Create a Photorealistic Mountain Landscape in Unreal Engine 5

Hey everyone, thanks for watching! I wanted this video to add to my previous tutorial. As you noticed, I breezed over topics covered previously and spent time instead discussing new workflows. I hope you learned something and as always, feel free to comment below with any questions, comments, or concerns. Cheers everyone!
Gaea Project File
drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Mountain Landscape Material
blueprintue.com/blueprint/m-9...
Console command I used
r.Raytracing.Geometry.InstancedStaticMeshes.Culling 0
My PC specs
GPU - Nvidia 2060 Super
CPU - i7 9700
RAM - 64GB DDR4
Motherboard - MSI Z370-A Pro
Contents of this video
00:00 - Intro
00:54 - Using OpenGIS
01:55 - Creating Terrain in Gaea
03:35 - Terrain Setup in Unreal
04:54 - Adding Rocks to Mountains
05:26 - Set Dressing
06:50 - The Use of Decals
07:05 - Creating the Trees
08:01 - Importing and Scattering Trees
09:10 - Lighting
10:52 - Rendering
11:23 - Color Grading
11:39 - Outro

[@gabetandy]

Thanks for watching! If you have any questions or things you want to discuss feel free to leave a comment (:

[@maciejklosowski6006]

Very realistic, i picked up a few tricks along the way. Whats your take on using plane with high-res image VS dome HDRI (i.e HDRI backdrop) in projects like this? Thanks.

[@gabetandy]

@@maciejklosowski6006 for this project I did play around with some HDRIs but ended up going with the image. It offered enough resolution and it looked good.

[@gabetandy]

@@YEAHSURETHINGMAN no. Don't want to sell/giveaway assets that aren't mine :)

[@nazmhikmet5500]

First of all hello, your work is very realistic. I graduated from university and I will work with unreal engine soon. What kind of computer do I need to use to do this job as realistically as you do? If possible, could you please explain the features of the computer you are using?

[@gabetandy]

@@nazmhikmet5500 hey thanks! You can find my computer specs in the videos description. However my machine is getting old. If you have the money I would suggest Pudget Systems for a computer.

[@peterallely5417]

Wow, that’s probably the best looking natural environment I’ve seen in UE period. Well done and thanks for sharing.

[@gabetandy]

Hey thanks that means a lot!

[@DeadpanNorwegian]

It's not a playable area. It only looks good from this one shot. This one frame. Very fake.

[@JohnnyPope]

Incredible insight into the creation of an absolutely awesome looking environment. Thanks for taking the time to not only tutor, but also provide access to the project files, something almost nobody else does - at least without a paywall. Many thanks!!!

[@artrevell]

I've been looking for something like this, looks amazing!

[@zacharydembinski7486]

Awesome stuff! Really loved the final look.

[@thatboykav2618]

this is insane, good work man

[@ButtercupVisuals]

Your approach to environments and techniques really helped me build a portfolio that got me a environment artist job. Keep up the good work, Gabe!

[@gabetandy]

Hey thats awesome to hear!

[@daxpandhi]

Fantastic video, Gabe! Love it!

[@jonathan130]

That looks phenomenal. Good job!

[@b.a.g2073]

Excellent. Both the scene and the tutorial. Thank-you

[@nicolasalarcon5538]

I just began my UE journey last week and oh boy I can't thank you enough for your work. This is exactly what I needed to keep going ! Keep up the good work mate and cheers from France !

[@Greenrobotvp]

Amazing work Gabe!!

[@jasonlefor1]

Incredible tutorial, Gabe! Your clear and thoughtful guidance has propelled me to the next level. Eagerly anticipating your upcoming projects in the near future.

[@brandonjacksoon]

Amazing result, thank you for the short tutorial version! I really appreciate it. Always want to learn more)

[@AD34534]

That looks amazing. Great job.

[@KUBE.archvis]

This presentation was beautiful. I love that you described the entire workflow and only highlighted key information. This is also the first time i actually use every software mentioned in a tutorial. Usually i have to download something and am greeted by yet another learning curve 😂

[@apetrukovich]

Wow, thats looks great! Thanks for the tutorial!

[@mopozuJIko]

That's exactly what I needed to learn! I have experience creating large scale landscapes in Blender, but have little experience transfering that knowledge to UE. Thank you for making such valuable content!

[@Covingsworth]

I don't know how I'm just now seeing this. Absolutely stunning work on the project and a video to match it!! Wow

[@PeterLeban]

Brilliant work and presentation. Kudos.

