Save hours! Procedural Foliage in Unreal Engine 5 - Photoreal Landscape Tutorial
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 พ.ค. 2024
- Tutorial on Procedural Foliage generation in Unreal Engine 5. The basics of the procedural foliage volume, and static mesh foliage assets.
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to procedural foliage
00:53 - Enable procedural foliage in editor preferences
01:09 - Creating a procedural foliage volume
01:44 - Creating a static mesh foliage asset
02:45 - Spawn procedural grass
03:50 - Refine simulation with collision, clustering and growth
04:59 - Number of steps and number of seeds per step
05:51 - Initial seed density
06:26 - Average spread distance
06:58 - Growth settings
07:39 - Foliage age
08:02 - Adding flowers to the foliage volume
09:41 - Filling patches with grass material
10:12 - Adding trees to the foliage volume
12:02 - Object growth overlap priority
12:38 - Free training on Unreal Engine Filmmaking
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We need content creators like you. No bullshit. Straight to the point.
Thanks so much man. This is such an encouragement. I basically just make the videos that I would want to watch. I am so glad you connected with it as well! Best of luck!
@@azielartsThanks man! Would definitely love to connect and stay in touch.
One small thing that I would like to add to this video is regarding the grass asset. I used the same asset from Bridge, i.e. the Variation 12 and it's LOD0, just as you have. I was getting some weird LOD culling and fading in the middle-distance, but the near and the far grass was rendering properly. I had to go into the Static Mesh and fiddle around with the LOD and regenerate the LODs. Did you face any similar issue?
Would like your thoughts on the same.
@@KaustavMajumder Absolutely, yes that is a great point. I believe in this video I converted the meshes to nanite, but that is not always an option for everyone, so I will try and add in some things about that in future videos👍
Wow that was really helpful, it was simple and understandable.
Amazing! So glad it was helpful 👍
I was struggling with my island and just refreshed my youtube page, your video came up, and now I cant believe how different everything is in just 12 minutes!! Thanks alot man, wish you all the best🍻✨✌🏻
This was by FAR the best, simplest and easiest tutorial and in fact was the ONLY one I found using this amazing plugin! Thanks! I sub'd
Amazing!!! I am pumped you found it helpful. Welcome to the channel 🤙
Really clear, fantastic tutorial. Thank you!
No problem!! Are there any other topics or problems you are having that I could help with?
@@azielarts slowly working my way through your channel. You’re really clear so no issues so far! I’ve shared your stuff with students in a class I’m taking so hopefully you’ll be solving a host of problems!
@@wobbledaggerfilms Amazing! Just hit me up if you have any questions. Also happy talk to the class if yall need it.
Excellent stuff man! Keep up the good work! Really clear how you explain things!
Thanks so much! I am glad you found it helpful.
This was one of the most helpful videos for me
Amazing video man ❤ thank youuu
You are welcome Spencer! Are there any other topics or questions that you have that I could make a video on?
Thank you! You're a superb instructor. You spoke at an understandable pace, explained all of the key concepts without just rushing past them, and you make great eye contact throughout. This is the first instructional video I've watched where I almost felt like I was in an actual class room.
Wow Dale! This made my day. Thank you so much for the kind words. I am so happy you found it helpful and connected with the teaching.
You actually think you learn better by seeing his face, and him looking into the camera? If anything, I think having his face on the video and over the screen recording is nothing but distracting and it serves no purpose. The frequent cuts between just his face and screen recording were also very jarring. There were also just way too many edits/cuts, both the parts were he filmed himself and the screen recording. Like he was unable to even speak a complete sentence without multiple cuts. And you could tell at many parts he did not know his way around the editor very well. In 10 seconds there are about 8 cuts. Totally jarring.
@@DeadpanNorwegian I know I learn better this way. The more interactive and life like it feels, the better I do with it. Doesn't mean you do, though.
Nicely done! Been looking into this
Absolutely 👍
Super good content, keep it up! You got great way of sharing your know-how! Happy to have found you today...
Thanks so much. I am Really glad it was helpful!
I've been looking into the Errant Photon plugins for foliage spawning, it's worth a look! Thanks for the tutorial!
