materials are assigned to each layer, and they are - I'm starting to get pretty irritated with it.
 
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Asura

New Member
May 3, 2008
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OK, got an image below to explain what is happening.

terrainproblemto9.jpg


Wth both layers visible, I can see the top layer, grass - that makes perfect sense.

Then I make the grass not visible... and ALL the texture goes - the layer underneath isn't visible.

Then I make the grass visible again, and it comes back - but then I make the soil layer hidden, and it hides the grass layer.

You may be able to see why I'm becoming quite annoyed.
 

Asura

New Member
May 3, 2008
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I'm at that stage now where you honestly start to wonder if the whole terrain element of UnrealEd is just a joke, or purely designed to p*** people off. It just DOES NOT WORK. My level is mostly outdoors and as a result, if I can't fix this then the week I've spent making static meshes has been WASTED.
 

Larkin

Gone
Apr 4, 2006
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Hourences Terrain Tutorial said:
The first layer will automatically display on the terrain as it is the first, therefore always visible. The second layer however will remain invisible until you paint it. Select the second layer by clicking it (turns yellow - as pictured) and select the standard Paint tool with which you also modified the geometry of the terrain, and start painting away!

Click Here then click Terrain
 

Asura

New Member
May 3, 2008
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OK, I eventually managed to fix it. It just "started working". No idea precisely what I did, but as long as I can get the terrain in the map, I'm happy.

I have another question now, however - I've come into UE3 from UE2, and I didn't realise that you can't now do skies in the way they used to be done (i.e. a skyzone actor and setting the level's exterior surfaces to "fake backdrop"). This is a problem, because now I've built my level in subtractive mode :(

Now I COULD just make the outer walls really huge, then put the skydome inside, and that would sort-of fix it - but it isn't the most elegant solution. Is there a better way to fix this?
 

Dante

Born Ex Nihilo
Mar 2, 2008
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Lithuania
If you are working on outdoor level, its a lot better to go additive way, substractive style is kinda old and additive is somewhat more "logical". I`m not sure if its possible to convert build style from substractive to additive (and vice versa), but i strongly suggest to move to additive, even if it means copying whole level to another file.

Talking about terrain, it does seem to work slightly weird when you first create it, so i suggest to simply restarting editor, after that i didnt notice anything unusual.
 
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Asura

New Member
May 3, 2008
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I eventually managed to figure this out, though I get artifacts in the editor that don't seem to cause problems in-game. I can only assume this, and a fair few of the other errors I'm getting are due to being stuck on a low-spec PC (for Unreal 3, anyway).