Large Scale Landscape Pipeline - Photoshop > World Creator 2 > UE4

As the expectation for content grows with gamers - the expectations on the artists grow more and more demanding - Here I will demonstrate an overview of a process I have developed for quickly populating large open world environments in Unreal Engine using a Photoshop - World Creator - UE4 Workflow, from Concept, to beautiful playable space.

This process allows for easy iteration should your concept team want to make adjustments to the design of the terrain or layout of features mid production.

I will offer a brief glimpse into some of the tools used in the process.

Technical Info

4033x4033 Heightmaps and Weight maps (for this example I have decided not to split the landscape into chunks to use with World Composition in UE4 as I wanted to test stacking Weight maps together in Photoshop post curation in World Creator without having to write a batching droplet to handle the merging on thousands of files)

Timeframes

Design & Heightmap Curation & Weight map Curation & Export from WC & Heightmap Import to UE4 Landscape (2 hours)

Weight map Import to UE4 Landscape Shader (several hours - half a day depending on shader complexity)

Landmark / Feature Block-in

Set up of Landscape Grass Types (several hours)

Set up of Procedural Foliage Volumes and Actors (several hours)