Rarely do I comment tutorials for their quality, however your guide is an undeniable must-watch. Thank you for your content!
This is so encouraging!!! Thank you so much!
+1
Great video and found it at the perfect time! Thank you!
Glad it was helpful
This was very helpful, thank you!
Happy to help!
great video. i forgot how to do this. quickly got me back in step. thank you. :)
No problem! Good luck!
COOL, you got a new subscriber
Bro wtf why are you so underrated?? Great job at explaining wish you blow up soon!
Thanks so much 👍
Awesome Tutorial. Thank You.
You are very welcome!
Thank you, that was a great explanation.
You got it!
Splendid tutorial my man!
Has anyone else had the problem that the grass dissappears when the clustering num steps and initial seed density is above 3???
Super helpful! Thanks
I already knew how to do this and I still watched all the way through. Your style and pace is fantastic. Would love to see more of your videos
Great video mate!
Thanks so much!
Great video! Is there an erase option like with foliage paint? For example if I like the placement of everything except for 1 tree, could I delete that tree? Or if I have a dirt path made with auto material/vertex painting, could I delete all the generated foliage on the path?
great tutorial! thanks! subscribed!
Awesome! So happy to have you.
Hey man! Nice tutorial and huge thanks for this! I've got an problem with foliage scale. I want to have grass mesh scale lower and I can't seem to find where am I supposed to change that. I open the grass mesh panel and in transform section I change the Import Uniform Scale but nothing happens - the grass is still scaled as default size.
this is how u need to explain. well done. so much tutorials but nobody really explain why they do smth they do.
Thanks so much! I am glad is was clear!
thank you
I really like the materials you used, which ones did you use as grass?
I think it might have been called wild grass on quixel bridge. There are a bunch though with the same name
thank you very many
You are very welcome 👍
You saved me, thank you for video!!
So happy to hear that. You got it 👍
Thanks man :)
You are welcome!
Nice 🙂👍🏿!!!
💪🤙
Love your content mate! Thanks for this. I have created a ground plane with with a High Poly Static Mesh and not with a Landscape. Could you please share a video to use PCG to generate foliage on Static Mesh? Thanks.
Thanks!!! Now I'll try to use it in my projects too. But how to create roads, paths and etc. using this tool?
While i find the ability to do this useful, i also find that it removes creative liberties. I used to use this technique but as i use the engine more and more i find myself using techniques like this less and less.
Im not saying this technique is wrong i just want to say to everybody focused on the artistic side of things to be particular about the use case and remember to express your artistic freedom
you were more than helpfull but you deserve a subscribe....so i subscribed..lol
Yo!! hanks so much! I am honored 🙏
I know there are two ways to do this. This way adds in collisions. You can use landscape grass type to spawn small/non collision based meshes. The landscape grass type can be used in the material editor to control growing based on a mask you provide. The foliage procedural generation works great for collision.
My question to you is do you know if there is a setting somewhere in there to control where growth happens based on either the material/texture or by some kind of mask?
Lastly I think maybe in a future video, if not done so already, show how to handle fade in and out. I know with 5.2 the opacity mask is still there so far, and I think it’s a simple function to add in the material. I forget the exact name of it. But fading along side the cull distance you can specify really provides performance and visual.
@@jmdz okay then tell me why it works in my project? If I am so wrong then explain instead of just painted grass can have collision, because I am pretty sure I even said this way adds collision. The SECOND way is to use a grass type object, which lets you handle grass in the material editor. So no I am not wrong because I have done it. Opacity mask was a viable way to handle fade in and fade out but you need to build out the nodes to properly get that. So again I do not know where I am wrong on this. I would love to know the methods I have mentioned were not correct.
Amazing clip, is there any way to tell to svoid certain area? Like a road so plant don grow near the road?
Thank you from Japn
Absolutely!!
Hi, this video was really helpful but I was wondering if there was a way to cover my whole map without it crashing?
Hi, How to change tree size in the Procedural Foliage, if asset are small trees.
great bro
👍
for games is it still best to use landscape grass in your shaders and use masks for placement?
or is there a way to use nanite?
