5:34 To accurately adjust the green landscape brush, you can change your view from Perspective to Top and use the Arrow keys (on PC). It slides right into place. Thank you for this video!
@@demenzunmedia You're very welcome. I'm working entirely from Top view now. It took a couple of practice maps, but I've got the process down. One thing to watch out for is the green Add Brush might add an extra row or column of sections depending on how you place it.
I have found the answer to a question i have been asking for almost 3 years, even the most senior unreal guys i have spokent to did not mention this method. Thank you!
@@carloscarrillo2813 - This video and this technique was found back in UE5.0 and 5.1 days. For UE5.0 through 5.2 they used Cells, which this technique worked with. However, with UE5.3 and 5.4 Epic now changed to Regions for managing the section loading and unloading on the World Partition MiniMap. The Regions are Volumes. There is no Region Volume in the editor "Place Actor" panel, so I'm guessing that they cannot be manually added. It would probably take an engine code update to add the ability to "refresh" the Landscape Regions and add new component areas to new Region Volumes. I don't know if this is possible with Blueprints. All of that said, all that it really affects is the ability to hide/show regions while working on the Landscape, so if the tile-paste-extend method is used, then the outer area outside of the initial Region Volumes will always be loaded.
@@demenzunmedia oh does this mean that the stamping method will fail when building a large world now? I have spent 2 days stamping my landscape, i am way past the region volumes. This has been the only successful way that ive managed to build a world of 32x32km without it crashing when importing the heightmaps. I have tried tiles but can only build 16x16km as it crashes on 32k, i have also tried using more than one landscape actor but that leaves small gaps between landscapes which cant be closed as i can only edit one landscape at a time. thats probably not the way to go either... I have also scaled 16x16km to 200units but that causes strange shadows in some areas and looks blocky. i have 64gb of ram, do i need to upgrade to 128gb to get this work? im running out of methods, how would one build a landscape of this size effectively? Please help 🥲
@@carloscarrillo2813 - You have a few choices. I haven't tried the Extend-Stamp Method since 5.2 so I have no idea if it has serious issues with Regions, I have only been going by feedback from others that they ran into issues. Leave it to Epic to change how things work and break the methods that developers were using. Choice #1 - Stick with UE5.2 or lower. It uses Cells which work with this Stamp method. Choice #2 - Get more RAM. I have successfully many times imported 32641x32641 heightmaps on multiple computers here but they all have 128GB of RAM and 16GB/24GB GPUs. The crash occurs with only 64GB because when working with large heightmaps the import method performs all of the Heightmap-to-DXT-Texture setup all at once in GPU memory and not in batches. So it will use up to 80GB+ of GPU+Shared memory. So a 64GB system won't work. Your main memory is shared 50% with the GPU for what is called Shared Memory, you can see it in Windows Task Manager Performance tab. To work with 32k heightmaps you need 64GB Shared plus 16GB-24GB Dedicated GPU memory. Otherwise it fails. And no Page File won't work, it has to be 80GB+ GPU memory, so 128GB main plus 16/24GB GPU is required. Choice #3 - Forget about Landscape and heightmap-based terrains and go with TINs (Triangulated Irregular Meshes). TINs have been used in video games for decades, and most of UE5's features support them. There is a complete multi-part series of videos on the channel here on TINs. It's an option, but you lose painting, sculpting, road splines, and anything Landscape-specific, etc. I have created TIN terrains up to 64km x 64km 1-meter spacing and they were light-weight and east to create. But you have to know what you are getting into.
@@Williazzzz - If you wrote some type of system to automate this process, you would probably make a killing on the Epic Marketplace. I doubt that it would be easy to do though. I'm betting that just a completely new Landscape heightmap importer plugin would be the way to go.
did you stop there because you ran out of RAM or because thats the size you wanted? Could you go bigger in theory as long as you made sure to unload the cells in the editor of some landscapes when you're not editing them?
@@Tomphonse - You are eventually going to run into issues with larger terrains, such as the time to do builds and to just fill the map components with content. Plus also the size of the source RAW heightmaps and the project size. You have limited drive storage.
I use this method to extend my world partition landscapes. I havent had any issues with edit layers or splines not working. Everything works fine. Also in 5.5 the server now only loads relevant tiles
@@demenzunmedia Nope. 40x60km. Just make sure to not load anything longer than 16384. Even if its just 1kmx16384km it wont work. If you load an area smaller than this everything works fine. Just load and unload as you need
@@NortandoGames - Interesting. Are you using 5.5? I haven't tested 5.5 maximum sizes yet. On 5.0 through 5.4 if you attempt to create a Landscape larger than 16384 with Edit Layers ON, it gives a DXT Texture Too Large Error. Because the Edit Layers is a DXT Texture stack and 16384 is the maximum texture size. Are your Edit Layers persistent across the entire landscape? Or only on the section that you are editing? If you follow what I mean. If it is persistent across the entire landscape, then Epic has updated it to tile the Edit Layer system as well. With previous engine versions tested by multiple people, the Edit Layers didn't work over 16k. Also, how are you managing the Regions and Region Volumes, or are you using them?
I attempted this tutorial, and was able to add the first 32 component expansion like the video at 4:45, but when I attempt to add the 2nd half I no longer get the green brush. It attempts to paint the additional components as soon as my mouse curser moves into the view window, even if I don't click. Is there a setting or step that I am missing, or is that a bug. Unreal Engine 5.1.1-239...
That sounds like a bug in UE. What happens if you save the level and restart the engine and try again. UE 5.1 and 5.1.1 are really buggy, I get a lot of issues with it, especially memory errors, 5.1 is a real memory hog.
@@demenzunmedia I am making progress now, but have to save with every change due to crashes or that bug I mentioned earlier. I have 128gb of ram, so that part is ok for now. Thank you for the video!
I'm wondering if having more than 128GB RAM improves performance when adding components this way. Also Noticed in UE5.3 it does not detect a 4033x4033 landscape as 32x32 components and changing it causes the import to bug. So you basically have to create an empty landscape of that size first and then import. UE5.2 correctly sets it to 32x32 components however.
Problem with World partition is Deleting Landscape. because it get's splitted into small tiles u can't delete them at once. it's freezes them. Simply creating takes less time but deleting takes more time.
In the Outliner, locate and expand the Landscape actor. Select all of the StreamingProxy items under the Landscape, delete those. Select all of the Region items if this is UE5.3/5.4 and delete them. Then finally delete the main Landscape actor. It has to be done in this order. Save the level. Exit and restart the editor and see if the Landscape is gone. If the Landscape persisted, then the External_Actors folders are messed up and the Map/Level file will have to be deleted and re-done.
is this approach still valid for 5.4.2 ? i don't mind the tedious work; i'm not yet fully committed to my tile-placement & need to ability to shuffle around, as necessary. was thinking i'd create a template for myself with some landscape-grids already laid out for ease of playtesting.
This method will still work for 5.4. However I heard that 5.4 supposedly has additional large terrain abilities, but I can't find anything on that on the Epic 5.4 Release Notes or anywhere, and I looked long and hard, so I think people are just making stuff up or confusing features. The only new feature I can find in a search is Large World Coordinates which is something entirely different. Epic's Landscape documentation still classifies 8129x8129 as a "Large" Landscape. I am going to do a large import test on my workstation with 512GB and see if UE5.4 is still limited to 32k on World Partition. I am currently working on a few new Unreal Engine videos including 5.4 New Terrain Features, and Creating Terrains using Tile Static Meshes, plus Benchmarking Terrain Designs. I should have those videos starting to come out this week, they will mostly be live unscripted videos.
I just tested UE5.4, it still crashes trying to import anything larger than 32k on World Partition. So no changes were made to the terrain system that I can find other than some UI updates and changes to the World Partition interface. And I'm using a Workstation with 512GB of memory so that isn't the issue.
@@demenzunmedia would i run into the 32k limitation with this 'section-stamp' approach - or solely tiled / single heightmap import ? also - do you have any experience with OpenTopography ? a lot of the 1m landscape sections i'm looking to download are locked behind a paywall. i'm not against paying the fee, though it's only valid for ~3 months at this point. lastly, did the OpenMaps / Canada repository change recently? i cannot find any 16-bit .png files any longer. swear i was able to acquire them, several months ago. edit - one more thing. what's your recommendation in regards to 'filling voids' in heightmaps?
@@elganzandere - The 32641x32641 maximum size is only on the Landscape heightmap importer. If the Landscape Import Edit Layers option is enabled, then the maximum heightmap size is actually 16321x16321. I know of people who have used this extend/stamp method and created terrains that were almost 90km x 90km at 1 meter scale. It took them a couple of days but they did it successfully. I don't know what the maximum limit is with it though as I have never tried to do that method with anything really massive since it takes days to do it. I'm familiar with OpenTopography but I refuse to use paywall services, and many of the higher resolution DEMs worldwide are paywalled. I have always used DEMs from free sites like the USGS NED 1-meter FTP (although 40% of the DEMs have Voids). I normally use the Mapper Explorer in TerreSculptor to get DEMs as it is quick and good resolution at 3 to 5 meter. I have also been maintaining a list of free DEM Sites in TerreSculptor which includes the web address and resolution and location. The last time I went to the Canada DEM site I could no longer find any DEM downloads, I don't know if they are restructuring the site or if they just moved or removed the data from public access. Void Filling can be a pain, as it will never replace the missing data unless you use low-resolution Proxy Fill. Depending on what software you are using, GDAL has a Fill that is passable but only good on small regions. TerreSculptor 3.0 has a number of Void Fills that can usually fix up most DEMs with Voids. The Fill Holes and Linear Interp algorithms work the best in TS3.