[@metedev]

Great work! Thanks to show us this long process way to great view of mountain.

[@oliverhawk1840]

Amazing work man!

[@LeeJakob]

wow this is amazing!! thank you so much for sharing great tutorial!!

[@HristoVelev]

Awesome, thanks for sharing!

[@3DComparison]

Great work! Keep these tutorials regarding landscapes in UE5 coming ;)

[@WilliamFaucher]

Amazing work as always Gabe! Love seeing more people use pathtracing. I just wish the pathtracer supporter various atmos effects and volumetrics!

[@gabetandy]

Appreciate it William! Just give it time :wink:

[@antoniosuarez7881]

tell to the auto exposure no, Bad Dog!!

[@jorgechoairy2504]

Don't stop posting! you make great content!

[@viktortheslickster5824]

Looks like something out of RDR3, amazing work!

[@g1rlnextd66r]

love these tutorial bro

[@johans7119]

love it. some small movement in the nearest trees wouldn't go amiss

[@scarabrae]

Lovely work.

[@the-secrettutorials]

Is this what Red Dead Redemption 3 will look like?

[@gabetandy]

Oh man that would be sick!

[@djh345]

The only issue to making this happen is actual characters. Enviroment has gotten alot further than photorealism with animations on human chars.

[@the-secrettutorials]

@@djh345 I'd be fine with Metahumans... But it's Rockstar, so I hope they are able to pull it off this time :P Everything else looked great already

[@leonelorellana7859]

I don't think so, we haven't see what rage engine is capable of, for right now unreal engine is the most photorealistic graphic engine in my opinion,

[@IwinMahWay]

Better

[@iceddz]

Welcome back, it's been awhile. The only KZbin channel I subscribed to with only 1 video... Now you've got two!

[@gabetandy]

LOL

[@ewsdsdffdasasdasdasd9714]

I love your voice, I love your content. Very straight to the point. That being said coming from a Video Game Background a couple of tricks can't really be used, unless it's for a narrative gameplay where the player cannot move freely. But who cares, it's gorgeous, thank you so much for this video.

[@bilalahmad9638]

Wow brilliant work

[@brunobordini7696]

Ficou incrível! Parabéns!

[@ZephrusPrime]

You nailed it!

[@henningricke]

Great work!

[@brandonjacksoon]

2nd video on the channel, but still AWESOME! I'm glad that I'm subscribed already :)

[@Highcastle_of_Geek]

The addition of 3D geometry to the landscape is a great point. I’ve used 3D meshes in my environments, but hadn’t thought of little spot treatments to break up the more man made looking landscape areas.

[@ArtAgma]

Hey man. Great video. I saw your artstation page. And I have to say your "who shot the sheriff" and "Hanged man's tree" look amazing. Great work 👍

[@gabetandy]

Thank ya!

[@martok666]

beautiful result thanks for sharing

[@lion_towers3d]

Amazing work! I've been really looking for an excuse to get into Gaea recently - this might be it!

[@gabetandy]

Do it!!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Lovely stuff!

[@gabetandy]

Hey thanks dude! Love your environments

[@joeykush6058]

This is so rad, coming from someone who knows hardly anything about unreal, i was still able to learn so much about how its done. Incredible job man. Also, this is so cool lol 10:13

[@gabetandy]

LOL Joey

[@djwrongen]

Glad u listed you machine spec. Nice T know things are achievable on common specs😊

[@Evangelos_Bl]

Thank you very much for sharing with us!!!

[@DerBeinmann]

Very nice 👍 thx

[@shakilhassan7157]

Awesome video. Please make the full length video with step by step as a playlist

[@ashwinvishwanath6701]

For anyone downloading the Gaea file, in community version at least, make sure in the slope node, before the penultimate combine, to uncheck the "classic style" beneath the falloff slider. This needs to be done so that the masking is correct to import into unreal.

[@namondastudio4616]

Great Job !! Thanks for sharing Bro !!

[@sergej_mutlich3244]

This would be amazing to walk through in VR!

[@leezhieng]

A lot of changes are needed to make it run on VR. I did a VR project recently on Unreal 5.2 and any translucent shader will crash the application when launched on VR. That's just one example of many other things that cannot be run on VR at least for now.

[@suw1837]

when I first saw the movie The Good Dinosaur , I was very impressed by the natural scenes and from then I started learning Blender and 3d stuffs. My dreams was to create similar environment like the movies and damn this is the most similar to that one. Waw!! this is awesome you have created a very beautiful landscape and you are very skilled.

