Blending Objects into Landscapes in UE5: A Guide to Runtime Virtual Texture

Learn the advanced techniques of utilizing virtual textures to enhance the realism of your landscapes. This guide walks you through enabling virtual textures support, creating real-time virtual textures for capturing landscape material and height maps, and blending object materials seamlessly with your environment in Unreal Engine 5 projects.
0:00 Introduction to Virtual Texturing in Unreal Engine 5
0:16 Enabling Virtual Textures
0:23 Creating Real-Time Virtual Textures
0:58 Setting Up Runtime Virtual Volumes
1:39 Extracting Material Attributes with Quixel Megascans
2:30 Blending Materials with Landscape
2:51 Adjusting Material Blending Parameters
4:30 Solving Texture Stretching on Vertical Surfaces
5:15 Enhancing Material Setup with Functions
6:00 Controlling Material Blending Options
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[@Arthurboy777]

This feature has so many steps I have to watch a tutorial every time… This really should be a one click action in the asset’s properties

[@MoSolei]

I agree; however, I made it once and kept it in a file every time I just migrated to my new project.

[@xirtus]

great stuff! have you put the blueprint up anywhere or just the tutorial?@@MoSolei

[@skypilotace]

This is turning into rocket science. Us artists are having to become lighting experts, rendering engine experts, material composition experts, coding experts, photography experts, and color grading experts. This is the toughest learning curve I have ever experienced in software. Is any kid that is running around inside Fortnite even paying attention to whether materials are this expertly blended together?

[@execontini]

like everthing else in the soft industry, u have to know everything dam frameworks ! 😆

[@user-mp8sx1gy2m]

These detailing are not for games these are for movies and vfx

[@ApexArtistX]

Go blender instead

[@skypilotace]

@@ApexArtistX "Come on, snap out of it. Just give it a little more thought, and it's evident that Blender won't remain free forever. Remember how SketchUp, Unreal Engine, and many other industry giants started off as free offerings, only to switch to subscription models once they became essential tools? It's a pattern: they lure users in with free access, only to reel them in for payment later. The truth is, Blender is still playing catch-up with 3ds Max."

[@skypilotace]

@@ApexArtistX Come on, snap out of it. Just give it a little more thought, and it's evident that Blender won't remain free forever. Remember how SketchUp, Unreal Engine, and many other industry giants started off as free offerings, only to switch to subscription models once they became essential tools? It's a pattern: they lure users in with free access, only to reel them in for payment later. The truth is, Blender is still playing catch-up with 3ds Max. Unreal Engine, on the other hand, is kicking everyone's ass.

[@heckensteiner4713]

Great tutorial! I just use the clone stamp tool in Photoshop on every frame as someone is playing the game. It works, but it can be a pain if someone is playing my game on the other side of the globe and I have to book 15 hour flight to get to their house. But this seems much more efficient!

[@MoSolei]

This must be easier.🙂

[@activemotionpictures]

Amazing videos. No fillers. All cooked. Great content! Thank you for sharing.

[@MoSolei]

Thank you so much; I will put more tutorials with a similar format every week.

[@TheFlyingEpergne]

you saved my project with this tutorial thank you so much you little genius gem

[@shawnbecker1026]

Thanks this is a great tutorial and very clear. The only issue i have is when i use this on my 16sqkm landscape the textures are blurry. But from what i have read and testing it seems to be an issue with RVT at the moment. It works perfectly on a 2sqkm landscape for example

[@pontosinterligados]

This is amazing resource! Thanks. I’m still struggling make an actor dependent on a decal not to be contamines by other decals in the world lol

[@kaizu4914]

Very nice, useful tutorial!!!

[@MoSolei]

I am glad that you found it helpful. 🙏

[@Mars0685]

This is using UE properly! Wow great tip

[@MoSolei]

I am glad that you found it useful. 🙏

[@uimoos]

how does one even figure this stuff out, great tutorial for advanced results

[@OnigoroshiZero]

This was great.

[@MoSolei]

Thank you

[@allanajem]

موفق اخي محمد🎉

[@jamescleave7024]

3:13 187 -> 440 instructions after plugging both rvt samplers, and it will use tons of ram or don't have enough res for a landscape of a descent size. Good for cinematics maybe. but not games.

[@RedD12gaming]

Thank you.

[@MoSolei]

thank you

[@pengyuzhang1179]

you have a really soothing voice , but thoese steps take to set up whole thing , waht would I say , holycow.

[@ChinyONE]

If the end result seems blurry, go to your material that is used in your landscape and find the textures used for this material. Open the albedo Texture and disable virtual Texture streaming, Save and then enable it again and save. This fixed it for me.

[@MinhNguyen-vl7jj]

best tutorial!!!

[@MoSolei]

Thank you.

[@UnrealArtist]

Wow! this is a Unity engine level setup (Do that from there, enable that from there, drop that from there and then maybe it will work xD ) Cryengine made this years ago and easy peasy, I was expecting a more simpler way as unreal has a track record of doing complicated things simpler at thje user end, Anyway, Great tutorial brother, You actually made this tutorial much simpler, easy to follow, thanks, subbed.

[@MoSolei]

thank you

[@xamomax]

Great video. It is a little hard to follow with how quickly you launch and close menus, though.

[@MoSolei]

Thank you, I will keep it in mind for the next one.

[@dtso2]

Great video

[@MoSolei]

Thank you.

[@sophiebramley7594]

HI ! had to watch this alot but finally got it and its amazing. I can add ti to my MS materials, but became stuck when adding it to a different material. The MF didn't mathc with the normal brown material result output .. help please :(. Unless i literallty make only instances that run on the MS master...

[@sophiebramley7594]

it makes it problematic for when people have made things from c4d.

