In what version of Unreal Engine are you using USurfaceMesh?

@@3DevSoftware Hi- 5.4

I just tried it in UE5.3 and it works fine. Check that you have the four collision channels setup under: Project Settings > Engine > Collision > Trace Channels (Not Object Channels). The four that need to be there are: USMProject, USMRemove, USMOcclude, USMLandscape. These are case sensitive and must be written exactly as shown. The first three (USMProject/USMRemove and USMOcclude) need to be set to BLOCK. The USMLandscape needs setting to IGNORE. To make sure all is loaded correctly, you could then restart the Unreal Editor. USurfaceMesh should then pickup on these new collision channels and stop showing the collision message. Just to note, this is not an error message, it is an informative message telling you that there is something you need to do to make sure USurfaceMesh can work correctly. The setting up of collision channels is not something that USurfaceMesh can do itself. I will work on creating an updated tutorial for UE5.3.

Thanks for that. I've done exactly that and I'm still getting the message and the plug in still does not work as expected. @@3DevSoftware

I'm wondering if it might be some default.ini setting within the Electric Dreams project that might effect it?

@@cammiewolfI’ve tried USurfaceMesh in the ElectricDreams demo and all is working fine. Try removing the plugin entirely and reinstalling it. Also remove all if the collision trace channels that are part of USM and then re add them after reinstalling. If I can’t recreate the problem then its very difficult to do something about it.

@@3DevSoftware perfect, okay, I will give that a shot and see where it takes me. Much appreciated!

Thank you for your support :)

Thanks for that. Your comment made me laugh because some content is shown way to fast to understand for me.

Hi. Thank you for your kind words. They really mean a lot to me as I am a solo indie game dev that just happens to make plugins along the way. I created USurfaceMesh initially for myself as I needed a way to build mud mounds and rock meshes quickly in Unreal Engine. Since release I have steadily added features that I needed or were requested and would perhaps benefit the larger Unreal dev community. Over the years I have gotten pretty tired of the back and forth process of Unreal -> Export -> DCC App (Process a lot) -> Import -> Unreal and cycle until it's right. This is not an Unreal or DCC app problem, it's a game dev problem that is part of the old dev cycle. USurfaceMesh is capable of many things inside the Unreal Editor that previously were somewhat impossible to achieve (that I know of). For example: Capturing parts of the landscape, Painting the landscape using surface data, painting vertex colors using surface data, transferring vertex colors from one mesh to another using proximity to vertices rather than UVs, world aligned texture displacement on a mesh... to name just a few. I find new uses for the plugin all the time and a lot of new features could be added yet. Thanks again for your support. 3Dev :)

@@3DevSoftware Holy cow you created this tool as a solo dev!? This looks like something an entire team at epic spent a lot of time polishing. I hope you get way more attention for this and continue building tools for Unreal. I’m somewhat new to the industry but this is extremely impressive and inspiring.

Thank you for your kind words. Regarding the price. This plugin took me over a year to develop in C++. It was not easy to create. That being said, I needed the tool for my development and the toolset USurfaceMesh has is unmatched as of yet, especially considering it operates fully inside the Unreal Editor.

Hi. The mesh grid tile is 0 to 1 uv mapped so a perfect square will place on a 0 to 1 texture in a material and look correct. If you resize the mesh to something like a rectangle then the same uvs exist so the texture gets stretched. When using the spline, this too will stretch. If you increase the tiling of a height detail or noise texture then it tiles in both directions, u and v. I will be making an update soon that will allow the u and v to be tiled independently. The spline in the video uses world aligned mode which from the center of the world 0,0,0 it tiles the textures based on their world size which you can specify. This world aligned tiling texture that affects the mesh matches the world aligned texture nodes (built into unreal) that you can place inside of a material so the mesh and the textures should match each other (for the most part). The height texture slot does not use world aligned. If you do use world aligned mode for the height detail/noise textures then also enable the Max Height Base option so that the mesh pushes up to the Max Height rather than sitting at the Min Height.

@@3DevSoftware Thank you. I'll look into it slowly with what you told me

what is your pc spec?

Unreal Engine can handle tens of millions of polygons on screen at one time. It is a very efficient engine. The mesh shown in the video is only a few thousand polygons (from what I remember) when really close so shouldn't cause any problems at all. When combined with multiple auto generated LODS inside Unreal, it makes the mesh only a couple of hundred polygons at a certain distance. In Unreal Engine 5 you also have the option of using Nanite. This is auto enabled upon stamping the mesh and making it into a static mesh asset/actor. Using Nanite means the polygon count is managed by Unreal and there is not a problem with poly counts. The other consideration is collision. At the moment the mesh uses LOD 0 as the "Complex as Simple Mesh". This could be optimized to use the lowest LOD as the collision mesh or generate a much simpler mesh using convex hulls which can be generated in the static mesh editor.

Nanite

In short, Yes. Once the mesh is "Stamped", which means it has been converted to a regular static mesh asset then that asset can then be used as an instanced static mesh. By prefab, I assume you mean multiple static mesh actors combined into one actor? Yes, the meshes are just regular static meshes once stamped so they can be used exactly as any other static mesh would be used. Thank you for your support. It is much appreciated.

In short, no unfortunately. USurfaceMesh is an editor only plugin, so you can make different meshes while in the Unreal Engine editor but not during runtime gameplay. I may, in future decide to make a runtime version if that is popular with users? Thank you for your interest.

Yes. Once the procedural mesh that USurfaceMesh creates is stamped into the level as a static mesh then you can enable Nanite on that mesh. With the addition of the spline it makes creating procedural mud piles, surface rock that stretches along a path and generally laying mesh for any reason, a great help when building all types of surfaces. It also makes 'capturing' the surface easier because you can wind the mesh around hard to reach areas.

Thank you. I hope it's a great help to you all. I use the plugin myself all the time.

Hello. I am the developer of this plugin. The plugin can be found on the Epic Marketplace at www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/usurfacemesh

The plugin is available on the Epic Marketplace at www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/usurfacemesh

Hi, I have just tried to apply the mesh to the landscape in UE4.26 and it is working fine for me. Some things to check are: In the USurfaceMeshGrid actor that you place into your level, make sure under Settings->Landscape that the Landscape is set to your landscape actor in the level. If the USurfaceMeshGrid actor is in the Persistent Level then you can target the main Landscape actor directly. If it is in a streaming level then you can set it as one of the streaming landscape proxies which will then only affect that streaming landscape proxy and not the main landscape actor but also remember to delete the USurfaceMeshGrid actor before saving your level otherwise it will fail to save while the USurfaceMeshGrid actor is in that streaming level in the editor or you can move it to the persistent level (can be slow). Other things to check are that the distance you are applying it to the landscape is great enough, the default of 1000000 cm should be fine. Make sure it says "both" for the direction (to test it). The landscapes collision channels for "USMLandscape" can be set to ignore, which is the default setting. Let me know if any of that helps. Thanks.

I haven't tested it yet as UE5 is unreleased but I plan to upgrade USurfaceMesh to work with UE5 when it is officially released. Thank you for your interest.

USurfaceMesh 1.3 now supports Unreal Engine 5.

@@3DevSoftware yaay, thanks