Making a Terrain

Terrains in Unreal Editor can be made in two ways. One is via realtime mesh editing and the other is via heightmaps (or both). This tutorial will only cover the first option.


Start by carving out a really, really big level to put you terrain in.


In your Generic Browser, go to the Actor Classes tab and choose Info->Terrain


You should be getting this green terrain icon.


I was stumped for a whole day on why I couldn't see the terrain mesh. Googling for an answer yielded no results. Then I tried hitting "G" for game mode on the editor. Presto! It showed in Game Mode.

Before assigning materials to your terrain, always remember to SAVE YOUR LEVEL FIRST.


Next, click on the Terrain Editing Mode and it should open up the Unreal TerrainEdit dialog box.


Open up and existing material to assign to your terrain (or create one from scratch). Right-click and assign "New Terrain Setup Layer from material(auto-create)".


The first entry is to define the Terrain Material.


The second entry is to define the Terrain Texture.


This is how it looks like.


Press F4 or double-click on the icon to access the Terrain Properties. Alter the numbers so you have a nice subdivision to work with. Also, bMorphingEnabled allows the level to have LOD and bMorphingGradientsEnabled allows Materials LOD (Please correct me if I am wrong).


Make sure you are in Paint Mode and the brush has some strength settings. Proceed to paint. You need to hold down the Ctrl key and left mouse to elevate, right mouse to depress the terrain.


To make your terrain more complex, we can add a second layer of materials. I chose a snow material to be more obvious.


Go ahead and paint the second layer.


Finally, add a light in the scene. Increase the visibility by increasing the Drawscale and Radius.


Don't forget to BuildAll. Test the level... Done!