This was very helpful, I am never painting in foliage again.
Absolutely! Also if you want more procedural stuff, I am doing a Livestream this Friday 3pm EDT on building a procedural coral reef
Wow!! 😍😍
🎉🎉🎉
love it
👍👍👍
Really great tutorial, clear and easy to understand.
One question I do have is can you explain How I would use an image(maybe a black and white mask) to place procedural assets in specific locations? I am thinking something like English countryside hedgerows. THis would be very tedious to paint and I would think that a procedural approach would be perfect, if only I could figure out how to add the location map.
Hey ! That is a great question. I think what might work best for you is the new Procedural Content Generation Framework. I am about to drop some videos on it. But you can use splines or other objects to cut out your foliage. Works well for roads or hedges
So can we use this to spawan skeltal mesh with animation like to make a crowd, this will be greaat as the current process of spawing crowd with Niagara is too hard and very complicated
Decreasing draw distance helps a lot when spawning large amounts of assets just a hint
Amazing, thanks for the tip!
I am wondering if this would work with a cesium tile landscape. I am thinking no or at least not as one might expect. The volume would have to follow the pawn around and it probably doesn't know not to spawn things on say, ocean or roads or buildings.
I followed the steps in this video to a t and the last two times i got to the part where he changed the initial seed density to 10.0 and it wouldn't simulate for me on my end.
Great tutorial, thanks! I am coming from archviz world. It looks like UE got their version of Forest Pack. Is it possible to use specific mesh (plane) for scatter rather than box? Or use box but add specific meshes as excluded areas for scatter.
I think your best bet is looking at the new PCG plugin that epic just released. I am doing a Livestream about it this Friday at 3pm EDT if you want to join, or you can catch the recording on the channel. It give you more flexibility and I will be covering how to spawn things on a mesh.
This is useful, such an easy way to add foliage exactly the way you want it. Quick q: I have a car in the screen and for some reason the grasses is also going over the car. Is there a way for the volume to only effect the landscape?
exactly my thoughts.
Hey, great tutorial and really nice scene, you created!
Did you use ray-traced shadows on your directional light or did you turn them off?
Hey, thanks so much, nope all lumin
@@azielarts Thank you for the quick reply! Oh okay... The thing is, even though you used lumen, you still could have used ray-traced shadows.
It can be set in the project settings or in the light source itself...
The reason why I'm asking is, this: If I use ray-traced shadows I get good performance but the shadows in the grass look blurry and very unprecise. If I turn off ray-traced shadows I loose around 30fps but the grass looks good. 🤔
@@ChrisOseProduction hey! yeah I am not using raytraced shadows, that sounds strange that raytraced shadows would be more performant for you. The raytraced shadows might be on the lowest sample settings which would make sense why they run a little faster. I still think Lumin should be faster though. Are you also using nanite foliage?
@@azielarts Hey, yes I'm using nanite foliage. With "lowest sample setting" you mean the ray tracing samples in the light source?
Question for you and others: is it better to use the foliage actor or PCG?
HI! ok so I will love to see a tutorial on how to make this map that you show us in 0:35 -0:39, can you please how did you made it? or is there any tutorial available? Thx in Advance.
I will add it to the list of videos 👍
It's great to see Ross flourishing after Friends.
Lol, don't know how to respond to that, but thanks for the comment 👍
Very nice tutorial. I have a few questions. If we put too many assets or veggies in the scene, will it reduce the performance? If so, what could we do to optimize it?
Hypothetically it should be doable to have extremely dense scenes. You are more limited by the actual rendering of the geometry and shaders than PCG specifically. So it more comes down to standard types of optimization like using nanite on all your meshes. Not having too many materials, optimizing texture size using world partitions if you have a large area. Stuff like that
Love the tutorial, I do have one question. I can't see the grass mesh that I loaded in, but when I look down in the viewport then its all visible, but when I look back up it just disappears. I've searched almost everywhere for a solution, did you run into this issue to? What can I try to fix it? Any advice is appreciated
I would try to set all foliage plant textures to have no Mipmaps. You can find this in the texture's settings.
