UE4 Breakdown - How I create grass for my indie game Lucen

[@BhushanKad]

Kris be like "Kept you waiting, huh?" Amazing job this is very helpful even though I am using unity. I love these devolgs, keep them coming.

[@TheRealMasterMassey]

same here i use unity also but this makes me want to use unreal lol!

[@tylercode2905]

Holy crap! So many of my favorite devlogs have updated today.

[@KrisLucenDev]

:) I'm glad to be in your favourites

[@tylercode2905]

@@KrisLucenDev I'm telling you, typically I watch devlogs for inspiration on my projects but only some convert me from being just interested in the process to being excited for the game too. (Time's a limited resource, otherwise I'd be interested in them all)

[@BogusLarry]

@@tylercode2905 What other devlogs/tech channels do you watch? I love watching devlogs but only know of a few. (Randall and Sebastion Lague are my favorites)

[@ReeceGeofroy]

Very entertaining and informative. Great work Kris! The grass looks beautiful by the way 😅

[@bethel6594]

reece i swear to god

[@ReeceGeofroy]

@@bethel6594 you are following me man 😂

[@LudensFramed]

Fresh looking grass dude !!! Love this stylized looking , looks so nice!!

[@eobet]

Thank you! So few people using forward rendering with static lighting off in Unreal. This was very refreshing to see!

[@mrtegs]

I can't believe the windows background is your inspiration for this, that's so funny

[@theintern3481]

Pigeon is happy to see a devlog...Pigeon says keep up the work..Pigeon is looking forward to future projects..-PigeonDev

[@douglath3803]

THANK A LOT!!! Finally, find someways in UE4 to achieve a similar grass effect to the genshin impact especially the fake cloud shadow, I love it pretty much

[@skyacaniadev2229]

Good work! Excited to see the final game!

[@cupcake-gameclip5129]

It looks good, I feel like I can eat those grass

[@JakeOpp_]

This is great! Loads of info. Thanks for putting this up!

[@App-Tips]

Woah! Looks really beautiful!

[@GameDevGarage]

Looks really nice! Congrats..

[@piterpunx]

this is awesome dude, thanks for sharing

[@mayvedal2316]

Thank you so much for this! Love it!

[@LaszloIvanyi]

This seems very good, the problem is I only understand like 50% of it at the moment. Saved it for later, when I'm clever. :D

[@h20xyg3n]

This looks sick, i'ma watch later :)

[@blackpanda1302]

Thanks for the breakdown

[@joshbishop]

Hey man! New here, but I already love your videos!

[@KrisLucenDev]

Welcome, and thanks for watching! Glad you're enjoying them

[@nkungtran7121]

OMG. I really really love your gras style and how you work? I hope I can see more detail cause I just a beginner and some soft like I really don't know to do this ? THank you so much.!!

[@tom.looman]

What's your experience been with forward renderer in unreal? Especially in a stylized game like yours, I'm curious if you ran into any limitations (and if you use it a all, but since you mentioned MSAA I figured you might be)

[@KrisLucenDev]

Hi Tom! So far I haven't run into any limitations - previously I was using LPV (which doesn't work with forward) with deferred but the actual difference in the look was so negligible that it didn't matter. I have to be wary of too many shadow casting movable lights, but that's about it and easy to work around! It was Chris Murphy from Epic who suggested I try forward, and so far it has proven to be much better for this project!

[@tom.looman]

@@KrisLucenDev Nice! Shadow casting movable lights are still very expensive for deferred anyway Hehe I hope we could get some Forward+ someday

[@KrisLucenDev]

Yes! Would love to have the best of both worlds

[@thumbsup08]

Me: Turns static lighting off and starts the 20-minute restart where it compiles thousands of shaders Him: and then here's all these other great things you should also do Me: -____-

[@abysmalodin]

Edit: The mesh will appear invisible until you set some wind values for some reason >.> Got it about 95% working. Only thing that's weird is how small the clouds are with similar numbers. Wondering if there was other settings changed besides what was shown. Anyways super informative video, got your gum-road piece (just to double check my work) Hopefully I can find a way to alter the color tips more strongly.

[@RossTownsend]

Would you be able to do a video on how you blend the grass with the terrain where grass hasn't spawned? I find there is always a noticeable circle around the player, too much grass (bad performance) or the grass blends too much and I lose out on shadows etc. Looks great btw!

