Landscape Quick Start Guide

The Landscape system inside of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) is a collection of tools for creating expansive outdoor environments. This guide teaches you the basics you need to build your first Landscape.

Before You Begin

Before starting this guide, ensure you have an Unreal Engine project. We recommend a project that uses the First Person or Third Person template, so you have a character that can walk the Landscape and check its scale and slopes.

For more information about creating Unreal Engine projects, see Creating a New Project.  

You'll also need a basic level with no floor to work in. To set up a new empty level for your Landscape, follow these steps:

1. In your UE project, create a new level using File > New Level and select the Basic level template.

   

2. Select the Floor in the level and press the Delete key to remove it from the level.

   

1 - Creating a new Landscape

Switching to Landscape Mode opens the Landscape panel with all the tools you need to manipulate your Landscape.

To create a new default Landscape actor in an empty level, follow these steps:

1. Click the Landscape option in the Modes dropdown menu.

   

   After you select Landscape mode, the Landscape panel appears with the following set of Landscape tools. 

   

2. For this tutorial, keep all default settings and then click Create to add a default Landscape to your level.

   When Unreal Engine generates the new Landscape, you should have something that looks like this:

   

   To learn more about the settings in the Landscape tool's Manage mode, see Creating Landscapes.    

3. To ensure your player doesn't spawn under your Landscape, select the PlayerStart actor and move it up slightly on the Z axis.

2 - Working with the Landscape Tools

Let's get familiar with some of the tools and keyboard inputs that are most commonly used to interact with the Landscape system.

The Landscape tool has three modes, Manage, Sculpt, and Paint, accessible by clicking on their icons at the top of the Landscape panel. Each mode provides different methods for you to interact with the Landscape.  

Here is an overview of what you can do with each mode:

Icon	Mode	Description
	Manage mode	Create new Landscapes, import or export Landscape data, and modify Landscape components. For more information about Manage mode, refer to Landscape Manage Mode.
	Sculpt mode	Modify the shape of your Landscape by selecting and using specific tools.  Sculpt mode also has the Landscape Copy Tool to copy and paste parts of your Landscape. For more information about Sculpt mode, refer to Landscape Sculpt Mode.
	Paint mode	Modify the appearance of parts of your Landscape by painting textures on it, based on the layers defined in the Landscape's Material. For more information about Paint mode, refer to Landscape Paint Mode.

Interacting with the Landscape Tools

While each of the three modes within the Landscape tools allows you to interact with the Landscape differently, the keyboard and mouse keys that you use are similar.

Here is an overview of some of the most common keys, key combinations, and mouse buttons that you'll use when working with the Landscape tool.

3 - Sculpting the Landscape

You can find all of the tools used for sculpting in the Sculpt tab in the Landscape panel. 

For this part of the Landscape tutorial, you are going to start with a completely flat section of the Landscape and then build up the details as you go along. When finished, you'll be familiar with the various Landscape tools.

To sculpt your Landscape, follow these steps:

1. Find a section of the Landscape that you want to work with. For this tutorial, you are not going to be filling in the entire Landscape but just a section of it.

   For ease of use, set a camera bookmark by pressing Ctrl + 1 on the keyboard. With a camera bookmark, you can quickly return to a pulled-back view and check how your entire Landscape is looking as you shape it. If you press the 1 key, your camera will return to the bookmarked view.

   

2. With the bookmark set, begin painting in the larger details for hills and valleys using the Sculpt tool.

   You can change the value of the Brush Size and Strength either in the Landscape panel or the Landscape toolbar located just above the viewport. These are the brush settings used to sculpt the sample Landscape in the screenshot: 

   Tool Used	Brush Size	Strength Setting
   Sculpt tool	8192	0.29

   When completed, you should have something that looks like this: 

   

3. After you block out the hills and valleys, use the Smooth tool to help refine the look and feel of them. Using this tool smooths your Landscape features and makes them seem more natural. Be careful not to smooth away all your features!