[@FilmmakingLisboa]

Great work Gabe! Looks amazing. Just curious why you didn't bring in the elevation data into Gaea to generate the terrain?

[@gabetandy]

The elevation data is pretty low res and its hard to add details to it in Gaea. Much easier and more detailed to make a terrain from scratch.

[@tomaszmk]

hi Gabe ... SUPERB job ! grats ;)

[@lnbfishing8856]

Thank you Gabe, super tutorial and a beautiful landscape. Could one make a game out of a map like this, with such level of detail?

[@gabetandy]

You could, just need some talent and a beefy machine to run it at real-time!

[@Theoooq]

please do more!!

[@rongzhouguli]

做得真好，感谢你的分享！👍

[@cyba-jstovall2707]

Stunning! How long did this take?

[@gabetandy]

The scene took about 2 months to make

[@Restart-Gaming]

This is great to bad you could not sell this whole map on the unreal store I would buy it keep up the great work.

[@joelwesterveltaia2196]

Very impressive.

[@DarkoMitev]

Awesome Environment ! What were the render times using the path tracer on this scene?

[@gabetandy]

Thanks! I don't remember, sorry

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

Really cool!

[@NicoleSummer8]

Awesome 👍💪👏

[@BarryLester]

he's back

[@gabetandy]

yessir

[@Greenrobotvp]

Great video Gabe! Are the foliage and trees static? Or moving subtlety?

[@pgjohnson5504]

Great tutorial! Do have any tutorials about making the twigs?

[@gabetandy]

I don't, I just learned to make them on my own.

[@kristianrabakov8579]

Can you make a more in-depth tutorial for all the processes in the video please?

[@spitball2005]

im so happy

[@arjungowda6452]

Thank y💕 u.... Plz more video s plz

[@microbounce2009]

How did you make the node connection to place the image in a plane? I've been looking for that for a long time. thank you very much for your video.

[@gabetandy]

Not sure what you mean?

[@microbounce2009]

@@gabetandy How did you place that background image on that plane? I want to achieve the same thing.

[@mopozuJIko]

@@microbounce2009 it's at 9:57 You simply create a material and place the photo as a texture, but don't forget to change some settings in material settings as shown in the video

[@Restart-Gaming]

Would love this map for my survival game I am making

[@research2088]

Gabe, thank you for this video, which is brilliant educational content. I am learning a lot about this currently and want to ask. do you have any additional courses/lessons or material available for learning purposes? Looking forward, to your response. Thank you.

[@gabetandy]

Thank you! You can see my PC specs in the description. This is the only learning material I have made so far.

[@nazmhikmet5500]

First of all hello, your work is very realistic. I graduated from university and I will work with unreal engine soon. What kind of computer do I need to use to do this job as realistically as you do? If possible, could you please explain the features of the computer you are using?

[@jasoncarll8073]

wow, that would make a great hunting game map! ;0 😵😮

[@gabetandy]

REAL!

[@olegb2177]

Great work! Is there are way to add some wind to the trees?

[@TimurKadagidzze]

The video is awesome, thanks for it! But I have a question) How did you make such detailed ground material up close? If you used satellite data nearby?

[@oldschool_bamagatrader9960]

man.. u just passed the creativity way beyond the limit peak .. 100 star out of 5 .. keep it up dude.. one question dude .. i have GPU RX7900xtx and CPU Ryzen9 7900x3D .. can i use them for this type of modification ?

[@gabetandy]

Hey thanks. As long as you can use ray tracing in Unreal you can!

[@cgharsh]

Hi very nice!!! is there any solution Sky light not working while using path tracer with hdri backdrop

[@gabetandy]

Make sure you are using the built in skylight inside the HDRI backdrop.

[@redfawnstudios]

Very nice! Now that we have displacement (again) in Unreal would you skip the Blender plane subd/displace step & just do that directly in Unreal?

[@gabetandy]

Maybe. IMO Blender's poly editing is faster than Unreal. At least for my machine.

[@Restart-Gaming]

Tells me i have to have a API Key when getting the height map?

[@tonnynderitu1504]

🔥🔥🔥

[@FPChris]

Any tutorials on managing large land masses at runtime?

[@gabetandy]

This is a good one kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zpq0e56JpbSihbM Also check out the videos that Embark Studios has uploaded.