[@nayovw]

How do you just save it and copy to another project. Do you just save the RVT materials and apply the same process ,can you help ?

[@chinarvartak4738]

Thanks for more detailed explanation on RVT blending... I had used a similar setup in my project... But using this also increases shader complexity which has an effect on performance... Are there any tips on reducing the shader instructions and complexity? That's the area I struggle with most...

[@Fhek297]

I have a question.. if the property is decided by world height, does the ground have to be the same height and not have hills and stuff?

[@alexiced3714]

Wow. This technique makes difference :) Is it cheap to be used in videogames? Or it is suited only for cinematics?

[@danygilbert6733]

No, lots of game are using this technique and it's been around for a long time now.

[@MoSolei]

Mostly cinematics, but some games as well

[@PhilippBauss]

Great tutorial. Can you share the Material Function please?

[@MoSolei]

I will put in description

[@lexibyday9504]

does this have to be an object on top of the terrain or can it also be an object stuck into the side of the terrain?

[@aidingkornejady6951]

Thanks for the tutorial. I followed every step, yet my tree didn't blend with the landscape's height as it shows in 3:56, they're completely separated. Does anyone know why?

[@kacpercieluch7270]

when you transform vector, do transformation from world space to tangent space. By default it's in reverse

[@reck101101]

A good thing to note is that the runtime virtual texture volume somehow will not do the capture if your mesh on the ground is using Nanite. Havent found a solution yet.

[@sadha3073]

Absolute world position not showing the z amount 🥺 please response quick

[@SWE0Ekkim]

Just adding this makes my material 4 times slower, going from healthy green to sharp red in the costs... 😅

[@MoSolei]

Optimization depends on the platform on which you want to run the UE5 file; using this might not be a good option in some cases.

[@IstyManame]

What if there's not enough resolution cuz i have pretty big landscape?

[@locinolacolino1302]

You can probably use a separate low resolution tiled texture to fill the space, it'd be hard to notice because it's at a seam anyways.

[@IstyManame]

@@locinolacolino1302 wdym?

[@mercartax]

Move the two bounding boxes with your player. This blending is most useful in close proximity to the camera.

[@IstyManame]

@@mercartax what bounding boxes

[@locinolacolino1302]

@@IstyManame Copy this guy's setup, but instead of blending your ground texture with the object, blend a separate low resolution texture (you know how small textures will repeat themselves, this should fill in the space and make it appear higher resolution than it is).

[@Sinepi93]

As a beginner i have to say that the Video was already fast at the middle. But at the End, with creating the Function, it became almost insane... Could be improved

[@MoSolei]

I will keep in mind.

[@s1ler]

This is an actually good tutorial 👍 so many of them are utterly useless garbage that won't help anyone produce anything of quality.

[@MoSolei]

Thank you so much, I will make more.

[@citywok9693]

I dont know what i did wrong.. the Side remover takes effect at a value of 100 and doesnt even remove the stretch. I rewatched the video like 5 times and watched another to see what other did to fix that but they got the same... Please help me (PS: im testing this at my open world landscape that got many ups and downs)

[@user-zm2sb3do3s]

If I don't use virtual texture, how could I blend object?

[@proplayer-qd5pz]

Would it work with pcg?

[@MoSolei]

I believe it does. I haven't test it.

[@doopyx]

this is sooo complicated..wow..I mean thing like that should be easy..

[@MoSolei]

Just do it once and save it somewhere; after that, just copy and paste.

[@Glowbox3D]

I don't have a problem rewinding a tutorial a few times...a few times. Some steps here are glossed over too quickly. Bit frustrating. I could just be having a bad day. Thanks.

[@MMMM-sv1lk]

I got lost a couple times too, even though it is one of the better explanations some steps fly by...

[@MoSolei]

Thank you for your feedback, I will try to be more clear in the next one

[@MoSolei]

@@MMMM-sv1lk I will do better in the next one.

[@dylanmaffeis]

For me the blend is very blurry, It's weird, I've already tried setting the RTV to max resolution.

[@shawnbecker1026]

I was just about to comment the same. What size of landscape do you have?

[@dylanmaffeis]

@@shawnbecker1026 890x890 if you find a solution please let me know

[@dylanmaffeis]

@@shawnbecker1026 890x890 if you find a solution please let me know

[@dylanmaffeis]

@@shawnbecker1026 890x890, are you using 5.3?

[@MMMM-sv1lk]

Somebody commented it works on a 2km map and gets blurry on a 16 km landscape object.

[@The96Nick]

Is there any workaround for nanite landscape with displacement? Because it doesn't work with it :(

[@MoSolei]

I haven't tried it yes

[@user-jk9cb9ik5r]

When i come to "draw in virtual textures" the thumbnails won't show up...

[@MoSolei]

You made a mistake on one of the steps.

[@user-pf2iv2ie9n]

@@MoSolei The thumbnails on mine aren't showing up either and I'm doing it perfectly like the video. I've watched the video several times and I can't get the result... and yes, the virtual textures are activated. Can you help me?

[@MoSolei]

@@user-pf2iv2ie9n@user-pf2iv2ie9n Sometimes you have to play with the numbers; I will write an explanation in the pin to the comments.

[@crit_cannon1090]

Never tell me you don’t know what tech artist do lol

[@jonRock]

LMAO. This is so hilariously complicated for something that should be very simple. UE5 engine devs should consider making this much more simple.

[@RaphpowerSGSUModding]

so it works only on an axis, when you start having tube like environments it obviously break, gotta revert on old methods I guess

[@pigeon7316]

It’s not even worth it for all the steps you must do lol😊

[@prettyone68]

yea , we do not care about performance and optimization . We are just doing this. U5