   These are the brush settings used to create the sample Landscape in the screenshot below: 

   Tool Used	Brush Size	Strength Setting
   Smooth tool	2048	0.29

   

4. Now that you smoothed out the Landscape, it is time to add some flat mesa-like sections using the Flatten tool. The Flatten tool captures the height information of the location of your first click and raises or lowers the heightmap to meet that point as you drag around the brush.

   These are the brush settings used to create the sample Landscape in the screenshot below:

   Tool Used	Brush Size	Strength Setting
   Flatten tool	2048	0.29

   

5. Use the Ramp tool to add some flat ramps between the mesas. To create a flat path between two points, click your landscape to set a start point and an end point for your ramp and then click Add Ramp. Use the translation gizmo to move the start and end points in any direction to shape your ramp.  

   These are the ramp settings used to create the sample Landscape in the screenshot below:

   Tool Used	Ramp Width	Side Falloff
   Ramp tool	2000	0.40

   

6. Use the Erosion tool to wear down steep slopes and give your Landscape a weathered look. It simulates thermal erosion, where soil moves from higher to lower ground. This tool helps shave away parts of your hills to create mountain peaks and ridges. 

   These are the brush settings used to create the sample Landscape in the screenshot below:

   Tool Used	Brush Size	Strength Setting
   Erosion tool	693	0.25

   

7. Add more erosion effects with Hydro Erosion. The Hydro Erosion tool simulates how water will erode Landscape details over time. Like the Smooth Tool, be careful not to erode away all your detail. 

   These are the brush settings used to create the sample Landscape in the screenshot below:

   Tool Used	Brush Size	Strength Setting
   Hydro Erosion	2048	0.29

   

8. To break up the surface of the Landscape even more, use the Noise tool. The Noise tool adds random noise to the surface of the Landscape by randomly moving the Landscape vertices up or down or both at the same time. 

   These are the brush settings used to create the sample Landscape in the screenshot below:

   Tool Used	Brush Size	Strength Setting
   Noise tool	2048	0.29

   

9. Use the Smooth tool again to smooth out some of the more jagged areas of the Landscape to give it a more natural look. This can help even out too-deep areas that the player might get stuck in if they fall. 

   These are the brush settings used to adjust the sample Landscape:

   Tool Used	Brush Size	Strength Setting
   Smooth tool	1121	0.16

To learn more about each sculpting tool, see the Sculpt Mode pages.   

4 - Creating Landscape Materials

After you finish sculpting the Landscape, add some layered Materials to your project so you can paint your Landscape and give it a real-world look. 

Folder Setup

 First, set up some folders to organize your texture and Material content. 

To create new folders for your Material assets, follow these steps:

1. Create a new folder named Landscape in your project's Content folder.

2. Then inside the Landscape folder, create 3 new folders:

   • Materials

   • Resources

   • Textures

Your Landscape folder should look like this:

Migrating Textures

Now that you have the folders in place, you need to migrate some textures from a Fab sample content project so you have some assets to work with. 

To migrate sample textures from the example content to your project, follow these steps:

1. In Epic Games Launcher, go to Fab, search for and select the Content Examples project, and click Add to My Library.

2. In the UE Library tab, create and launch a new project based on this Fab Library sample.

3. In the Content Browser, go to /Content/ExampleContent/Landscapes/Textures/.

4. Select the following assets:

   • T_GroundGrass_D

   • T_GroundGrass_N

   • T_Granite_Rock_visscjf_4K_D

   • T_Granite_Rock_visscjf_4K_N

   • T_Noise_N

5. Right-click your selection and go to Asset Actions > Migrate.

6. In the Asset Report dialog, confirm the list of textures you want to migrate and click OK.

7. For the destination, go to your Landscape project and select its Content folder. Click Select Folder.

8. Return to your Landscape project, find the migrated textures in the /Content/ExampleContent/Landscapes/Textures folder, and move them to the /Landscape/Textures folder you created earlier.

