Landscape Puddles - Building Worlds In Unreal - Episode 29

Landscape Puddles - Building Worlds In Unreal - Episode 29
In this tutorial, I show how to add dynamic, procedurally generated puddles to your landscape material in Unreal Engine. The puddles have parameters to control the puddle color, opacity, and water accumulation. And I show how to remove puddles from under the river water and remove grass where the puddles form.
Here's the noise texture we use in the tutorial:
(To download these assets, please right-click on the link and choose "save link as...", then select a location for the file. If Chrome tells you it can't download the file securely, click the up arrow icon and select "Keep")
www.bencloward....
Here's the previous episode on water bouyancy and ripples:
• Water Systems Deeper D...
And here's the playlist for the whole series:
• Building Worlds in Unr...
Here's the playlist for how to create the landscape material:
• Unreal Engine Landscap...
Learn more!
• Landscape Material Tut...
Shader Book Recommendations
www.bencloward...
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Theme Music
Peace in the Circuitry - Glitch Hop
teknoaxe.com/Li...
Background Music
Sappheiros & Almaa - Dreams
• Sappheiros & Almaa - D...
#UnrealEngine #landscape #puddle

[@AndrewByrnes1]

Lord of the shaders: return of the king.

[@MR3DDev]

These are some fantastic puddles.

[@Dieselbird]

Great Video Ben! I've never been good with materials since I started with unreal but this really helped out!

[@carlossuarez9272]

Incredible Video as usual. I use a different approach to make handly paint puddles in the landscape based in Lukas tutorial too but this procedure way is more advanced. As always thx for share your knowledge with the UE community.

[@darianagreen9082]

That’s a great tutorial as usual, Ben! Thank you for sharing your knowledge! Since you are going to show how to make rain drips on the landscape and surfaces the next tutorials, could you please also show how to make skin on the face wet as well? And also show raindrops on the skin? Because I need for close up cinematic shots a realistic character, if it rains hard, his face should be covered with raindrops. And also make hair and clothes look wet. I also was wondering if you can include as a bonus to your next tutorial about rain how to make tears rolling down the cheeks. I suppose it will be very similar procedure to showing raindrops on the skin, but meanwhile the raindrops can be random, the tears should have their path from the corners of the eyes down the cheeks. I can’t find anything on that topic and considering that Metahumans are out now, many people are playing with cinematic cutscenes. And there is not yet a single tutorial about realistic tears material in Unreal. Please help!

[@turalmemmedov3648]

OMG, today is thursday :D

[@pedrolopezbalseiro6949]

Hi Ben! I've been checking your tutorials for a while and they're super helpful. I actually did something very similar to this a while back but run into a problem, do you know if it's possible to change the physical material of the landscape using the puddles mask so it is set to water where the puddles appear? I've been trying to make a weather system but I'm having trouble with this issue where the character walks over puddles but still trigger the dust steps fx and sfx instead of water.

[@BenCloward]

This is a really good question, Pedro - one that I don't have a good solution to. I think what I would so is make the footstep effects (sounds and particles) depend on a global value that's controlled by the weather. So when it's wet and raining, I'd use wet and raining footstep effects everywhere, not just in the specific puddles, and then once things dry up, I would use the dry, dusty footstep effects. Otherwise, you're trying to solve the really hard problem of getting pixel shader values out of the GPU - which I'm not even sure you can do. I know that my suggestion is not ideal, and that you'd rather be able to make nice splash effects exactly where the puddles are, but I'm not sure how to do it.

[@pedrolopezbalseiro6949]

@@BenCloward yeah that's what I ended up doing. Wish there was a better solution but it doensn't seem possible. Thanks for taking the time to answer my question :)

[@g-lurk]

"im gonna subtract the green and then subtract the red" this is like some synesthesia shit... are there any videos that really break down what that means, visually? its such a foreign concept to be mathing letters and color channels like that. i feel i need an epiphany to get through a barrier that helps me better understand this at a higher level. but other than my own shortcomings, this video is great so far

[@anbecharts]

When grouping to "Weather", you don't have to type it everytime, once one parameter has been assigned to a group, you can click the small arrow pointing down, and select the group name for the other parameters. Less typing :)

[@BenCloward]

That's a great tip - thanks!