@@elganzandere - And Filling Voids is an option on every DEM Importer dialog in TS3, so it makes it easy to fix up the heightmap on import. Often though you might want to import multiple times trying different Void Fill algorithms to see which gives the best results. Fill Holes works the best for small holes, but Linear Interp can fill large regions with something passable for use. TS3 does have a Proxy Fill as well, but that means finding a 5-meter or 10-meter tile that is exactly the same location as the 1 meter data, to be able to use the lower-resolution heights as a void fill.
Great video. The real problem is that a lot of time is wasted positioning the grid well in a 32K * 32K world divided into 4K maps... and all this considering an accuracy of 1m which is not even that great. Even if you consider an accuracy of 1/4 m manual work becomes almost impossible. At least there was a way to position the various cells automatically by simply specifying the position of the cell (e.g. x1 y1)
hi, i'm from the island of reunion, i'd be curious to know how you managed to get the whole island map in 16km2? i use the landscaping plugin on ue5, your tutorials helped me a lot to understand the world partition and the material limits to import a terrain but would you have a solution on terresculptor to import a terrain with altimetric data? because to calculate hlods terresculptor and tile creator are just right for my project but I can't manage to import my terrain on the landscaping plugin.
Hi. I have never used the Landscaping Plugin on the UE Marketplace, so I am unfamiliar with how it works other than the Description text on the store page. The Landscaping Plugin is supposed to support a few DEM file formats, so if you were using TerreSculptor 2.0 or 3.0 and the Tile Creator to split a heightmap into tiles, and you wished to import those tiles using the Landscaping Plugin, then you would use the TIF file format on the TerreSculptor Tile Creator when saving, and then the GeoTIF importing on the Landscaping Plugin. That should work unless the developer of the plugin is doing some really wacky stuff. GeoTIF and TIF files are basically the same and mostly compatible. GeoTIF just includes some extra TIFF Tags for additional information. Your other option would be to keep the heightmap as a single file and export to HGT or TIF in TerreSculptor and see if the Landscaping plugin will import that.
Regarding importing a 16km x 16km map, that is really easy in UE5, using the Landscape importer built into the engine editor. Simply resample your heightmap to 16321x16321 in TerreSculptor, normalize it, then export to PNG 16-bit grayscale. Then import that into the regular Landscape Editor in Unreal Engine, with a world Partition enabled level. World Partition supports heightmaps up to 16321x16321 with Edit Layers enabled, and 32641x32641 with Edit Layers disabled.
thank you very much for your quick reply, could you send me an e-mail so that we can discuss this subject? it's been 15 days since my tests failed and the landscaping plugin has a significant advantage, the roads incorporated into the landscape thanks to the projection of the EPSG file, the problem is that landscaping does not take the file exported from terresculptor, I tried from the ue5 importer, followed your tutorial and managed to get a landscape with 100fps, I have a machine that allows me to work well amd 5975 theadripper has 32 core, a gtx 3090 and 256go of ram, so I would have liked to have a landscape with 100fps.
@@pierrehenriturpin7324- That sounds like the Landscaping plugin is assuming or supporting only certain types of GeoTIF files with existing specific GeoTIF Tags. The TIF files exported from the TerreSculptor Tile Creator are plain TIF without any optional GeoTIF Tags, so their plugin importer might not correctly support them, which is a significant oversight on their part. GeoTIF Tags are NEVER guaranteed to be present in ANY GeoTIF file, they are ALWAYS Optional. Poor design on their part I am sorry to say. What I can do is look into including a few common GeoTIF Tags with the Tile Creator TIF format, but that would only be available in TerreSculptor 3.0 since it is using the full LibTIF library. The free TS2.0 wouldn't support Tags as it is using the Windows WIC Image Library for TIF which is too limited. I will add this feature to the future wish list items for TerreSculptor.
I am really struggling in UE5.1.1, I read what you said earlier about it being a massive memory hog. I have virtually identical system specs as you (5950x, 128gb ram, rtx 4090 w/ 24gb VRAM) and just trying to load a single 16,321 x 16,321 map consumes all of my VRAM and nearly all my system memory. It is also extremely unstable. If I attempt to do anything to the terrain with all of it loaded, it will immediately crash. I have to load the world in smaller sections to work on it, however this introduces lots of issues and is also extremely buggy. Things like borders where I had previously loaded terrain having dark lines in the texture along the edge that only gets fixed by painting again (which of course adds new dark lines at the edges of the newly loaded landscape) It seems impossible to actually work on a game world of this size on a single landscape. And there is scant little info out there for operating multiple landscapes at a time. I have a few ideas rolling around with using one scaled up / low resolution "Base" landscape and using higher detailed but smaller landscapes that "poke through" the low quality one for specific POIs or biomes. Either way, thanks for the work you have put in. I hope Epic gets this sorted out. I REALLY love the idea of making a massive world.
It is highly unlikely that you will be able to load all cells at once on a 16km x 16km map, 128GB+24GB is not enough memory for that, if you watch Task Manager you will see that you are running out of memory. You probably need at least 256GB+48GB which pushes you into the $5000+ Quadro GPUs. You can probably safely load around 9 cells (3x3) to 25 cells (5x5) at one time as the cells will be 1021x1021 each (a LandscapeStreamingProxy), so that will be a 3km x 3km to 5km x 5km region. Anything more than that will require too much memory. It is normal to be getting lines along the edges of cells as you are working, does not doing a full build when you are done get rid of the lines? It should. Building for me gets rid of lines along the edges. They are typically because of the changes to the lightmaps. If it is only happening during painting and you can only get rid of it with more painting, and building does not work for you, then that would be a bug. I have a video for multiple landscapes, WP Part 9, the issue with doing that is that you always have a border on the landscape where the edge polygons are texture stretched, that you can't get rid of, which is a flaw on how Epic is doing the texture coordinates on the landscape mesh around the edges (yes, more bugs). So I don't recommend trying to use multiple landscapes unless the player never gets to see any edges. If you try to use multiple landscapes with one as a large scale base and multiple higher resolutions ones "poking through" then you will see the edges the same as you would if you poke through a static mesh. You can't properly blend the edges of the two landscape meshes that I am aware of, so you would see the transition edges. You could try a Pixel Depth Offset blend and see if it works, but don't be surprised if it doesn't. One other issue that you have with using a larger scale base landscape is that your quads will be much larger, so you cannot do such terrain features as ridges or escarpments (steep slopes) as the steepness of the slopes is directly proportional to the scale XY value. So if you go with an 8k heightmap with a scale of 200, then you have just cut your steepness ability/angle in half. Massive worlds have massive headaches. And Unreal Engine 5+ has simply too many bugs to work on one properly. Epic needs to get on the ball and fix their large open world features. Especially the drop to 16k limits for 5.1+.
@@demenzunmedia thanks for the long response, I did watch all 10 of your videos on the subject after I kept running into issues. I did a little bit of testing last night on my idea of using a base landscape with higher resolution POIs, and so far it's actually looking really promising. I changed my materials to use absolute world position rather than texture coordinates which makes the seams virtually invisible assuming the mesh transition is at a shallow angle. I am going to keep working with this for a while to see how far I can get with it. I did try a full build to get rid of the dark lines, but they didn't go away, it's very frustrating. I tried to load all 16km to remove the lines but like I said that makes it extremely unstable, and large sections of the mesh break and need to be edited which causes them to update back to the deformation I had originally made. I haven't tried to build and play from an exe, I haven't even done that in UE yet, I am brand new to the engine. Thanks again for your hard work, your videos are the only reason I've made it as far as I have.
@@steen_is_adrift - I hope that the multi-resolution method works for you. I should do some in-depth research into that with UE5. The most that I have done is low resolution large scale heightmaps around the perimeter and a high resolution play area, as that is a common layout. I don't know what to say about the lines, it sounds like a bug, I only use Auto-Materials with large landscapes which is why I don't typically encounter it. It's possible that the lines wouldn't affect a release build, I would try it and see. I have more videos coming soon for WC and WP covering additional topics.
@@rossedwards6503 - Yes, if World Partition is disabled, such as using a New Basic Level, then when importing a heightmap file larger than 16384x16384 you still get the crash with the GetMax2DTextureDimension error. So the Landscape importer itself has been changed with 5.1 and 5.1.1 to have a maximum 16384 resolution for the heightmap, regardless of whether it is tiled or single file. The error occurs in the Landscape Texture creation portion of importing (when converting the heightmap to mipped textures), so Epic is doing something different there now in the code. 5.0.3 allows heightmaps in size up to exhausting memory, 34k with 128GB+24GB. I will soon be getting a new computer with 1TB/2TB of memory so that I can test heightmaps up to 256k+ and provide large heightmap importing services.
