Building our Terrain Zone

Click the "Camera Movement" button on the left toolbar to close the Terrain Editor. Locate the TerrainInfo icon which has been created, and reposition it so that is perfectly centered between the four walls, and about 512 units above the floor. Rebuild the map. Position your camera above the TerrainInfo icon and you should see a flat terrain surface stretching all the way across our outdoor area. If you setup the layers properly, the terrain will display the dirt texture we assigned to the bottom layer (Layer1), since we set the other layers' AlphaFills to "256" making them completely transparent (If one of the other textures is displaying instead, don't worry. We'll be playing with the layered textures later).

If the terrain is not positioned properly to fill the area, you can move the TerrainIcon and rebuild the map; the terrain will always center around that icon. It is also worth noting that while in this tutorial we are building terrain that perfectly fits our area, there is no harm if your terrain stretches beyond the borders of your subtracted world; the overlap simply will not be visible in-game. Save your map. If you've gotten this far, you may have experienced a few UnrealED crashes, but the worst is over. Move your mouse over the top down 2d view once just to reassure yourself that the editor is your friend once again.

Sculpting the Landscape

Open the Terrain Editor, and Select "Painting" from the "Tools" list. Under "Options", set Inner Radius to around "254", Outer Radius to around "558", and Strength to around "25". Select the "Terrains" tab, select "TerrainInfo0", and then select the gray Heightmap under "Heightmap Info" (It will turn greenish-gray to indicate it is selected). Now the fun begins.

 

In the 3d perspective view, hold the [Ctrl] key, left click, and drag in short movements to raise the terrain, creating hills. Then, hold the [Ctrl] key, right click, and drag to lower the terrain, creating valleys. By adjusting the Inner Radius and Strength settings, you can "paint" the height of your terrain in large bold strokes or with minute fine touches. It is a very powerful tool. Note that the Undo button will not work when modifying terrain, so be careful once you get your terrain the way you like it. After playing with the terrain a bit, click the "Camera Movement" button to close the Terrain Editor, and place an insertion zone and node point just above a flat area of your landscape. Double click on the TerrainInfo icon to open it's properties. Expand "R6Planning" and set m_blsWalkable to "True". Set m_iPlanningFloor_0 and m_iPlanningFloor_1 to "100". Now our entire terrain will work in the planning stage and in-game map. Rebuild the map. If your insertion zone or path node are not on a suitably flat plane, the editor will let you know.

Save the map, load it as a practice mission, and walk around a bit. Notice that your operatives can climb gradual inclines but cannot climb slopes that are too steep. Also notice that the terrain automatically inherits the hit effects of the assigned texture (in this case, dirt kicks up when our dirt texture is hit by bullets). At this point, our terrain geometry looks pretty realistic, but the fact that everything is painted with a single texture is pretty unrealistic. Let's get back to the editor.

 

Painting the Earth

Open the Terrain Editor, and Select "Painting" from the "Tools" list. Set InnerRadius to around "102" and OuterRadius to around "203". Select "TerrainInfo0" under "Terrain Infos", then select the "Layers" tab. Select "Layer2", which is a dirtmoss texture we placed just above our bottom layer of dirt. Since we now have a layer selected, the painting tool is going to affect textures rather than heights. In the 3d perspective view, hold the [Ctrl] key, left click, and drag in short movements to paint dirt moss on top of the dirt. Next, hold the [Ctrl] key, right click, and drag to erase dirt moss, displaying the dirt underneath. Select "Layer4", and paint a rock face on one of your higher hills. Then, select "Layer2" again and try to paint dirt moss over the rock face. It doesn't work, does it? Actually, it is painting the dirt moss, but underneath the rock. (Select "Layer4" and erase part of it in the same spot to see what I mean.) The order of the layers is very important because you can never paint a lower layer texture over a higher layer texture.

Remember how we set our base layer Alpha Fill to "0" and the other Alpha Fills to 256? Believe it or not, you can even set higher layers to partial transparency, allowing the lower texture to show through right off the bat. (However, to do this we would need to delete and recreate the texture, which we're not going to take the time to do now.) You might notice that the grass texture we loaded is magnified a bit more than it should be. If we wanted to, We could fix this by deleting and recreating the layer with lower UScale and VScale settings. Experiment some more with painting layers. With a good mix of logical texture placement and pure randomness you'll be amazed at how realistic you can make your terrain appear. Make sure you mix things up enough that the repeating pattern of a single texture is never noticeable.