Creating the Landscape Material

To create a material for your Landscape and add your textures, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Materials folder in the Content Browser.

2. Right-click in the Content Browser and select Material from the asset list.

3. Name the newly-created material something that will help you find it, like M_Landscape for example.

   

4. Open the material by double-clicking it.  

   

5. Select the Material root node (the node that has the same name as your Material). In the Details panel, enable Use Material Attributes. The root node’s pins collapse into a single Material Attributes pin.

6. Add 3 MakeMaterialAttributes nodes to the graph, one for each layer you'll paint on your Landscape (grass, rock, and snow). 

   

   Using the Material Attributes method is useful when creating a Material with layers. You can bundle each layer's properties into a single node and then blend all layers with one Landscape Layer Blend node.

   To make these nodes take up less space in your graph, you can collapse them or use SetMaterialAttributes nodes instead. With SetMaterialAttributes, you manually add attributes instead of working with the entire set by default. 

7. Right-click the Material Graph, search for landscape, and add a LandscapeLayerCoords UV node. This node helps generate UV coordinates used to map the Landscape Material to the Landscape Actor.

   

8. Add 5 Texture Sample nodes for your textures' color maps and normal maps. Line them up vertically between the LandscapeCoords node and Material Attributes nodes.

   

9. Click the top Texture Sample node. In the Details panel, click the Texture list and add the T_GroundGrass_D texture. 

   Repeat this process to add the following textures to the remaining Texture Sample nodes:

   • T_Granite_Rock_visscjf_4K_D

   • T_GroundGrass_N

   • T_Granite_Rock_visscjf_4K_N

   • T_Noise_N

10. Add a Vector Parameter (V + Left-click), name it Snow, and change its Default Value to white.

    

11. Connect the LandscapeCoords node to the UVs of each of the Texture Sample nodes.

    

12. Connect each layer's texture to a MakeMaterialAttributes node: 

    • Connect the base color Texture Sample nodes' and Snow node's RGB pins to the corresponding MakeMaterialAttributes node's BaseColor pin.

    • Connect the normal Texture Sample nodes' RGB pins to the corresponding MakeMaterialAttributes node's Normal pin.

    

Layering Textures in the Material

After you add the Material nodes and connect the LandscapeCoords to the textures' UVs, it is time to add and set up the Landscape Layer Blend node. The Landscape Layer Blend node blends layers using Weight blending, Height blending, or Alpha blending. For this tutorial, we'll focus on Weight blending and Height blending:

• Weight blending uses each layer's painted weight to determine which to display. Use Weight blending where you want two surfaces to blend seamlessly into each other, such as rock into sand.

• Height blending uses each layer's painted weight with an additional height value often taken from the Texture Sample's Alpha channel. Use it when you want one surface to sit naturally on top of another, such as grass or snow on top of dirt or rock. In this tutorial, we'll show an example of height blending on the grass layer.

To layer the textures together in your Material and set up blending, follow these steps:

1. Add a Landscape Layer Blend node to the Material Graph. The node is empty by default.

   

2. Click the node to select it. In the Details panel, next to the Layers setting, click the plus (+) button until you have 3 layers. 

   

3. Enter the following values into the three layers:

   Layer Name	Blend Type	Preview Weight
   Grass	LB Height Blend	0.0
   Rock	LB Weight Blend	1.0
   Snow	LB Weight Blend	0.0

   When you set a layer’s Blend Type to LB Height Blend, a Height pin for that layer appears on the Layer Blend node. You'll connect a grayscale height texture to this pin, where lighter values are higher. In areas where layers meet, the layer appears on its high points first, which makes the transition look more natural.