@@rossedwards6503 - If you use World Composition instead of World Partition then you can still easily load terrains up to 32257x32257 and larger, depending on how much memory you have. 32257 is 8x8 of 4033x4033. However, converting a world from World Composition to World Partition is really flaky in the editor and can take literally days. I converted a 32km x 32km WC to WP on my R9-5950X 128GB RTX-3090 and it took more than 26 hours. I should see how large a world that I can create with World Composition in UE5.1 since that is a different process. I'll give it a try and post back my results.
@@rossedwards6503 - World Composition in UE5.1 is still correctly functional. I just created a 65025 x 65025 (65km x 65km) WC world and it worked fine. 65025 is 8x8 of 8129x8129. The big difference between WC and WP is that WC converts the terrain heightmap tiles one at a time as they are imported, so the memory footprint is always quite low, allowing an almost unlimited Landscape size. Typically only the memory required to convert one 8129x8129 maximum tile size to a Landscape texture. With WP they try to convert the entire imported heightmap into textures - in memory! - so you always run out of CPU or GPU Dedicated+Shared memory importing anything of any size (34k x 34k is the maximum that you can do with 128GB+24GB on 5.0.3.) World Partition as it sits is garbage. And even worse with 5.1. Epic badly needs to fix it up so that it works. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to create a 150km x 150km world or larger with a 128GB system.
why cant I find actual information on a topic on Terre sculptor? I have a heightmap of 750km by 750 with 3117 on it's highest point made in blender. The heightmap is a 16 bit png of 7500*7500 pixel size, if I import this in Terre Sculptor, how do I get the dimension right with the settings XZ spacing, Y spacing and Y scale to get an accurate scale of the XYZ parameters? Must be some calculation or not?
If you have the Settings Units set to centimeters, then the Spacing dimensions are in centimeters. Pretty simple. Spacing of 100 cm is 1 meter. The Terrain Properties Statistics panel even shows you exactly what the full area and elevation height amount in meters and kilometers are. You typically choose the Engine that you are targeting in the Units and don't touch the Y Scale after that, as it scales for the engine. You only change the Spacing values to change the mesh vertex spacing. The mesh spacing makes no changes to the underlying heightmap though, it is only for the rendered mesh. Make sure that the heightmap is normalized first before setting spacing values, especially if you are targeting Unreal Engine or Unity. Then spacing is just in cm or whatever units you set in the Settings, 100 cm is 1 meter, 200 cm is 2 meters, etc. With a Y Scale of 512, which is the Unreal Engine 4/5 scale, a normalized heightmap with Y Spacing of 100 is 512 meters in elevation height. Y Spacing of 50 is 256 meters in height, Y Spacing of 200 is 1024 meters in height. You may find this video useful: th-cam.com/video/nt6-Y4PdqkU/w-d-xo.html The chapter in the Reference Manual on Terrain Design covers most of this information. I am updating that as well. I will add an additional chapter on Units and Scale to the Reference Manual to cover this topic.
Has anyone been able to get the Location Volumes (LandscapeRegion_0_0, etc.) working with this technique? I have added additional volumes, but am unable to load/unload the World Partition Landscape.
Most likely World Partition Streaming won't work with this Extend setup, since the World Partition system is unaware of the additional Landscape Component sections manually placed outside of its 16km x 16km maximum size. Those extended sections of the Landscape will most likely not be broken into chunks for streaming and load/unload. Since Landscape is treated as a single plane object, the Extend method won't place its data into the World Partition Streaming information. Since this Extend method is not officially supported, and is a hack way to get around WP limits, it is going to have other limitations that will have to be dealt with. This video was released before the newer versions of UE5 that had the Region volumes created on import. If getting a larger than 16km terrain is the goal, you are probably better off using TIN Terrain as it easily supports up to 64km x 64km even on mid-level computers. And World Partition Streaming, Cell Load/Unload, Culling Distance Volumes, etc all work with TIN Terrains. The only other choice would be to disable Edit Layers and try a 32km max size import, but that requires a high-end computer. It really depends on what your goal is. I would need more information.
@@demenzunmedia I'll probably go with the TIN landscape. I got over 50 km using this patchwork stamping method, but certain views now tank the framerate. I really just want to go back to WC tbh. Thank you again David! You are an invaluable resource for the UE community.
@@decisionpointgames - Thank you. WC is still a viable possibility. Just stick with 2017 tiles maximum as 4033 and 8129 hitch on lower end systems. Yes, I would think that without having World Partition Region Streaming ability on that size of terrain that it would have performance issues. I haven't tested Cull Distance Volumes with large Landscapes but I don't think they will work. I plan on testing them in my next UE5.4 WP video. Epic changed a pile of WP features in UE5.3 and 5.4 since I released these videos back for 5.0 and 5.1. So I am working on a new video for World Partition 5.4 that will outline the differences and new features with the newer engine versions. Hopefully that will clear up any questions about differences and what will work. My experience with the new UE5.4 changes to WP, I wouldn't bother going larger than the default 16km x 16km, there are just too many issues with doing so. The WP system really is limited to 16km by so many of the designs that Epic has put into the WP system. Edit Layers, Streaming Regions, etc. are all limited to 16k. Which is a shame. Epic is planning on creating even another terrain system in the future according to their Roadmap. And this time they are not going heightmap-based, so my guess is TIN or Voxel. If you do go with a TIN Landscape, also note that I have tested WP Streaming and Cull volumes and they DO work. TIN terrains just lose Edit Layers and other Landscape specific features. I have tested TINs up to 64km and they worked great. I am still doing additional work with TINs, including seeing if I can get RVT to work. You might want to check out the videos on TINs. I can help with creating the TIN meshes if you need. 64km's 4096 tiles took about 40 hours for Adesk Max to optimize. I still have a lot more work and research into the TINs. I have given up on Landscape for anything larger than 16km.
@@demenzunmedia Actually, I meant UE4 WC. Like everything else in UE5, WC was laggy. Maybe it's improved? I have seen some of your TIN vids. Good work! I'm not using layers. RVT won't work on large landscapes (yet?). Multiple landscapes may be the solution there. I might try the cull distance volumes (+ fog). I have long views, which are the bane of open world dev (needed the challenge). A nice long hilltop view will drop my 70 fps down to single digits. That's what I'm trying to solve now. But generally, I would like to increase the fps everywhere anyhow. I may reach out to you for assistance with the map at some point. I just need to push out a demo, atm.
@@decisionpointgames - I don't believe Epic has done anything with WC in UE5 other than bring the code across. With both UE4 and UE5 WC on my low-end computer, i3/16GB/GTX1650-4GB I get hitching on WC tiles that are 4033 and especially 8129 size. This is even on an NVMe where the tiles can load quickly. I see a very slight FPS drop that is maybe 50ms with 4033 tiles, and 100ms+ with 8129. Multiple 16k Landscapes could be an option for creating a larger world. I have a video where I am testing multiple Landscapes beside each other and they do work. The only limit is no ability to paint or sculpt across the actors. But with multiple Landscapes and an Auto-Material it works great. This should also give you back the proper Region and Streaming abilities. But it will be a lot of work to manage that, four 16k Landscapes for just a 32km x 32km region, and more for bigger sounds like a pain. Cull Distance Volumes won't work on the Landscape Components unless Epic has changed this in 5.4, only on Static Meshes, but it can help keep your foliage and buildings at a more reasonable view distance. Have you tried messing with the Landscape LOD Levels to see if you can simply make the further distance use smaller MIPs for lower resolution? That might help performance on your large Extend Stamp Landscape. I haven't looked in 5.4 to see if this is the same, but you used to be able to adjust LOD'ing on the Landscape.
Thank you for your marketplace support. The largest DM Big Worlds 1&2 map is 1024 sq km or 32km x 32km. I googled these game sizes so they may not be correct, there is totally different size information depending on who you go to. The source website that I used here was gaming gorilla: - Skyrim is 576 sq km or 24km x 24km (15 miles). - GTA5 is 6084 sq km or about 78km x 78km (49 miles). - RDR2 is 360 sq km or 19km x 19km (12 miles) Other sites state that GTA5 is only 47km x 47km which is 2209 sq km (30 miles). So it is difficult to tell.
@@demenzunmedia I would never been able to figure this out on my own. the open world template epic games has for unreal engine is pitiful. The sizes your pack provide is what should be called an open world template. With 32gb ram and 3070 rtx 8g ram, I can work on the 1024sq km map but only small sections at a time right. Makes me want to upgrade pc, hopefully epic takes makes a better solution for open worlds
@@demenzunmedia sorry if dumb question. But if I just upgrade my 32gb ram to 128gb ram I’ll be able to load the entire map 1k map with my 3070 rtx to edit no problem right? It’ll be easier to edit for my game if I can load the whole map instead of by sections. And cheaper to just upgrade the ram then building a new pc.
@@gil6970 - I'm hoping that Epic makes the open world features work better and require less system resources. Right now it is a real dog. As an example, with 128GB of memory I can create a 180,000 x 180,000 meter terrain in TerreSculptor, but UE5.1.1 is limited to 16,384 meters. It's mind-blowing how bad Epic is doing on this.
