landscape material update (3 layer material)
since the last post I added another layer of the material for landscapes which is the mud.
the materials can be controlled with how much sloped, contrast, etc just like the previous example.
Steps on developing the MATERIAL LAYERING for Landscape
I wanted to learn how to use the landscape sculpting tool so it would be easier to make the landscape. The tutor showed me a technique which layers multiple materials on top of each other and depending on the angle of slopes, those materials will show up and be updated during sculpting the landscape. Here are quick steps and how I manage to make it. I did follow a four part Youtube tutorials each goes for 40 mins-1 hour long. First part of tutorial is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdWo_ffOr8s
But! I’ll walk you guys through it, but it will be summarized.
1st step is to make and compose the materials for the grass, mud, and the rocks. This cannot be done using normal material but instead we use Material Function.
The idea is to make the texture blend betwen a large size texture and a smaller one, so when we go further away, the texture tiling wont be noticeable and require more distance to see the the tiling effect, for the small size, its the opposite; so when the user goes closer to the texture, it wont be pixelated. The input Vector is there so I can change the texture scaling.
We also need to this to normal maps; have a large and a small version and shared with the same parameter. In the middle is basically the blending part. We take a pixel depth then divide by how far we wanted the blending to occur using the input BlendDistance scalar, then we clamp it.
this is the final version
As you can see, if go closer to it, it will transition to the smaller version and making it look sharp and un-pixelated. same goes for when you go further away. Most of the materials shares the same nodes and layout but different textures and normal maps.
The next step is to combined all the material function into one.
we bring in our functions and make sure we have parameters connected with the 3 different things, so we change them in the material instance.
The result will go to mat layer standard, this node will allow to also blend the normals and not just the texture it self.
this basically masked the slope angles, so we can change how far a material should “fall”/ reveal off the slopes.
this part is basically just combined the texture and the slope mask, and place where texture should be seen; either on top or on the bottom of the material.
You do this to the other materials.
when finish setting the materials up, I connected all of them to layer blends. This part were a little bit confusing but basically, you just place the end results and place them accordingly on which textures should be the base, the in-between, and the top.
Make it into material Instance so you can apply it to the landscape.
Here you can see that you have full control on how far you want the top 2 materials to “fall” on top of each other. Texturing were provided by other team member.
You can see that it updates real time when I'm sculpting the landscape, very handy when you cant texture for your life.
and if you want to change the grass slopes, you can do it with ease. It would look much better if the textures were great, but texturing is my weakness and needs improving.
Mountain and big hills were not used in the final production. I thought that some sort of mountain or hill in the background would be more appealing, but in the end, it was scraped and were replaced by cities.
This however gave me ideas and understanding of the process of creating multiple materials and layering them on top of each other. I learned that you can use alphas so other materials can be seen. Much like the cracks between the rocks on the top, you can see the mud in between. It was a very valuable lessons and experience that I gathered during the project as developing complex materials are very important and can save A LOT of time rather than texturing it by hand.