[@sarthaksharma2206]

Hi gabe, amazing work. I have a question tho, 4:09 here we made a auto landscape material, but we are having a imported real world GIS image from blender. Is it possible to have auto material in static mesh? I have a real world arhviz project coming up where I need real world heights but with a auto material on it. Thanks

[@T1mothyTee]

Any reason you import the terrain as a static mesh as opposed to using the landscape of UE5? / Do you use the virtual textures to blend the quixxel assets? great video:)

[@gabetandy]

I find working with static meshes easier than setting up landscapes (:

[@sabhikhan10]

❤❤❤

[@rileywalz7326]

It seems you use speed tree quite a bit, does speed tree come with textures when you buy it, or do you need to buy assets from speed tree to get more textures to play with? Same goes with Gaea is it simply modeling or is there a database of textures that come with it. Been debating getting these two programs, they look amazing but wondering if i need to build a texture library first.

[@gabetandy]

I don't use SpeedTree all that much but when I did use it I used Quixel Megascans for the textures. There are preset trees that come with SpeedTree if I'm remembering correctly. Don't quote me on that though lol. With Gaea, there are procedural textures built into the program.

[@mopozuJIko]

also if doing project inside Unreal, I think there is nothing in the megascans license that stops you from downloading their leaves atlases, creating trees in speedtree and using them for personal projects inside Unreal. For commercial use I'd say it's better to research their licensing more thoroughly. Also there are lot's of place where it's possible to download leaves and bark textures for free, or use photos of them and use programs that can generate rougness and normal maps from photos. Speaking about Gaea, you still have to create the landscape yourself using procedural tools inside the program. Color information can be generated in Gaea as well, but is rarely used for final shots and mostly as a reference point for setting up your final shader with tilable materials later.

[@virajtemghare3267]

at 3:50 you said the foreground is satellite data and background is gaea mountains. I understood that the background is the static mesh exported from the gaea. The satellite data is the landscape from the unreal or it is a static mesh? If it is a static mesh then have you textured the foreground? Because texturing a static mesh in the foreground is difficult. Can u elaborate on the 'foreground satellite data' please?

[@gabetandy]

Yes the foreground is a massive static mesh. Instead of using textures to add detail I used 3D meshes from Quixel placed on the ground to add detail. Cheers

[@virajtemghare3267]

Ok now I got it! Thanks for all! @@gabetandy

[@briangonzalez907]

Amazing video but can you tell me what addon was that on blender for trees

[@gabetandy]

Its called The Grove 3D

[@jumpieva]

there is a big part I seem to be missing, did all the landscape textures import from blender? how did it grab those from height map data?

[@nickstuff2957]

please also create gaea tutorials

[@sethvanhee1130]

Lake Chelan!

[@ThePonyxslaystation]

I tried following along but the topographic data I got was super blocky and low quality. Can I only pick places with high levels of detail?

[@gabetandy]

You can subdivided the mesh before applying the modifier to get more resolution.

[@questionasker9226]

Do you think you can benefit from the new PCG features? Or is there a reason you have not used them here already?

[@gabetandy]

Oh for sure! PCG is great, I'll be using it in my next environment.

[@WolverineMKD]

Sure you can procedurally scatter the rocks on the hills but theres no better feeling of manually rotating boulders and rocks to catch light.

[@gabetandy]

lol

[@hest4785]

Nice job, although I have a question. Is your gaea terrain 1k or higher? I want to create a terrain for blender but its just seems that mine is too low.

[@gabetandy]

Hey thanks. My exported height map is 8K. The higher res the better

[@hest4785]

K thanks.

[@bdubz_det]

How long did this take you to make? incredible work. Hope to get this good one day..

[@gabetandy]

Quite a while! Thanks Stick with it! You WILL get better

[@aaron447]

Hello, are those microdetails on the ground (small pebbles which make up the majority of the surface) quixel assets or did you use a tessellation / POM method? I struggle to make realistic landscapes because I always end up finding them too flat and unnatural. Bottom half of 6:40 for reference. Thanks

[@gabetandy]

I used a Quixel ground assembly - asset ID wgvecfos

[@3darchstuffs]

Can u explain how you denoised the video in davinci?

[@gabetandy]

I didn't do any denoising.

[@3darchstuffs]

@@gabetandy ur anti aliasing was 20x25 as shown in video, did that give u this clarity in image without noise?

[@gabetandy]

@@3darchstuffs there was still a little noise afterwards but I like using noise in these types of scenes to add extra "details" to the distant mountains. Noise helps to fake details.

[@uzizizu]

how long was the render?

[@gabetandy]

I don't remember, sorry!