Landscape Maps Generator

M-Factory - Code Plugins - Apr 16, 2019

Plugin export height a weight maps as PNG. Support composite worlds.

  • Supported Platforms
  • Supported Engine Versions
    4.23 - 4.27, 5.0 - 5.4
  • Download Type
    Engine Plugin
    This product contains a code plugin, complete with pre-built binaries and all its source code that integrates with Unreal Engine, which can be installed to an engine version of your choice then enabled on a per-project basis.

This plugin is used for generating height maps and weight maps of landscapes.

The plugin has a programable pipeline via a generator blueprint.

  • The plugin supports composite worlds.
  • Plugin exports height maps as 16-bit one channel .png.
  • Plugin export weight, slope maps as 8 bit one channel .png.
  • The plugin can create splats and biome color textures in 2D.
  • The plugin uses Fractal, Perlin noise, and Cellular noise.
  • The plugin supports Hydraulic Erosion on GPU (kinetic, water, and thermal) and smooths edges of height maps to prevent cracks for the composite world.
  • The plugin has Liquid Simulation to simulate effects like lava.
  • The plugin can create sediment, water, or liquid maps too.
  • The plugin uses rainfall and temperature maps for the climate.
  • The plugin generates weight maps, which are most intensive when average temperatures and rainfall match with temperatures and rainfall world maps and fade where unmatched.
  • Plugin optimizes weight maps in a way that maximal weight values are preserved. This means that when some weight maps are more dominant than other weight maps, the other weight maps are set to zero, and on borders are weight maps smoothed for a better transition.
  • For the biome weight map(for example the desert), you can select slope maps(for example highest slope will be rock, then stones, lower slope dry grass, and lowest sand of the desert) when you don't use auto landscape materials.
  • Biome weight maps have average temperatures and average rainfall parameters on user-defined altitudes.
  • Users can set min/max latitude, min/max meridian, and min/max height of the terrain.
  • The plugin generates all maps in the background, so users can work in Unreal during the generation of the maps.

Technical Details

This editor code plugin generates height maps for terrains. It produces one or more tiles for composite worlds based on the various types of noise and generates user-defined weight maps of biomes based on temperature and rainfall and altitude mixings like intersection or unification. And slope maps of biomes. Also, it uses 3 types of Hydraulic Erosion run on GPU where the user can set the number of iterations, rain constant, solubility constant, evaporation constant, capacity constant, and many orders.

The plugin has a blueprint programmable pipeline, and many operators for mixing noise, the generation process is visualized and controlled by the coder. Maps are generated in the background.

Plugin support all resolution for every combination of quats, section, and components.

Code Modules: LandscapeMapsGenerator

Supported Development Platforms: Win64

Supported Target Build Platforms: Any

Example ProjectPlugin web pages, Documentation

Important/Additional Notes: The plugin can be used on all build platforms, but on the mobile platform the landscape Material must be simple due to mobile shader limits.

Version: 4.2.3 for UE 5.0