@@gil6970 - To give you a base idea, on my R9-5950X 128GB RTX3090 system, I can load an entire 16321 x 16321 terrain in UE5.1.1 and it requires about 52GB of memory and 2GB of GPU memory. And I can load an entire 24481 x 24481 terrain in UE5.1.1 and it requires about 108GB of memory and 3GB of GPU. You would not be able to load and entire 32km x 32km though, that would require more than 128GB, but even to be able to load the map in quadrants would definitely help on planning and design. So with 128GB you can load a larger region to work on at any time, a lot more than with 32GB of memory. However, be aware that UE5 is really buggy, and you might run into crashes or visual artifacting when you do things like paint layers on the Landscape and such. So be aware of that. UE5 has a lot of bugs still and the large open world system is really unstable. So don't be surprised if you run into crashes and other issues that you have to play with to find workarounds.
If you are going to be using this tile stamping technique, then the heightmap is typically a tile set of 4033x4033 tiles. So the 4033x4 tile size is 16129 x 16129. 4033x3 = 12097, 4033x2 = 8065, etc. The tiles have shared edges, that is why they are tilesize x count - (1 x count) in size. Use the Unreal Engine Landscape Sizes dialog in TerreSculptor to look up the World Composition tile sizes for 4033 to get the proper size for this method. In this case, you are using World Composition tile sizes for a World Partition terrain. Epic couldn't make it any more confusing for everyone. If your current heightmap is not a multiple of 4033 dimension then use the Resample Device to change its size correctly. That way you don't get any wasted edges in the Tile Creator. I wish that YT allowed images in their comments, I could paste in some screenshots to show you.
could you in theory create a map of any size with this on 32gb's of ram as long as you unloaded cells of the previous landscape. And then just throughout the rest of your editing process only load in one landscape at a time?
In theory you could create a map of any size, but you would most likely find yourself limited to around 200km x 200km or so because of other issues. When you decorate the map components you still need to have a few loaded in, so that process is going to take longer and longer the bigger the terrain gets. Plus there are other level design issues besides just components, such as materials and component painting. The bigger you go on the terrain size, the more time it will take to paint, sculpt, and add content like meshes. Plus the time to do builds and releases is simply going to increase exponentially, so what is the rest of your computer like for power? If it takes two weeks to build the level every time you change things then it isn't really feasible. You also have to take into consideration the size of the heightmap files and project files and the final distribution files. For example a 5000km x 5000km terrain area is 50TB of RAW heightmaps and a 500TB project size. How big is your hard drive? And what size of project are you planning on delivering to the customers?
@@demenzunmedia my goal is to create a semi close semi accurate 1:1 scale map of New Zealand which is about 450km's x 1600km's as a fun hobby project. I would use procedural generation for all the foliage and other meshes.
@@Tomphonse - 450km is 450,000 meters and 1600km is 1600,000 meters. A 450,000 meter by 1600,000 meter heightmap would be 720 billion x 2 = 1440 billion pixels or almost 1.5 TB in heightmap files and about a 15 TB Unreal Engine Project. I hope that you have some really large hard drives. I would expect at least a month or two full-time of stamping the 4033x4033 tiles onto the Landscape, because of the almost 45,000 tiles. Since that will be 450,000 / 4033 = 112 and 1600,000 / 4033 = 397 = 112 x 397 = 44,464 separate 4033 tiles to stamp. To load a 450,000 by 1600,000 heightmap into memory using software like TerreSculptor will also require that you have a computer with at least 3TB of memory. You will need this just to split the full heightmap into tiles. Good luck with the project! :)
Hey! :,( I really need your help. So Once I import one of the massive maps, like yours is much bigger than the default map, how do I reset the world partition sections to the new landscape and update the minimap? I only have partitions for the original landscape, and it still shows the old default open-world landscape on the minimap. I'm so close if I could just update this so I can world on individual partitions loaded in. Please help and thank you so so much
Hi. To set the MiniMap texture to be the current Landscape, you use the Build MiniMap item on the Build menu, but if you have a large terrain then you should set the texture size first in the properties panel. The World Partition Video Part 2 shows how to do this. If by World Partition Sections you mean the Cells for the world, to load and work on them, you select the MiniMap panel and drag a rectangle around the cells that you want to load, right-click and choose Load. Be sure to only load as many cells as you have memory for, World Partition can be a memory hog. You then unload all cells and load new ones to work on them. The MiniMap video should explain this.
@@demenzunmedia Amazing! Thank you! That may be my next task, as I was able to successfully build the massive map onto the mini map. Still, for some reason, the entire landscape is a single square loadable region in the minimap, rather than the small proxy tiles I have for the landscape mesh.
@@randomancy - What size is your terrain heightmap and in what mode did you import it? If you didn't import it in a World Partition enabled Level Type, such as New Open World, then you will not be using World Partition, it won't be enabled, and your Landscape will be one large piece.
@@demenzunmedia I tried to do file->new level->Open World since it has the world partition nd minimap already enabled, and then landscape add new, world partition grid size = 1, scaled at 200%, 255x255, 1x1, 32x32, 8161x8161, 1024. Was hoping to be able to load in and out the proxies so I can sculpt the landscape to match a tiled FBX mesh of a GIS render.
@@demenzunmedia I might be there, for some reason only part of the landscape was loading in and out correctly, and a large section in the middle was action like a static landscape not associated with the minimap assets and would say "not loaded" when I could see them. I restarted the editor, and now all the tiles are loading in correctly! I'm going to align the world grid with the landscape grid sizes, and start working on loading distance! thank you so so much!
The only way that you would be able to create larger open worlds would be if Epic fixed up their standard Landscape single-heightmap Import system. And I don't expect that to happen any time soon. With UE5.0.3 and a computer with 128GB memory + 24GB GPU you were limited to a 34km x 34km heightmap maximum. That is the largest that you could import before running out of memory. So Epic would have to completely re-write their importer to be more memory efficient. It is possible that the importer cannot be optimized. With UE5.1/5.1.1 you are limited to 16km x 16km regardless of your computer memory, that is the new limit. Any heightmap larger than 16384x16384 results in a import error. The tools are in the UE Editor to do it the way that I show in this video, it is meant to do EXACTLY this, adding Components and Importing Heightmaps onto it are the actual functions of the tools. So this is the only current method to get larger than 16km x 16km. Using this method in this video, plus TerreSculptor 3.0 plus a computer with 128GB of memory you would be able to create an open world Landscape around 150km x 150km, you would be limited to the operations that you performed in TerreSculptor, which has a maximum heightmap size of 185,000 x 185,000 with 128GB memory, larger heightmap sizes in TerreSculptor require more memory, up to 1 million x 1 million with 4TB of memory. There is no other way. The standard Landscape heightmap import method or this method using the Landscape tools are the only two ways in UE5 to create Landscapes. And the standard heightmap import is limited to 16km x 16km. The only other way that a larger world would be possible is if someone wrote a Landscape Import plugin that actually imported correctly instead of the current limited importer by Epic.
@@demenzunmedia SHAME on epic ... cause you have this wonderful and powerful engine and they give us no love for import tools around the open world topic ... thanks that you give us a short tutorial for "fixing" this ;)
@@cr4ftwork - Epic has actually been going backwards and providing less capabilities and reducing the size of the maximum open world Landscape. UE5.0.3 could import large heightmaps, on my R9-5950X, 128GB, RTX-3090 system I could import heightmaps up to 34km x 34km. Now on UE5.1 and 5.1.1 it is hard limited to 16km x 16km before it gives a Max2DTex error and crashes. I am working on a UE5 Plugin for the TerreSculptor software, sort of a "bridge" to allow transfer of heightmaps from TSmap and TSworld file formats to Unreal Engine 5, and during the development of this plugin I am going to see if I can bypass the limited importer in Unreal Engine and actually import massive heightmaps.
@@cr4ftwork - Another way to get massive open worlds is to stay away from World Partition. It is poorly designed and has a lot of limitations and problems. Hopefully one day Epic will fix it. You can use World Composition and create an open world theoretically as big as you have hard drive space for, assuming that you had a lot of RAM as well. With a computer with 128GB of memory, a floating-point heightmap up to 185,000 x 185,000 can be created in TerreSculptor, and then split into tiles for UE5. So you can create an open world as large as around 185km x 185km with a computer with 128GB of memory. With 4TB of RAM memory, TerreSculptor can create heightmaps up to 1 million x 1 million, so if you had a 20TB hard drive you could probably get close to that size of a world.
5:34 To accurately adjust the green landscape brush, you can change your view from Perspective to Top and use the Arrow keys (on PC). It slides right into place.
Thank you for this video!
Thank you for the tip!
@@demenzunmedia You're very welcome. I'm working entirely from Top view now. It took a couple of practice maps, but I've got the process down. One thing to watch out for is the green Add Brush might add an extra row or column of sections depending on how you place it.
wow omg I have been looking for this video! Just what I needed :D
WOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!! LOL :) you are the man, really smart too...
Thanks Chuck! :)
I have found the answer to a question i have been asking for almost 3 years, even the most senior unreal guys i have spokent to did not mention this method. Thank you!
One thing to keep in mind is that this method of extending the Landscape doesn't automatically create Regions for the World Partition MiniMap control.
@@demenzunmedia is there a solution for this?