 

Terrain Editing Tools

Let's take a look at a few other tools in the Terrain Editor. Since we'll be modifying terrain geometry again, select the "Terrains" tab, select "TerrainInfo0", and select the gray Heightmap (make sure it turns greenish-gray). Select the "Noise" tool. In the 3d perspective view, hold the [Ctrl] key, left click, and drag to add random roughness to the land. This tool is useful for creating a realistic sense of erosion in undeveloped land. The Strength setting controls the extent of the erosion.

Next, select the "Flatten" tool. In the 3d perspective view, hold the [Ctrl] key, left click, and drag over any area of the map to effectively bulldoze that land. This tool is useful for establishing civilized, developed areas. (Note that brushes and static meshes do not HAVE to be placed on perfectly flat surfaces...) The Flatten tool is also useful for creating cliffs by painting into the edge of a tall hill or mountain. But, the flattened area probably looks a bit unrealistic now; let's correct that.

Select "Smoothing" from the "Tools" list. In the 3d perspective view, hold the [Ctrl] key, left click, and drag over the edges of your flattened area to create a more gradual slope.

Static Meshes in Terrain

As I briefly mentioned before, you can place brushes and static meshes pretty much anywhere you'd like along your terrain. In many cases, you'll want to use a combination of terrain cliff faces and static mesh walls/fences to mark the edge of the map. Note that one sure way to upset players on your map is to allow them to walk up to border terrain which is just steep enough to prevent climbing, yet allows the player to think they might be able to climb it. Also note that while some static meshes will provide logical collision automatically, others (pine trees for example) will require that you place invisible collision hulls or blocking volumes to keep the player from accidentally stumbling passed the border.

You can also provide some neat effects by embedding certain static meshes into the terrain itself. Using the heightmap painting technique, carve out a small valley somewhere on your map. Then, click the "Camera Movement" button to close the Terrain Editor. Open the Static Mesh browser, open "Training_SM.usx", choose the "Water" group, and select "PondWater". Right click in your valley and choose "Add StaticMesh: 'Training_SM.Water.PondWater'". Reposition the static mesh so that it fills the bottom of the valley without any corners sticking out of the terrain elseware. If the static mesh is too large or too small for your valley, open the PondWater's "Display" properties and change the DrawScale value, or go back into the Terrain Editor and resculpt the valley to fit perfectly around your new pond. Note that normally you would only want to place this pond in an off-limits area, since the player will walk right over it as if it is fiberglass rather than water. If you'd like, experiment with placing brushes and other static meshes in various areas on your terrain.

 

Assigning Terrain to Planning Floors

If we wanted to, we could easily assign the entire terrain to a single planning floor. But I doubt your terrain is all of a similar elevation, plus we wouldn't want the far edges of the terrain to appear walkable in the planning map. So I'll show you how to assign different parts of your terrain to different planning floors. Thanks to Amon from the Dev team for sharing how to pull this off.

First, open the "View" menu in the editor and choose "Level Properties". Expand "R6Planning". We're going to divide our terrain into three floors, so set R6PlanningMinLevel to "100" and R6PlanningMaxLevel to "102". Close the level properties window. Locate the TerrainInfo icon and double click it to open it's properties. Expand "R6Planning" and set m_blsWalkable to "True". Set both m_iPlanningFloor_0 and m_iPlanningFloor_1 to one floor lower than the lowest floor on your map, in this case "99". Now, type the following into the command line text box along the bottom of the editor: "pp c=1". Press the [Enter] key. Click once in the 3d perspective view and your terrain should all turn red.

Open the Terrain Editor. Select the "Planning paint" tool (the last option in the Tools list). Set "Floor offset" (a small textbox on the right side of the Terrain Editor window) to "1". This will allow us to "paint" the areas of the map that we want to assign to the lowest floor (which in this case happens to be floor 100). In the 3d perspective view, hold the [Ctrl] key, left click, and carefully drag over only the lowest areas (the valleys) of your terrain. Areas you assign will change to a different shade of red. Try to avoid rough edges as much as possible. Now, change "Floor offset" to "2". This will assign terrain to the next floor up (in this example, floor 101). In the 3d perspective view, hold the [Ctrl] key, left click, and carefully drag over only the medium elevation areas of your terrain, avoiding the highest elevation terrain while painting right up against the edges of the low elevation terrain you just assigned. Also note that if there are areas of your terrain which you do not wish to be walkable (for example, the map edge) simply do not paint it. If you make any mistakes, you can set "Floor offset" to "0" and then paint over the mistake to erase it. Finally, change "Floor offset" to "3" and paint the highest elevation areas.