What are the difference with PCG methods? When do we use procedural foliage over pcg?
Hey! Love the tutorial. Im having an issues with my flowers habing a big enpty space around them.. the grass spawns in a circle around it. No matter hown8 adjust my procedural settings thebcircle ramains. Any ideas?
Nevermind. I figured it out. 😅
yeah i was just about to say, the AAA studios actually use botanists to say how things grow, and how and old growth forest is different from a new one.
we can do this too?
Yo I love that. It is absolutely true!! It all starts with observation and the really world. The better you can see and analyze the word around you, the better you can digital riff
Is it possible to config shape not by box but by custom polygon?
is it possible to manually remove some meshes?
not that I know of, you could maybe make a blocking volume and plop it where the asset you want to remove is?
Hello, does the placement of foliage place objects into the procedural foliage spawner actor affect on the final result? for example if I place first grass and then trees and vice versa.
Hey! To my knowledge it does not, which is why you need to change the priority sometimes
How do you keep i from spawning on spline mesh roads?
When I generated mine it didn5 have collision? How cab I fix this :(
Any way to create a terrain environment that changes according to season. Full foliage in summer. Then in fall season, trees lose leaves, etc.
There is an Ultra Dynamic Sky plugin that has various weathers, including snow. So in snow, e.g. would be good to have a terrain that has no leaves on the trees. Thanks
This is a great question. I love that plugin as well. I know the tree packs i linked also can change with seasons you could drive them through a material parameter collection. Grass you would need to make something custom( unless you can find it on the market place). The actual landscape materials are totally doable using hight blending. Yes, I think you could make it all connected for sure.
Hello, and thanks for your videos. I wanted to ask if there is a way to apply weed to a specific plane? without it penetrating the lateral surface? I notice that the grass often comes out of its surface. is there a method that cleanly cuts the grass at the edges of the floor? for archiving . Thank you very much
Hey! As far as I know there is not. Either the grass is on or off and the distance from or under the surface will be dependent on the origin point of the grass geo (or any offset you add in the placement.) On top of that if you have grass wind it will push it through the surface if you don't have the hight mask on the noise set up correctly. I think it might be achievable through a material function with a depth fade node though?
I'm on a Mac and don't have an editor preferences tab- is this something I need to enable somewhere else? Or just a PC feature maybe?
You should definitely have, on a mac the editor Preferenes are under the top menu "Unreal Editor > Preferences
@@azielarts Thank you so much! It was breaking my brain not being the same layout as a PC.
TYYYYYYYYYY
Can I use a mask with the procedural foliage tool in any way? I have some ideas using GAEA terrain maps, but not sure if procedural foliage can even integrate with masks at all.
Yes I believe it can from watching the release demo. You can input arrays of data and use them, and a texture map is just an array of values between 0 and 1. I will make a video when I can figure it out.... Still learning myself
does this work on a static mesh instead of landscape? Landscape with world partition crashes on me constant in UE 5.3 while simulating and streaming .... its a nightmare...
now we have a PCG in UE 5.3 so there is no need in procedural foliage?
Great question! I think they will eventually phase out the procedural foliage volume in favor of PCG, but at the moment it is whichever you prefer for your workflow.
Just an FYI Quixel just came out with their newest tree asset, Common Hazel. Keep in mind it's like 4.5gb downloaded though.
Solid 💪 yeah I saw that, they look gorgeous!
Sick. Gods are among us. "/bow"
the one problem im facing it
its the every guy in youtube has big screen resoulation and my internet cant hold for 720 or 1080 i have watch 360 or 480 and eveyrone have 2k 4k 8k and icant focus what u clicking in ui or what you read from text because its looks blurry low quailty i hope anyone understand me to record a video with 1366 x 768 😅 or 1440 x 900 thanks
This isn't the same feature like the procedural conent creation showed with UE 5.2 right?
Hey no it is not, not sure how that system works yet, but I will make a video on it when I do 👍
just start the video and i see a problem, the trees are pararel to the hills and not to the z
It might be that the mesh is turned sideways, you should be able to use the transform points node to turn them right side up.
