Thoughts on how to design terrain this way?

I’d like to design my terrain as shown in the image below. Graphics would be similar. I want to hand design it. There would perhaps be ramps to the upper levels.

What would be the best way to get this look and feel? If anyone knows of tutorials for such terrain design please feel free to throw them at me.



If your wanting something that simple I’d suggest doing it in a 3d modeling program such as 3ds max or blender.

Agree with goodmrfrank. It would be very easy to make something like this in blender.

However, yes, it could also be done quite easily with the landscape tool.

Thanks. I’m watching Blender tutorials this very moment but I would prefer to use the landscape editor within UE4.

However, I have come across the following problems.

  1. Cannot figure out how to create cliffs with sharp edges or plateaus of equal height.

  2. Not sure how to apply specific textures to certain regions of the landscape. EG: Edges always look like rock or dirt, ground always look be grassy, and hills always be snowy.

this guy has good video on how to do most of that.

or I use this when playing around with ground textures, this give you a basic slop detection, if you rise or lower the terrain on the sides you will get rock, the very bace texture is sand (depending on the high of the hole terrain, then the next level can be grass.

Drop the Material faction into the Material


I actually happened to of watched that entire series. It was very informative and helpful.

I’m mostly having issues with plateau height. I read somewhere(I forgot where) that if you hold control while holding left click(to paint) the terrain will be painted at a set height but that’s not what I’m experiencing. When I hold to paint, even when holding control(ctrl) the terrain just rises and rises until I let go. I can’t seem to get the editor to paint on a set level.

Take this video for example:
This is a video of the Starcraft 2 editor but I’m looking to accomplish what they’re showing between 13:00 minutes to 13:05. You’ll notice the ‘cliffs’ as he calls them are all the same height.

I figured out a way to accomplish what I was looking for. I made a single plateau at the height I wanted then used the flatten tool starting with the plateau, dragging it across the land to the accomplish what I wanted. Could do the same in reverse by making a ditch and flattening out starting from the ditch.

Is it possible to assign a material instance on the fly?

Let’s say I design 10 landscapes and sometimes I want landscape #3 to be winter, or fall. Could you dynamically change the materials?