[@anbecharts]

@@BenCloward you're welcome! Keep up the good work. Whenever people ask for shader tutorials, I always send them to your channel. 😊👍

[@marcinesa1336]

hello maybe you know why it works badly for me volume RVT ? i click set boundy and he places me wrong volume and that's why it doesn't work for me virtual textures but how do i do it manually it works

[@ethanwasme4307]

Hey, are there anyways to normalise a greyscale texture if it isn't hitting those 0 and 1 values? There's a node "Remap Value Range" but it needs to know the initial range before it can remap them :(

[@maybebix]

Hello Ben, thanks for your tutorials, it's very helpful! Do you have any idea, how to make a mask from static objects for puddles? Like canopies, building, etc. It can also be reused for a procedural snow system.

[@paradoxgbr6496]

Thank you good lesson

[@CaCaCaKK]

I miss you ben

[@Blastphemer]

Can you explain why puddles or black roughness spots reflect great when the directional light faces our camera direction but puddles look horrible almost like frozen white puddles when the directional light moves ? I know the reflection needs to hit our camera perspective in order to shine the other way around it just looks like frozen blurry puddles.

[@mrtobycook]

Very helpful tutorial, thanks as always Ben! I would love love if you could compare and contrast all the different methods that people are using to make landscape materials. It’s so hard to get clarity! Yours, MR3D, Brushify, MAWI, Andrei Ghenoiu’s, World of level design’s... what are the core differences, that only an expert like you can understand and explain to us?

[@BenCloward]

I haven't seen what all of them are doing yet, but I'd say it would be beneficial to learn the techniques that each of them are using. But instead of just copying them, seek to understand the methods they're using. Each technique they use becomes a tool in your toolbox for achieving what you want. Then when you want to build your own landscape material, you have a collection of techniques from everyone that you can mix and match to achieve what you're looking for. There isn't just one right way of doing things, and the more you know, the better you're able to adapt and combine ideas together to make something that's all your own. Thanks for the suggestion to compare them. I'll take a look when I get a moment and see what everyone else is doing.

[@mrtobycook]

@@BenCloward Great advice! I’m doing just that, and I understand them as I go. I wish Unreal just INCLUDED a built-in landscape material that supported Quixel surfaces... WITH displacement, and height blending. I don’t understand why Unreal is phasing out displacement, when it’s the only apparent way to get Quixel surfaces to have three dimensions inside Unreal. And the fact that they disable displacement with the MegaScans plugin by default is also super confusing. Do you understand their thinking there?

[@eggZ663]

@@mrtobycook Virtual Heightfield Mesh in unreal 5 for terrain, as for any other meshes it's going to be nanite

[@pubudu781]

Hi Ben, Great tutorial, one question though, is there a way to separate the puddles from blending with the objects when using RVT?

[@BenCloward]

Hah! That's a great question. I hadn't thought of that. I guess in that case, it would be better to add the puddles after the RVT.

[@pubudu781]

@@BenCloward Yeah, I'll try that, thanks Ben.

[@davinderrehal13]

I have a question do single layer water do not work with planar reflections In my case it's not

[@nocnestudio7845]

When you was showing first puddles they are animated. How can I do that??? Panner node doesn't working on landscape material ( UE5 )

[@BenCloward]

This video shows how to make the ripples: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3O6q36PmJuIh5I and this video shows how to use those to make puddles: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXSyoIGgdqygd80

[@nickgennady]

Hi, How would I use the puddle on a Layer Material? I need to do that so my footsteps know it is hitting a puddle.

[@nocnestudio7845]

Animated puddles don't work on landscape Virtual Texture...

[@BenCloward]

That is correct. Any animated elements have to be place after the virtual texture is sampled in the graph.

[@hyunsookang8782]

I'm 300th Like!

[@Tank.3d]

your my SenSEI...!!!

[@Someone-pg3rn]

UE5 Tutorial?

[@ipaneco777]

can u show us how to make these paint-able? plz