@@carloscarrillo2813 - This video and this technique was found back in UE5.0 and 5.1 days. For UE5.0 through 5.2 they used Cells, which this technique worked with. However, with UE5.3 and 5.4 Epic now changed to Regions for managing the section loading and unloading on the World Partition MiniMap. The Regions are Volumes. There is no Region Volume in the editor "Place Actor" panel, so I'm guessing that they cannot be manually added. It would probably take an engine code update to add the ability to "refresh" the Landscape Regions and add new component areas to new Region Volumes. I don't know if this is possible with Blueprints.
All of that said, all that it really affects is the ability to hide/show regions while working on the Landscape, so if the tile-paste-extend method is used, then the outer area outside of the initial Region Volumes will always be loaded.
@@demenzunmedia oh does this mean that the stamping method will fail when building a large world now? I have spent 2 days stamping my landscape, i am way past the region volumes. This has been the only successful way that ive managed to build a world of 32x32km without it crashing when importing the heightmaps. I have tried tiles but can only build 16x16km as it crashes on 32k, i have also tried using more than one landscape actor but that leaves small gaps between landscapes which cant be closed as i can only edit one landscape at a time. thats probably not the way to go either...
I have also scaled 16x16km to 200units but that causes strange shadows in some areas and looks blocky.
i have 64gb of ram, do i need to upgrade to 128gb to get this work?
im running out of methods, how would one build a landscape of this size effectively? Please help 🥲
@@carloscarrillo2813 - You have a few choices.
I haven't tried the Extend-Stamp Method since 5.2 so I have no idea if it has serious issues with Regions, I have only been going by feedback from others that they ran into issues. Leave it to Epic to change how things work and break the methods that developers were using.
Choice #1 - Stick with UE5.2 or lower. It uses Cells which work with this Stamp method.
Choice #2 - Get more RAM. I have successfully many times imported 32641x32641 heightmaps on multiple computers here but they all have 128GB of RAM and 16GB/24GB GPUs. The crash occurs with only 64GB because when working with large heightmaps the import method performs all of the Heightmap-to-DXT-Texture setup all at once in GPU memory and not in batches. So it will use up to 80GB+ of GPU+Shared memory. So a 64GB system won't work. Your main memory is shared 50% with the GPU for what is called Shared Memory, you can see it in Windows Task Manager Performance tab. To work with 32k heightmaps you need 64GB Shared plus 16GB-24GB Dedicated GPU memory. Otherwise it fails. And no Page File won't work, it has to be 80GB+ GPU memory, so 128GB main plus 16/24GB GPU is required.
Choice #3 - Forget about Landscape and heightmap-based terrains and go with TINs (Triangulated Irregular Meshes). TINs have been used in video games for decades, and most of UE5's features support them. There is a complete multi-part series of videos on the channel here on TINs. It's an option, but you lose painting, sculpting, road splines, and anything Landscape-specific, etc. I have created TIN terrains up to 64km x 64km 1-meter spacing and they were light-weight and east to create. But you have to know what you are getting into.
The precise method I used to import 81.6x81.6km on just 32gb of ram. Extremely tedius but glad I did it
Yeah, it looks terrible to do, and makes me think of ways to automate it.. (which probably ends up being even more work)
@@Williazzzz - If you wrote some type of system to automate this process, you would probably make a killing on the Epic Marketplace. I doubt that it would be easy to do though. I'm betting that just a completely new Landscape heightmap importer plugin would be the way to go.
did you stop there because you ran out of RAM or because thats the size you wanted?
Could you go bigger in theory as long as you made sure to unload the cells in the editor of some landscapes when you're not editing them?
@@Tomphonse its the size I wanted. You could go as big as you want really. It took me something like 30 hours
@@Tomphonse - You are eventually going to run into issues with larger terrains, such as the time to do builds and to just fill the map components with content.
Plus also the size of the source RAW heightmaps and the project size. You have limited drive storage.
Thank you very much for this technique! You are the best!
So good. I love your videos, so concise.
Thank you! I am working hard at making them better and informative.
I use this method to extend my world partition landscapes. I havent had any issues with edit layers or splines not working. Everything works fine. Also in 5.5 the server now only loads relevant tiles
You are working with Landscape smaller than 16384x16384 though, correct?
@@demenzunmedia Nope. 40x60km. Just make sure to not load anything longer than 16384. Even if its just 1kmx16384km it wont work. If you load an area smaller than this everything works fine. Just load and unload as you need
@@NortandoGames - Interesting. Are you using 5.5? I haven't tested 5.5 maximum sizes yet.
On 5.0 through 5.4 if you attempt to create a Landscape larger than 16384 with Edit Layers ON, it gives a DXT Texture Too Large Error. Because the Edit Layers is a DXT Texture stack and 16384 is the maximum texture size.
Are your Edit Layers persistent across the entire landscape? Or only on the section that you are editing? If you follow what I mean. If it is persistent across the entire landscape, then Epic has updated it to tile the Edit Layer system as well.
With previous engine versions tested by multiple people, the Edit Layers didn't work over 16k.
Also, how are you managing the Regions and Region Volumes, or are you using them?
I attempted this tutorial, and was able to add the first 32 component expansion like the video at 4:45, but when I attempt to add the 2nd half I no longer get the green brush. It attempts to paint the additional components as soon as my mouse curser moves into the view window, even if I don't click. Is there a setting or step that I am missing, or is that a bug. Unreal Engine 5.1.1-239...
Update: after importing the first landscape, I had to save the project and restart UE. It seems to be working now.
That sounds like a bug in UE. What happens if you save the level and restart the engine and try again. UE 5.1 and 5.1.1 are really buggy, I get a lot of issues with it, especially memory errors, 5.1 is a real memory hog.
@@demenzunmedia I am making progress now, but have to save with every change due to crashes or that bug I mentioned earlier. I have 128gb of ram, so that part is ok for now.
Thank you for the video!
I'm wondering if having more than 128GB RAM improves performance when adding components this way.
Also Noticed in UE5.3 it does not detect a 4033x4033 landscape as 32x32 components and changing it causes the import to bug. So you basically have to create an empty landscape of that size first and then import. UE5.2 correctly sets it to 32x32 components however.
The operation doesn't seem to be affected by RAM amount. It is slow regardless of how much memory you have.
Thanks for the update about 5.3.
Problem with World partition is Deleting Landscape. because it get's splitted into small tiles u can't delete them at once. it's freezes them.
Simply creating takes less time but deleting takes more time.
In the Outliner, locate and expand the Landscape actor. Select all of the StreamingProxy items under the Landscape, delete those. Select all of the Region items if this is UE5.3/5.4 and delete them. Then finally delete the main Landscape actor. It has to be done in this order.
Save the level. Exit and restart the editor and see if the Landscape is gone. If the Landscape persisted, then the External_Actors folders are messed up and the Map/Level file will have to be deleted and re-done.
is this approach still valid for 5.4.2 ?
i don't mind the tedious work; i'm not yet fully committed to my tile-placement & need to ability to shuffle around, as necessary.
was thinking i'd create a template for myself with some landscape-grids already laid out for ease of playtesting.
This method will still work for 5.4.
However I heard that 5.4 supposedly has additional large terrain abilities, but I can't find anything on that on the Epic 5.4 Release Notes or anywhere, and I looked long and hard, so I think people are just making stuff up or confusing features. The only new feature I can find in a search is Large World Coordinates which is something entirely different. Epic's Landscape documentation still classifies 8129x8129 as a "Large" Landscape.
I am going to do a large import test on my workstation with 512GB and see if UE5.4 is still limited to 32k on World Partition.
I am currently working on a few new Unreal Engine videos including 5.4 New Terrain Features, and Creating Terrains using Tile Static Meshes, plus Benchmarking Terrain Designs. I should have those videos starting to come out this week, they will mostly be live unscripted videos.
I just tested UE5.4, it still crashes trying to import anything larger than 32k on World Partition. So no changes were made to the terrain system that I can find other than some UI updates and changes to the World Partition interface. And I'm using a Workstation with 512GB of memory so that isn't the issue.
@@demenzunmedia would i run into the 32k limitation with this 'section-stamp' approach - or solely tiled / single heightmap import ?
also - do you have any experience with OpenTopography ? a lot of the 1m landscape sections i'm looking to download are locked behind a paywall.
i'm not against paying the fee, though it's only valid for ~3 months at this point.
lastly, did the OpenMaps / Canada repository change recently? i cannot find any 16-bit .png files any longer. swear i was able to acquire them, several months ago.
edit - one more thing. what's your recommendation in regards to 'filling voids' in heightmaps?
@@elganzandere - The 32641x32641 maximum size is only on the Landscape heightmap importer. If the Landscape Import Edit Layers option is enabled, then the maximum heightmap size is actually 16321x16321.
I know of people who have used this extend/stamp method and created terrains that were almost 90km x 90km at 1 meter scale. It took them a couple of days but they did it successfully. I don't know what the maximum limit is with it though as I have never tried to do that method with anything really massive since it takes days to do it.
I'm familiar with OpenTopography but I refuse to use paywall services, and many of the higher resolution DEMs worldwide are paywalled. I have always used DEMs from free sites like the USGS NED 1-meter FTP (although 40% of the DEMs have Voids). I normally use the Mapper Explorer in TerreSculptor to get DEMs as it is quick and good resolution at 3 to 5 meter.
I have also been maintaining a list of free DEM Sites in TerreSculptor which includes the web address and resolution and location.
