Ray L. Skorb - Landscapes

CREATION OF LANDSCAPE

GAEA

I created this landscape in GAEA 2.0 and exported it into Unreal Engine 5.4.

In order to create the landscape that I was imagining I used multiple different nodes and tools. The core of my landscape is a canyon with one mountain on each side. To make the landscape look more natural I decided to add noise textures on top. For more details in the later process of my creation, I added a river through the canyon, snow on top of the mountains, and vegetation in suited areas.

[GAEA] River

[GAEA] Snow

[GAEA] Vegetation

Unreal Engine

Landscape Material

The creation of a good material is the deciding factor as to whether the landscape looks good or not. I used seven different layers in the creation of my material in order to have a high-quality result: Soil, Grass, Stone, River Bed, Deposit, Flow, and Snow. All the assets and textures that I used are Megascans from Quixel on fab.com. All of those textures are 4k or 8k in resolution. To apply the different layers on top of my landscape I used the layer masks from GAEA and imported them into Unreal Engine. To stay organized throughout my project I developed multiple functions that helped me create a good material. For most of my layers, I used Texture Variation to hide repetitive textures in the landscape. A problem that appeared was that the UVs of the Landscape were too stretched at high slopes, which made the stone texture distorted. The solution that I came up with was to project the texture onto the landscape with Triplanar Projection. To keep everything clean in my Nodes I used comments and kept my connections straight. In addition to that, and to keep my project more optimized I used Material Instances rather than applying the Master Material directly to the Landscape. In the Material Instances, I created 16 different variables to tweak the result of the material.

Material Layers

GAEA Masks

Texture Variation

Triplanar Projection

Material Functions

Material Instance

Foliage

To add Foliage to my landscape I used Unreal Engines build-in tools. The grass and bushes are also from Quixel to keep the art style throughout the project consistent. I added all of the assets to Unreal's Landscape Grass Type and adjusted the values of density, random rotation, and random scale in order to convey a natural feeling. The Foliage can only spawn on the Grass Layer which prevents it from spawning on too high slopes, on too high altitudes, or in the river bed.

River

While planning my project I wanted to have a river flowing through my landscape. I used Unreal Engines Water Plug-In and adjusted it to my liking. In the Plug-In, there is an option to create rivers in the landscape. However, I decided not to use this function and rather add an Ocean to my landscape. The reason for that is that the River tool adds water but also carves the landscape. I didn't want to carve and change my landscape since I already had a riverbed from GAEA. Changing the landscape too much would also result in the Layer Masks not fitting anymore.

Virtual Textures

With an intense Landscape material, like the one I created, optimization becomes an important issue. Having seven different layers which all use 4k or 8k textures makes the Shaders quite complex. The solution I chose was to use Virtual Textures for my project. This method reduced the complexity drastically and ensured a higher quality of the project.

Without the use of Virtual Textures

With the use of Virtual Textures

Procedural Content Generation

For more realism and variation I added Procedural Content Generation. This landscape has more than ten different kinds of trees, stones, and other kinds of decoration. Trees and bushes only spawn in green areas while stones only spawn on soil. This separation of assets works based on the layers of the landscape material together with the layer masks from GAEA.

Visual Fidelity

To increase the visual fidelity of my project I added multiple features. To bring a more natural light into my landscape I used an HDRI Backdrop together with a skylight. For more depth in the world and a more immersive experience, I added mountains into the background. In order to improve the visual quality I added a post-processing volume and changed: the Bloom, Exposure, Lens Flare, Vignette, Depth of Field, and Shadow.