Landscape grass and trees process

[Amerio.Stephane]

Hello,

I'm trying to wrap my head around an actually efficient process to generate a large set of *various* trees and grass, in a very large terrain. Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to the doc, the process looks like:

1. add a single tree of a single type in the scene
2. create an impostor from it
3. create an ObjectClutter from the tree *mesh*
4. reassigns materials and readjust LOD distance for the clutter (so I'm actually redoing the work that was made when creating the tree *node*)
5. create an ObjectGrass matching the ObjectClutter, manually inherit material, assign impostor texture, tweak LOD and other settings
6. create a NodeReference for the ObjectClutter
7. create a NodeReference for the ObjectGrass
8. Now in Landscape editor, for a specific landcover tag, add the NodeReference for the ObjectClutter and then for the ObjectGrass
9. Generate landscape
10. Test, adjust ObjectClutter and ObjectGrass, apply updates, and repeat step 9
11. Repeat steps 1-10 for a new kind of tree

While none of these steps is too complex, it's still very tedious if you want some diversity in your terrain. I feel the grass/impostors steps should really be a "behind the scene" operation.

I tried using WorldClutter. Its usage seems more straightforward, and supports a variety of trees node by default, but I couldn't find a way to use it with grass impostors.

For the records, I need a visibility distance of 5km at the very minimum with impostors. Real meshes only need to be visible below 100m.

[binstream]

You are right, some of the steps can be automated on our end in theory.

We have plans on making the vegetation system more high-level and easier to use, but it is not the highest priority at the moment, sorry.