The last time I went to the Canada DEM site I could no longer find any DEM downloads, I don't know if they are restructuring the site or if they just moved or removed the data from public access.
Void Filling can be a pain, as it will never replace the missing data unless you use low-resolution Proxy Fill. Depending on what software you are using, GDAL has a Fill that is passable but only good on small regions. TerreSculptor 3.0 has a number of Void Fills that can usually fix up most DEMs with Voids. The Fill Holes and Linear Interp algorithms work the best in TS3.
@@elganzandere - And Filling Voids is an option on every DEM Importer dialog in TS3, so it makes it easy to fix up the heightmap on import. Often though you might want to import multiple times trying different Void Fill algorithms to see which gives the best results.
Fill Holes works the best for small holes, but Linear Interp can fill large regions with something passable for use. TS3 does have a Proxy Fill as well, but that means finding a 5-meter or 10-meter tile that is exactly the same location as the 1 meter data, to be able to use the lower-resolution heights as a void fill.
Great video. The real problem is that a lot of time is wasted positioning the grid well in a 32K * 32K world divided into 4K maps... and all this considering an accuracy of 1m which is not even that great. Even if you consider an accuracy of 1/4 m manual work becomes almost impossible. At least there was a way to position the various cells automatically by simply specifying the position of the cell (e.g. x1 y1)
hi,
i'm from the island of reunion, i'd be curious to know how you managed to get the whole island map in 16km2? i use the landscaping plugin on ue5, your tutorials helped me a lot to understand the world partition and the material limits to import a terrain but would you have a solution on terresculptor to import a terrain with altimetric data? because to calculate hlods terresculptor and tile creator are just right for my project but I can't manage to import my terrain on the landscaping plugin.
Hi. I have never used the Landscaping Plugin on the UE Marketplace, so I am unfamiliar with how it works other than the Description text on the store page.
The Landscaping Plugin is supposed to support a few DEM file formats, so if you were using TerreSculptor 2.0 or 3.0 and the Tile Creator to split a heightmap into tiles, and you wished to import those tiles using the Landscaping Plugin, then you would use the TIF file format on the TerreSculptor Tile Creator when saving, and then the GeoTIF importing on the Landscaping Plugin. That should work unless the developer of the plugin is doing some really wacky stuff.
GeoTIF and TIF files are basically the same and mostly compatible. GeoTIF just includes some extra TIFF Tags for additional information.
Your other option would be to keep the heightmap as a single file and export to HGT or TIF in TerreSculptor and see if the Landscaping plugin will import that.
Regarding importing a 16km x 16km map, that is really easy in UE5, using the Landscape importer built into the engine editor.
Simply resample your heightmap to 16321x16321 in TerreSculptor, normalize it, then export to PNG 16-bit grayscale.
Then import that into the regular Landscape Editor in Unreal Engine, with a world Partition enabled level.
World Partition supports heightmaps up to 16321x16321 with Edit Layers enabled, and 32641x32641 with Edit Layers disabled.
two errors on the landscaping plugin when importing geotiff from terresculptor: altitude not calculated or no epsg projection.@@demenzunmedia
thank you very much for your quick reply, could you send me an e-mail so that we can discuss this subject? it's been 15 days since my tests failed and the landscaping plugin has a significant advantage, the roads incorporated into the landscape thanks to the projection of the EPSG file, the problem is that landscaping does not take the file exported from terresculptor, I tried from the ue5 importer, followed your tutorial and managed to get a landscape with 100fps, I have a machine that allows me to work well amd 5975 theadripper has 32 core, a gtx 3090 and 256go of ram, so I would have liked to have a landscape with 100fps.
@@pierrehenriturpin7324- That sounds like the Landscaping plugin is assuming or supporting only certain types of GeoTIF files with existing specific GeoTIF Tags. The TIF files exported from the TerreSculptor Tile Creator are plain TIF without any optional GeoTIF Tags, so their plugin importer might not correctly support them, which is a significant oversight on their part. GeoTIF Tags are NEVER guaranteed to be present in ANY GeoTIF file, they are ALWAYS Optional. Poor design on their part I am sorry to say.
What I can do is look into including a few common GeoTIF Tags with the Tile Creator TIF format, but that would only be available in TerreSculptor 3.0 since it is using the full LibTIF library. The free TS2.0 wouldn't support Tags as it is using the Windows WIC Image Library for TIF which is too limited.
I will add this feature to the future wish list items for TerreSculptor.
I am really struggling in UE5.1.1, I read what you said earlier about it being a massive memory hog. I have virtually identical system specs as you (5950x, 128gb ram, rtx 4090 w/ 24gb VRAM) and just trying to load a single 16,321 x 16,321 map consumes all of my VRAM and nearly all my system memory. It is also extremely unstable. If I attempt to do anything to the terrain with all of it loaded, it will immediately crash. I have to load the world in smaller sections to work on it, however this introduces lots of issues and is also extremely buggy. Things like borders where I had previously loaded terrain having dark lines in the texture along the edge that only gets fixed by painting again (which of course adds new dark lines at the edges of the newly loaded landscape)
It seems impossible to actually work on a game world of this size on a single landscape. And there is scant little info out there for operating multiple landscapes at a time. I have a few ideas rolling around with using one scaled up / low resolution "Base" landscape and using higher detailed but smaller landscapes that "poke through" the low quality one for specific POIs or biomes.
Either way, thanks for the work you have put in. I hope Epic gets this sorted out. I REALLY love the idea of making a massive world.
It is highly unlikely that you will be able to load all cells at once on a 16km x 16km map, 128GB+24GB is not enough memory for that, if you watch Task Manager you will see that you are running out of memory. You probably need at least 256GB+48GB which pushes you into the $5000+ Quadro GPUs.
You can probably safely load around 9 cells (3x3) to 25 cells (5x5) at one time as the cells will be 1021x1021 each (a LandscapeStreamingProxy), so that will be a 3km x 3km to 5km x 5km region. Anything more than that will require too much memory.
It is normal to be getting lines along the edges of cells as you are working, does not doing a full build when you are done get rid of the lines? It should. Building for me gets rid of lines along the edges. They are typically because of the changes to the lightmaps.
If it is only happening during painting and you can only get rid of it with more painting, and building does not work for you, then that would be a bug.
I have a video for multiple landscapes, WP Part 9, the issue with doing that is that you always have a border on the landscape where the edge polygons are texture stretched, that you can't get rid of, which is a flaw on how Epic is doing the texture coordinates on the landscape mesh around the edges (yes, more bugs). So I don't recommend trying to use multiple landscapes unless the player never gets to see any edges.
If you try to use multiple landscapes with one as a large scale base and multiple higher resolutions ones "poking through" then you will see the edges the same as you would if you poke through a static mesh. You can't properly blend the edges of the two landscape meshes that I am aware of, so you would see the transition edges. You could try a Pixel Depth Offset blend and see if it works, but don't be surprised if it doesn't.
One other issue that you have with using a larger scale base landscape is that your quads will be much larger, so you cannot do such terrain features as ridges or escarpments (steep slopes) as the steepness of the slopes is directly proportional to the scale XY value. So if you go with an 8k heightmap with a scale of 200, then you have just cut your steepness ability/angle in half.
Massive worlds have massive headaches. And Unreal Engine 5+ has simply too many bugs to work on one properly. Epic needs to get on the ball and fix their large open world features. Especially the drop to 16k limits for 5.1+.
@@demenzunmedia thanks for the long response, I did watch all 10 of your videos on the subject after I kept running into issues. I did a little bit of testing last night on my idea of using a base landscape with higher resolution POIs, and so far it's actually looking really promising. I changed my materials to use absolute world position rather than texture coordinates which makes the seams virtually invisible assuming the mesh transition is at a shallow angle. I am going to keep working with this for a while to see how far I can get with it. I did try a full build to get rid of the dark lines, but they didn't go away, it's very frustrating. I tried to load all 16km to remove the lines but like I said that makes it extremely unstable, and large sections of the mesh break and need to be edited which causes them to update back to the deformation I had originally made. I haven't tried to build and play from an exe, I haven't even done that in UE yet, I am brand new to the engine. Thanks again for your hard work, your videos are the only reason I've made it as far as I have.
@@steen_is_adrift - I hope that the multi-resolution method works for you. I should do some in-depth research into that with UE5. The most that I have done is low resolution large scale heightmaps around the perimeter and a high resolution play area, as that is a common layout.
I don't know what to say about the lines, it sounds like a bug, I only use Auto-Materials with large landscapes which is why I don't typically encounter it.
It's possible that the lines wouldn't affect a release build, I would try it and see.
I have more videos coming soon for WC and WP covering additional topics.
thnks
How many streaming proxies are in each of those 4033x4033 terrain sections?
The default number of Streaming Proxy actors for a 4033x4033 Landscape section is 256.
@@demenzunmedia Are you seeing the same memory limitations if you import large terrains (single png heightmap) without using world partition?
@@rossedwards6503 - Yes, if World Partition is disabled, such as using a New Basic Level, then when importing a heightmap file larger than 16384x16384 you still get the crash with the GetMax2DTextureDimension error.
So the Landscape importer itself has been changed with 5.1 and 5.1.1 to have a maximum 16384 resolution for the heightmap, regardless of whether it is tiled or single file.
