Landscape Layer Map

You can create a new Landscape Layer Map either from scratch, sculpting it with an extendable set of brushes available out-of-the-box, or using imported data (images or tilesets), be it an arbitrary terrain generated in terrain generator software (e.g., World Machine), or real digital elevation maps and satellite imagery data.

Notice

Landscape Layer Map is designed as a shared data pool, the graphic data of which can be used to add details to the Landscape Terrain surface, used in logic (e.g. as a land cover classification map) and by other objects as well, such as Grass, for example.

You can place layer maps anywhere in the scene by moving, scaling and rotating the node (rotation is available around the Z axis only). By blending different Landscape Layer Maps you can modify the terrain even at run time.

Depending on the size and resolution of your landscape, the size of the data can be quite large. You can use lossless and lossy compression options to reduce the size of the .lmap file.

Creating a Landscape Layer Map#

Create a new Landscape Layer Map via either of the following ways:

By creating a node:
1. In the Create menu, select Landscape -> Landscape Layer Map and place the new Landscape Layer Map node in the scene.
2. By default, the map has the white, flat and read-only landscape_layer_map_base.lmap asset set in the Landscape parameter. Click to create a new landscape layer asset.
By creating an asset:
1. In the Asset Browser click Create -> Create Landscape Layer Map and specify a name for the new lmap asset.
2. Then drag the asset to the Editor viewport and place a new Landscape Layer Map in the scene.

Notice

If the current world contains no Landscape Terrain object, which is required for terrain rendering, a new one will be created automatically and set as the parent node for the new Landscape Layer Map.

Specifying Graphic Data#

Generating from files:
1. Set the Data Filling option to From Tileset.
2. Depending on the desired way to access to the resources, choose the value of the Data Sources parameter:
  - Assets. Use available imported textures, which is a pretty good option for small and moderate terrains.
  - External Files. Provide full paths to the resources (e.g. a network drive). A better option for large terrains with extremely dense graphic data.
3. Specify the resources: albedo and height textures (or texture tilesets) and up to 20 mask textures. In the case of using tilesets, specify only first tiles and appropriate naming patterns.
4. Adjust other import settings. For instance, you can redefine the Resolutionof the Landscape Layer Maptextures.
5. Click Reimportto load the provided resources.
6. Modify the layer using Brush Editor.
Sculpting from scratch:
1. Set the Data Fillingoption to Manual.
2. Choose the Resolutionof the LandscapeLayerMap textures and click Reimportto apply changes.
3. Click Brush Editand open Brush Editorto draw over the layer map surface and thus sculpt the layer from scratch.

NoticeKeep in mind that reimporting will clear all modifications made via the Brush Editor tool earlier!

Watch a quick video guide below on creating and editing a Landscape Terrain and Layer Maps:

Size and Density of Graphic Data#

The spatial size of Landscape Layer Maps is limited only by precision of coordinates. However, the resolution of graphic data used has the direct influence on the size of an *.lmap asset on the hard drive.

The density of a Landscape Layer Map data is calculated as its Spatial Size divided by the Resolution of graphic data and expressed in meters/pixel (mpx). Knowing the target size and density of your Landscape Terrain layer, you can estimate the resolution of input textures required for achieving the desired quality as follows:

Resolution_X = Size_X / Density

Resolution_Y = Size_Y / Density

Notice

The final density of the terrain graphic data is limited by the render parameters.

For example, if you need to create a square terrain 100 × 100 km and with 3 mpx density, you will need to prepare 32768 × 32768 px textures. You can slice huge textures to tilesets with proper naming, to operate on regular size textures (e.g., 8×8 textures each of 4096×4096 pixels).

Regardless of the bit depth of input textures, uncompressed graphic data of any Landscape Layer Map is saved using the following formats:

Two R32F textures are used to store the Height and Height Opacity data (32 bits per pixel for each one).
A single RGBA8 texture keeps the Albedo data including opacity (four 8-bit-per-pixel channels).
Five RGBA8 textures are used to store 20 Masks and the same number of textures is used for Masks Opacity data (four 8-bit-per-pixel channels for each one).

Thus, if all components are used each pixel of graphic data takes more than 50 bytes on the hard drive, without service data taken into account. Putting it all together, this is how the size of an *.lmap asset depends on the resolution of the data used and components enabled approximately:

Resolution, px^*	Approximate size	Height		Albedo	Each 4 Masks
Resolution, px^*	Approximate size	Color	Opacity	Albedo	Color	Opacity
1024×1024	74 Mb	5.7 Mb	5.7 Mb	5.7 Mb	5.7 Mb	5.7 Mb
2048×2048	295 Mb	22.7 Mb	22.7 Mb	22.7 Mb	22.7 Mb	22.7 Mb
4096×4096	1.1 Gb	91 Mb	91 Mb	91 Mb	91 Mb	91 Mb
8192×8192	4.6 Gb	364 Mb	364 Mb	364 Mb	364 Mb	364 Mb
16384×16384	18.3 Gb	1.41 Gb	1.41 Gb	1.41 Gb	1.41 Gb	1.41 Gb
32768×32768	74 Gb	5.7 Gb	5.7 Gb	5.7 Gb	5.7 Gb	5.7 Gb
65536×65536	295 Gb	22.7 Gb	22.7 Gb	22.7 Gb	22.7 Gb	22.7 Gb

^*The highest resolution is taken from the input textures.

When enabling/disabling any component in the Import Settings and reimporting data, the size of the file increases or decreases correspondingly. 20 Masks are grouped into 5 textures each of four channels (Masks 0-3, .., Masks 16-19), therefore, enabling at least one mask in a group of four will be treated as if all four masks in the group were enabled in terms of the asset size.

Although, the format of Landscape Layer Map assets implies asynchronous streaming of data of only necessary tiles, the perfomance might be an issue on workstations utilizing hard drives with poor throughput capacity. In this case, consider splitting a huge Landscape Layer Map into several smaller ones and engaging compression. Make note that using performant SSDs is preferable.

Notice

Refinement of the Landscape Terrain graphic data using details enables you to achieve higher density without affecting the size of Landscape Layer Maps.

Compression#

Compression options serve for reduction of the size of the *.lmap file, which may also speed up asynchronous streaming of tiles. In some cases, compression ratio may exceed 100:1.

Supported compression methods:

Our Method — recommended. UNIGINE compression method optimized for compressing 2D and 3D textures. It provides better results than LZ4 and Zlib without quality reduction.
Zlib — for high compression ratio (can provide up to 2 times higher compression ratio, but takes up to 20 times longer).
LZ4 — temporary option, planned to be removed in the upcoming releases.

Lossless and Lossy compression options are available. When it is needed to apply any changes, the graphic data needs to be decompressed first. Therefore, depending on applicability, these options have different advantages:

Lossless compression ensures absence of quality deterioration and decompresses graphic data to its original state.
Lossy compression provides a higher compression ratio but some information may be lost.

WarningWhen you repeatedly decompress/compress the data using Lossy algorithm, the quality will deteriorate every time the data is compressed.

It is recommended to develop projects against Lossless compression algorithms (or with compression disabled) and apply a Lossy compression option when making the final build.