Custom Terrain Blending Tool for UE4
A student from Digital Arts and Entertainment is working on his own tool inspired by Star Wars Battlefront.
It was 2016 GDC talk by Dice about Star Wars Battlefront, which presented in-engine tools to blend together natural meshes and the environment, that inspired the artist. In this presentation DICE showcased some in-engine tools to blend together natural meshes and the environment.
What really sells the effect is the adjustment of the vertex normals of the mesh. This removes the ugly lighting seam caused by intersecting geometry. To adjust the normals of the mesh to the normals of the surrounding area, I use the DistanceFieldGradient node. This system can be a bit finnicky and took a lot of tweaking to get right, but I’m pretty happy with the result.
You can follow the progress on the tool here.
Published 20 December 2016