The error occurs in the Landscape Texture creation portion of importing (when converting the heightmap to mipped textures), so Epic is doing something different there now in the code.
5.0.3 allows heightmaps in size up to exhausting memory, 34k with 128GB+24GB.
I will soon be getting a new computer with 1TB/2TB of memory so that I can test heightmaps up to 256k+ and provide large heightmap importing services.
@@rossedwards6503 - If you use World Composition instead of World Partition then you can still easily load terrains up to 32257x32257 and larger, depending on how much memory you have.
32257 is 8x8 of 4033x4033.
However, converting a world from World Composition to World Partition is really flaky in the editor and can take literally days. I converted a 32km x 32km WC to WP on my R9-5950X 128GB RTX-3090 and it took more than 26 hours.
I should see how large a world that I can create with World Composition in UE5.1 since that is a different process.
I'll give it a try and post back my results.
@@rossedwards6503 - World Composition in UE5.1 is still correctly functional. I just created a 65025 x 65025 (65km x 65km) WC world and it worked fine.
65025 is 8x8 of 8129x8129.
The big difference between WC and WP is that WC converts the terrain heightmap tiles one at a time as they are imported, so the memory footprint is always quite low, allowing an almost unlimited Landscape size. Typically only the memory required to convert one 8129x8129 maximum tile size to a Landscape texture.
With WP they try to convert the entire imported heightmap into textures - in memory! - so you always run out of CPU or GPU Dedicated+Shared memory importing anything of any size (34k x 34k is the maximum that you can do with 128GB+24GB on 5.0.3.)
World Partition as it sits is garbage. And even worse with 5.1. Epic badly needs to fix it up so that it works. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to create a 150km x 150km world or larger with a 128GB system.
why cant I find actual information on a topic on Terre sculptor?
I have a heightmap of 750km by 750 with 3117 on it's highest point made in blender.
The heightmap is a 16 bit png of 7500*7500 pixel size, if I import this in Terre Sculptor, how do I get the dimension right with the settings XZ spacing, Y spacing and Y scale to get an accurate scale of the XYZ parameters? Must be some calculation or not?
If you have the Settings Units set to centimeters, then the Spacing dimensions are in centimeters. Pretty simple. Spacing of 100 cm is 1 meter.
The Terrain Properties Statistics panel even shows you exactly what the full area and elevation height amount in meters and kilometers are.
You typically choose the Engine that you are targeting in the Units and don't touch the Y Scale after that, as it scales for the engine. You only change the Spacing values to change the mesh vertex spacing. The mesh spacing makes no changes to the underlying heightmap though, it is only for the rendered mesh.
Make sure that the heightmap is normalized first before setting spacing values, especially if you are targeting Unreal Engine or Unity.
Then spacing is just in cm or whatever units you set in the Settings, 100 cm is 1 meter, 200 cm is 2 meters, etc.
With a Y Scale of 512, which is the Unreal Engine 4/5 scale, a normalized heightmap with Y Spacing of 100 is 512 meters in elevation height. Y Spacing of 50 is 256 meters in height, Y Spacing of 200 is 1024 meters in height.
You may find this video useful: th-cam.com/video/nt6-Y4PdqkU/w-d-xo.html
The chapter in the Reference Manual on Terrain Design covers most of this information. I am updating that as well. I will add an additional chapter on Units and Scale to the Reference Manual to cover this topic.
Has anyone been able to get the Location Volumes (LandscapeRegion_0_0, etc.) working with this technique? I have added additional volumes, but am unable to load/unload the World Partition Landscape.
Most likely World Partition Streaming won't work with this Extend setup, since the World Partition system is unaware of the additional Landscape Component sections manually placed outside of its 16km x 16km maximum size. Those extended sections of the Landscape will most likely not be broken into chunks for streaming and load/unload. Since Landscape is treated as a single plane object, the Extend method won't place its data into the World Partition Streaming information.
Since this Extend method is not officially supported, and is a hack way to get around WP limits, it is going to have other limitations that will have to be dealt with.
This video was released before the newer versions of UE5 that had the Region volumes created on import.
If getting a larger than 16km terrain is the goal, you are probably better off using TIN Terrain as it easily supports up to 64km x 64km even on mid-level computers. And World Partition Streaming, Cell Load/Unload, Culling Distance Volumes, etc all work with TIN Terrains.
The only other choice would be to disable Edit Layers and try a 32km max size import, but that requires a high-end computer.
It really depends on what your goal is. I would need more information.
@@demenzunmedia I'll probably go with the TIN landscape. I got over 50 km using this patchwork stamping method, but certain views now tank the framerate. I really just want to go back to WC tbh.
Thank you again David! You are an invaluable resource for the UE community.
@@decisionpointgames - Thank you.
WC is still a viable possibility. Just stick with 2017 tiles maximum as 4033 and 8129 hitch on lower end systems.
Yes, I would think that without having World Partition Region Streaming ability on that size of terrain that it would have performance issues. I haven't tested Cull Distance Volumes with large Landscapes but I don't think they will work. I plan on testing them in my next UE5.4 WP video.
Epic changed a pile of WP features in UE5.3 and 5.4 since I released these videos back for 5.0 and 5.1. So I am working on a new video for World Partition 5.4 that will outline the differences and new features with the newer engine versions. Hopefully that will clear up any questions about differences and what will work.
My experience with the new UE5.4 changes to WP, I wouldn't bother going larger than the default 16km x 16km, there are just too many issues with doing so. The WP system really is limited to 16km by so many of the designs that Epic has put into the WP system. Edit Layers, Streaming Regions, etc. are all limited to 16k. Which is a shame.
Epic is planning on creating even another terrain system in the future according to their Roadmap. And this time they are not going heightmap-based, so my guess is TIN or Voxel.
If you do go with a TIN Landscape, also note that I have tested WP Streaming and Cull volumes and they DO work. TIN terrains just lose Edit Layers and other Landscape specific features. I have tested TINs up to 64km and they worked great. I am still doing additional work with TINs, including seeing if I can get RVT to work. You might want to check out the videos on TINs. I can help with creating the TIN meshes if you need. 64km's 4096 tiles took about 40 hours for Adesk Max to optimize. I still have a lot more work and research into the TINs. I have given up on Landscape for anything larger than 16km.
@@demenzunmedia Actually, I meant UE4 WC. Like everything else in UE5, WC was laggy. Maybe it's improved?
I have seen some of your TIN vids. Good work! I'm not using layers. RVT won't work on large landscapes (yet?). Multiple landscapes may be the solution there.
I might try the cull distance volumes (+ fog). I have long views, which are the bane of open world dev (needed the challenge). A nice long hilltop view will drop my 70 fps down to single digits. That's what I'm trying to solve now. But generally, I would like to increase the fps everywhere anyhow.
I may reach out to you for assistance with the map at some point. I just need to push out a demo, atm.
@@decisionpointgames - I don't believe Epic has done anything with WC in UE5 other than bring the code across.
With both UE4 and UE5 WC on my low-end computer, i3/16GB/GTX1650-4GB I get hitching on WC tiles that are 4033 and especially 8129 size. This is even on an NVMe where the tiles can load quickly. I see a very slight FPS drop that is maybe 50ms with 4033 tiles, and 100ms+ with 8129.
Multiple 16k Landscapes could be an option for creating a larger world. I have a video where I am testing multiple Landscapes beside each other and they do work. The only limit is no ability to paint or sculpt across the actors. But with multiple Landscapes and an Auto-Material it works great. This should also give you back the proper Region and Streaming abilities. But it will be a lot of work to manage that, four 16k Landscapes for just a 32km x 32km region, and more for bigger sounds like a pain.
Cull Distance Volumes won't work on the Landscape Components unless Epic has changed this in 5.4, only on Static Meshes, but it can help keep your foliage and buildings at a more reasonable view distance.
Have you tried messing with the Landscape LOD Levels to see if you can simply make the further distance use smaller MIPs for lower resolution? That might help performance on your large Extend Stamp Landscape. I haven't looked in 5.4 to see if this is the same, but you used to be able to adjust LOD'ing on the Landscape.
How big are your maps in the market place compared to a Skyrim game or gta/red redemption?
I just bought big world 2 maps. Thank you
Thank you for your marketplace support.
The largest DM Big Worlds 1&2 map is 1024 sq km or 32km x 32km.
I googled these game sizes so they may not be correct, there is totally different size information depending on who you go to. The source website that I used here was gaming gorilla:
- Skyrim is 576 sq km or 24km x 24km (15 miles).
- GTA5 is 6084 sq km or about 78km x 78km (49 miles).
- RDR2 is 360 sq km or 19km x 19km (12 miles)
Other sites state that GTA5 is only 47km x 47km which is 2209 sq km (30 miles). So it is difficult to tell.
@@demenzunmedia I would never been able to figure this out on my own. the open world template epic games has for unreal engine is pitiful.
The sizes your pack provide is what should be called an open world template.
With 32gb ram and 3070 rtx 8g ram, I can work on the 1024sq km map but only small sections at a time right.
Makes me want to upgrade pc, hopefully epic takes makes a better solution for open worlds
@@demenzunmedia sorry if dumb question. But if I just upgrade my 32gb ram to 128gb ram I’ll be able to load the entire map 1k map with my 3070 rtx to edit no problem right?