Is there a way to delete individual assets{instances} after spawning??🤔
Unfortunately no, you can use a blocking volume to cut out parts though
@@azielarts Ok, was doing it that way as a 2nd option in case it wasn't possible...Thanks again for the time saving tut!🙏
How can I paint or do this procedural grass on just one specific mesh ?
I am trying to give grass to a lawn running along a small road, I dont not want the grass to do on road. any help ?
Same question
@@losblancos_14 you can use the tool FILL in the landscaping. But u have to import mesh in pieces(where u want where u dontwant). Somehow it worked well for me
@@faheemrana1281 Thanks man
I know this is an older video but to make your forests are you still using procedural foliage or are you just using the normal PCG graph now?
Great question! Recently I have been using PCG most often. It just gives me more flexibility.
@@azielarts Ah okay thanks! Would it help optimization if I used both or make it worse? I mainly use ue5 for film so I’m not too worried but it would help prevent crashes
you have not mention the tree alignment angle yet on landscape
Anyone using the procedural foliage with a landmass on their level? Why my landmass isnt fully covered by the grass? somebody can help?
I am having this same problem. I will make a video about it as soon as I figure it out:/
how to change the color of grass?
Would this be a viable option if you needed to mask out a section where the foliage shouldn't be?
Yes I would use a blocking volume maybe. Although for more creative control recently I have been opting for pcg
I work in ArchVis and have only just start using Unreal this year. I build 3d playgrounds. Since the playgrounds themselves have unusal shapes and the grass need to lay-in around it is why I asked. Are pcg's only usable on landscape or can they be applied to objects? For example, say I had a 10' x 10' x 4' mound that should have turf on it. Could I apply pcg to it. Keep in mind your video is the first I've seen about pcg.
@@azielarts
Also, I appreciate you taking the time to respond.@@azielarts
absolutely 👍@@ryancounts8131
Sorry to disturb you, but when I try to use the procedural foliage I've this message: Unable to spawn instances. Ensure a large enough surface exists within the volume. I don't understand why? Sometimes it's ok but wast majority of time it can't generate Procedural Foliage and say that message . I've certainly errors in my way to work but I don't understand where ? Do you have an idea to resolve this problem ? Thanks.
Hmmm it sounds like the volume might not be intersecting with the landscape, or is not large enough.
As a side note, you do need specifically a landscape for it to spawn on, not a static mesh.
Do you think that would be the problem?
@@azielarts At the end I reset all lines in the foliage I add in the spawner and now it’s ok ! Very strange. I’ve already see this message in few forums and nobody can’t give answers. Maybe it’s perhaps linked with the hardware ? Reset is maybe the only thing to do.
@@azielarts is there something similar to this but that also works on static meshes?like a static mesh plane for example
No matter what I do, I get the error "volume not large enough" no matter what size I set the volume. I am only using 3 types of trees. My current scale is 1000x1000x125
???
Hmm do you have a landscape in your level? For me the same thing happened if I was using a static mesh instead of a landscape
@@azielarts I have a landscape, yes. What was weird was I had to ensure the location was 100x100x100 for it to work...
how to static meshes turned off
How you make it look color full?
It is mostly lighting 👍
@@azielarts ahh thx
How do I get a Hitbox on these trees?
Open the mesh asset and use the collision drop down to generate one, then save the asset.
I am having issues. It was working and now it's not.... I followed all steps and it's not showing up and then ue crashes
Ooh really hard to say not knowing your scene or computer spec. You could try the PCG approach in my other video. Might work better for you ?th-cam.com/video/s41GdoN2QGg/w-d-xo.html
I hit resimulate with 20 steps. Not my proudest moment 🙆♂
Good tutorial, but I would suggest you to keep focus on the software with you in the inset. Your video has so much of intercuts of you being full screen and it this is irritating for a tutorial. Please don't get angry.
Thanks for the feedback 👍
Ignore him it was helpful and concise :)
@@Chewbert You can ignore me. But I would appreciate the author who has accepted my advice, then who the hell are you to poke your nose into it !!
"Cuidado não use em jogos, isso crash qualquer NavMesh!"