4. Connect the layers to the Landscape Layer Blend node:

   1. Connect the grass layer's MakeMaterialAttributes node to the Layer Grass pin.

   2. Connect the rock layer's MakeMaterialAttributes node to the Layer Rock pin.

   3. Connect the snow layer's MakeMaterialAttributes node to the Layer Snow pin.

   4. Connect the grass Texture Sample node's alpha (A) pin to the Height Grass pin.

   

5. Connect the Landscape Layer Blend node's output to the Material root node's Material Attributes pin.

   

6. Add 3 Constant nodes to control the roughness of each layer and connect them to the MakeMaterialAttributes nodes' Roughness pins. For example, you could set a Roughness of 0.85 for grass, 0.7 for rock, and 0.5 for snow.

7. Right-click each MakeMaterialAttributes node and select Collapse Nodes to save space in your graph.

8. Save your Material. It should look like this:

   

5 - Painting a Landscape

With your Landscape Material created, you can now apply the Material to the Landscape and begin using the Paint tools.

Setting Up the Landscape for Painting

Before you can begin painting the Landscape, there is some setup you need to do first.

To apply your Landscape Material to the Landscape, follow these steps:

1. Find your Material in the Content Browser. This should be located under a folder labeled Materials you created in the previous section. Click on it to select it.

   

2. With the Landscape Material selected in the Content Browser, select the Landscape in the world. Then in the Details panel, expand the Landscape section and look for the Landscape Material property.

   

3. Apply the Material to the Landscape using the Use Selected Asset from the Content Browser arrow icon. You can also drag the Material asset from the Content Browser to the Details panel and drop it on the Landscape Material input.

   

After adding the Material, your view should look like this:

Now that you applied the Landscape Material, you are almost ready to start painting. Before you can paint, you must create and assign three Landscape Layer Info Objects. If you try to paint before you assign the Landscape Layer Info Objects, you get the following warning message.

You need to create three Landscape Layer Info Objects, one for each layer that you want to paint.

To set up paint layers, follow these steps:

1. In the Landscape tools, click Paint mode.

   

2. Above the Layers list, override the Default Layer Asset Path and set to your /Landscape/Resources folder.

   

   In a later step, Ureal Engine creates layer info assets in this folder. Layer info assets can be saved anywhere in your project, but it helps to keep them in one shared folder. A layer like Snow usually has the same settings on every landscape, so one shared asset avoids duplicates scattered across your level folders.

3. In the Landscape panel, in the Target Layers section, next to Layers, click the Create Layers From Assigned Materials button. 

   

4. Above your layers, click the Auto-Fill Target Layer Assets button.

   

5. In the Auto-Fill Target Layer Assets dialog, add a checkmark to Create new assets in the default folder if none are found, and click Unassigned Layers Only.

   

Painting the Landscape

Now that you created and applied the Landscape Layer Info Objects, you can begin to paint your Landscape.  You'll use the Paint tool to apply textures to your Landscape. 

To paint a layer on the Landscape, click the layer you want to apply, and press and hold the Left Mouse Button to paint that texture on the area under your brush.

Remember you can use Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y to undo and redo your paint strokes.

When you finish painting, you should have something that looks like this.

To learn more about Landscape painting tools, see the Paint Mode documentation.

Adjusting the Mapping Scale

The scale of the Textures on your Landscape can start too big or too small. To fix this, open your Landscape Material and select the Landscape Coords node. With that node selected, adjust the Mapping Scale in the Details panel and save the Material. When the Material is re-compiled, check the scale in the viewport. If the scale is not to your liking, repeat the processes above until you get the results you want.

Here is a comparison between a Mapping Scale of 0.5 on the Left and 5.0 on the Right.

Checking Painted Layers

There are two visualization modes you can use to check where your paint layers are blended into your Landscape. In the Viewport toolbar, click Lit (the View mode settings menu), go to Visualizers, and select Layer Usage or Layer Debug. For example, the Layer Debug view shows where each layer appears on the Landscape and where layers are blended.

6 - External Creation Tools

While the default Landscape tools do have the ability to meet all of your sculpting and painting needs, there could be some situations where you might want some extra control over your Landscape's look and feel. The following is a list of software packages that could help you obtain the results you are looking for if you cannot get them from using the Landscape tools.