It’ll be easier to edit for my game if I can load the whole map instead of by sections. And cheaper to just upgrade the ram then building a new pc.
@@gil6970 - I'm hoping that Epic makes the open world features work better and require less system resources. Right now it is a real dog. As an example, with 128GB of memory I can create a 180,000 x 180,000 meter terrain in TerreSculptor, but UE5.1.1 is limited to 16,384 meters. It's mind-blowing how bad Epic is doing on this.
@@gil6970 - To give you a base idea, on my R9-5950X 128GB RTX3090 system, I can load an entire 16321 x 16321 terrain in UE5.1.1 and it requires about 52GB of memory and 2GB of GPU memory. And I can load an entire 24481 x 24481 terrain in UE5.1.1 and it requires about 108GB of memory and 3GB of GPU.
You would not be able to load and entire 32km x 32km though, that would require more than 128GB, but even to be able to load the map in quadrants would definitely help on planning and design.
So with 128GB you can load a larger region to work on at any time, a lot more than with 32GB of memory.
However, be aware that UE5 is really buggy, and you might run into crashes or visual artifacting when you do things like paint layers on the Landscape and such. So be aware of that. UE5 has a lot of bugs still and the large open world system is really unstable. So don't be surprised if you run into crashes and other issues that you have to play with to find workarounds.
how are you getting height maps 16129x16129?
If you are going to be using this tile stamping technique, then the heightmap is typically a tile set of 4033x4033 tiles. So the 4033x4 tile size is 16129 x 16129. 4033x3 = 12097, 4033x2 = 8065, etc. The tiles have shared edges, that is why they are tilesize x count - (1 x count) in size.
Use the Unreal Engine Landscape Sizes dialog in TerreSculptor to look up the World Composition tile sizes for 4033 to get the proper size for this method. In this case, you are using World Composition tile sizes for a World Partition terrain. Epic couldn't make it any more confusing for everyone.
If your current heightmap is not a multiple of 4033 dimension then use the Resample Device to change its size correctly. That way you don't get any wasted edges in the Tile Creator.
I wish that YT allowed images in their comments, I could paste in some screenshots to show you.
could you in theory create a map of any size with this on 32gb's of ram as long as you unloaded cells of the previous landscape. And then just throughout the rest of your editing process only load in one landscape at a time?
In theory you could create a map of any size, but you would most likely find yourself limited to around 200km x 200km or so because of other issues. When you decorate the map components you still need to have a few loaded in, so that process is going to take longer and longer the bigger the terrain gets. Plus there are other level design issues besides just components, such as materials and component painting. The bigger you go on the terrain size, the more time it will take to paint, sculpt, and add content like meshes. Plus the time to do builds and releases is simply going to increase exponentially, so what is the rest of your computer like for power? If it takes two weeks to build the level every time you change things then it isn't really feasible.
You also have to take into consideration the size of the heightmap files and project files and the final distribution files. For example a 5000km x 5000km terrain area is 50TB of RAW heightmaps and a 500TB project size. How big is your hard drive? And what size of project are you planning on delivering to the customers?
@@demenzunmedia my goal is to create a semi close semi accurate 1:1 scale map of New Zealand which is about 450km's x 1600km's as a fun hobby project.
I would use procedural generation for all the foliage and other meshes.
@@Tomphonse - 450km is 450,000 meters and 1600km is 1600,000 meters.
A 450,000 meter by 1600,000 meter heightmap would be 720 billion x 2 = 1440 billion pixels or almost 1.5 TB in heightmap files and about a 15 TB Unreal Engine Project.
I hope that you have some really large hard drives.
I would expect at least a month or two full-time of stamping the 4033x4033 tiles onto the Landscape, because of the almost 45,000 tiles.
Since that will be 450,000 / 4033 = 112 and 1600,000 / 4033 = 397 = 112 x 397 = 44,464 separate 4033 tiles to stamp.
To load a 450,000 by 1600,000 heightmap into memory using software like TerreSculptor will also require that you have a computer with at least 3TB of memory. You will need this just to split the full heightmap into tiles.
Good luck with the project! :)
Hey! :,( I really need your help. So Once I import one of the massive maps, like yours is much bigger than the default map, how do I reset the world partition sections to the new landscape and update the minimap? I only have partitions for the original landscape, and it still shows the old default open-world landscape on the minimap. I'm so close if I could just update this so I can world on individual partitions loaded in. Please help and thank you so so much
Hi. To set the MiniMap texture to be the current Landscape, you use the Build MiniMap item on the Build menu, but if you have a large terrain then you should set the texture size first in the properties panel. The World Partition Video Part 2 shows how to do this.
If by World Partition Sections you mean the Cells for the world, to load and work on them, you select the MiniMap panel and drag a rectangle around the cells that you want to load, right-click and choose Load. Be sure to only load as many cells as you have memory for, World Partition can be a memory hog. You then unload all cells and load new ones to work on them. The MiniMap video should explain this.
@@demenzunmedia Amazing! Thank you! That may be my next task, as I was able to successfully build the massive map onto the mini map. Still, for some reason, the entire landscape is a single square loadable region in the minimap, rather than the small proxy tiles I have for the landscape mesh.
@@randomancy - What size is your terrain heightmap and in what mode did you import it? If you didn't import it in a World Partition enabled Level Type, such as New Open World, then you will not be using World Partition, it won't be enabled, and your Landscape will be one large piece.
@@demenzunmedia I tried to do file->new level->Open World since it has the world partition nd minimap already enabled, and then landscape add new, world partition grid size = 1, scaled at 200%, 255x255, 1x1, 32x32, 8161x8161, 1024. Was hoping to be able to load in and out the proxies so I can sculpt the landscape to match a tiled FBX mesh of a GIS render.
@@demenzunmedia I might be there, for some reason only part of the landscape was loading in and out correctly, and a large section in the middle was action like a static landscape not associated with the minimap assets and would say "not loaded" when I could see them. I restarted the editor, and now all the tiles are loading in correctly! I'm going to align the world grid with the landscape grid sizes, and start working on loading distance! thank you so so much!
is there another way to do it cause this seems to me not the "right" way to create massive open worlds :D
The only way that you would be able to create larger open worlds would be if Epic fixed up their standard Landscape single-heightmap Import system. And I don't expect that to happen any time soon.
With UE5.0.3 and a computer with 128GB memory + 24GB GPU you were limited to a 34km x 34km heightmap maximum. That is the largest that you could import before running out of memory. So Epic would have to completely re-write their importer to be more memory efficient. It is possible that the importer cannot be optimized.
With UE5.1/5.1.1 you are limited to 16km x 16km regardless of your computer memory, that is the new limit. Any heightmap larger than 16384x16384 results in a import error.
The tools are in the UE Editor to do it the way that I show in this video, it is meant to do EXACTLY this, adding Components and Importing Heightmaps onto it are the actual functions of the tools. So this is the only current method to get larger than 16km x 16km.
Using this method in this video, plus TerreSculptor 3.0 plus a computer with 128GB of memory you would be able to create an open world Landscape around 150km x 150km, you would be limited to the operations that you performed in TerreSculptor, which has a maximum heightmap size of 185,000 x 185,000 with 128GB memory, larger heightmap sizes in TerreSculptor require more memory, up to 1 million x 1 million with 4TB of memory.
There is no other way. The standard Landscape heightmap import method or this method using the Landscape tools are the only two ways in UE5 to create Landscapes. And the standard heightmap import is limited to 16km x 16km.
The only other way that a larger world would be possible is if someone wrote a Landscape Import plugin that actually imported correctly instead of the current limited importer by Epic.
@@demenzunmedia SHAME on epic ... cause you have this wonderful and powerful engine and they give us no love for import tools around the open world topic ... thanks that you give us a short tutorial for "fixing" this ;)
@@cr4ftwork - Epic has actually been going backwards and providing less capabilities and reducing the size of the maximum open world Landscape.
UE5.0.3 could import large heightmaps, on my R9-5950X, 128GB, RTX-3090 system I could import heightmaps up to 34km x 34km.
Now on UE5.1 and 5.1.1 it is hard limited to 16km x 16km before it gives a Max2DTex error and crashes.
I am working on a UE5 Plugin for the TerreSculptor software, sort of a "bridge" to allow transfer of heightmaps from TSmap and TSworld file formats to Unreal Engine 5, and during the development of this plugin I am going to see if I can bypass the limited importer in Unreal Engine and actually import massive heightmaps.
@@demenzunmedia 🙏💪
@@cr4ftwork - Another way to get massive open worlds is to stay away from World Partition.
It is poorly designed and has a lot of limitations and problems. Hopefully one day Epic will fix it.
You can use World Composition and create an open world theoretically as big as you have hard drive space for, assuming that you had a lot of RAM as well.
With a computer with 128GB of memory, a floating-point heightmap up to 185,000 x 185,000 can be created in TerreSculptor, and then split into tiles for UE5.
So you can create an open world as large as around 185km x 185km with a computer with 128GB of memory.
With 4TB of RAM memory, TerreSculptor can create heightmaps up to 1 million x 1 million, so if you had a 20TB hard drive you could probably get close to that size of a world.