[@abhijitleihaorambam3763]

Woww this is great

[@MadpolygonDEV]

love you

[@Lurcii]

hi, Lucen looks amazing and the trailer looks so cool, I can't wait to play it. I just came to say that I believe the UI and HUD in the game should be clean and minimal as I think that would be great with the aesthetic you have. For example, the bow aim should just be a single dot rather than a dot and circle around it. Also, you should remove the health bars entirely as they remove from the immersion of the game (these are just suggestions and I will still play the game no matter what)

[@inkwyvern5171]

Yes, he should go with your preferences instead of his own. 😂

[@hapliniste]

I think you should try to model the grass blades because with your current grass there might be a lot of overdraw. The grass texture is realy simple so making it an opaque mesh might result in better performances. It might not be the case but if you struggle with perfs, that's an option to look at (that would not work with more complex grass textures)

[@CashJab]

Hey there, sort of new to UE4 here especially regarding foliage. How is this possible without the use of a mesh for the grass? Is having this thick of grass even optimal with using a mesh for the grass? Sorry if it's a newbie question, just can't seem to find good resources on some of these things.

[@CashJab]

Oh sorry, I just rewatched it and he said he got the grass cards from the Kite demo, I thought they were projecting on to landscape without any mesh for whatever reason.

[@FloodAnxiety]

If you are looking for SM_FieldGrass_01, you DO NOT want the one from the kite project (it has two by the same name but they are not the same as used in this video). The one you want is from: www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/open-world-demo-collection#

[@SaintRampalSpiritualLeader]

@Lennon Kayden these two replies are as real as my girlfriend

[@noahalm9652]

I'm really looking forward to this game! Just a question, will you be able to play with 2-4 friends in the future? (Keep up the good work!)

[@alexandredepail1154]

Hey, great video and great work, thank you for sharing your knowledge ! I was wondering if your console tips "r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight 0.2" (and the others) affect also the packaged game and not only the editor ? I found no way to override these variables in the project settings or in a PostProcess volume / camera.

[@KrisLucenDev]

Hey good question - in Lucen I am setting it in the level blueprint so it will always happen when starting the level :)

[@alexandredepail1154]

@@KrisLucenDev Thanks for your answer ! To clarify for future people who might ask themselves the same question as me, you can use the "Execute Console Command" node in BP. Anyway, keep up the great work ! :)

[@pedrolopezbalseiro6949]

This is an awesome tutorial Kris! Thank you! I'm really interested in how you create a toon shading model in UE4. Do you have any videos about this or know of some good tutorials for it?

[@drewwitt9287]

I've downloaded the project files and I'm not really sure how to get them working in my game? I've moved all the files over into mine, but when I go to those folders, they are empty? I also downloaded Kenny's foliage pack as well. What are the steps to getting this implemented from download?

[@HelderP1337]

Nice, end result is awesome. How is the overdraw for this? Are you making any LODs for the grass piece?

[@andrinSky]

Hello Kris, i have bought your Grass today. It looks very good. What i'm missed is that this grass would be interactive to the player. Can you show us, how we can implementing this Feature?

[@mmckn1885]

I cannot figure out how to get the interactive grass to work with ALS V4. It would be awesome if you did a video for it, however; I know you're too busy for that because of the tree pack and the game.

[@SasisaPlays]

Awesome video and techniques! Thank you for your work! But what about performance? When there is a huge landscape, with a lot of grass, how is it optimised? I would really like to see more content about such good stylized graphics!

[@aemilion6920]

Hi Kris, When I sculpt the landscape the grass that is within the sculpted area darkens. Any idea how that can be solved or what it can be? Thanks

[@garetpeyton6787]

Great video, is there anything special we need to do for the vertex color?

[@martinpetrik7967]

Hi, can I ask what did you change in "WorldCoords-XY" function under Detail Mask nodes?

[@Riddle124]

this looks great! can you make a more detailed tutorial?

[@8lusk]

Hi. I bought the scene from gumroad, but whenever I copy paste the files to my own project I cant paint the foliage. The Grass SM turns grey and the materials reset.

[@KrisLucenDev]

You will still need to set up the foliage type, and you may have to reassign the material to the grass. I would recommend using the right click-> migrate option to migrate assets between projects, as it will find dependencies and make sure it includes everything

[@arthurprather6720]

With Mesh DIstance Field enabled, Its killing my PC performance... I have RTX 2080 8GB graphic, AMD 8 cores, 32GB PC ram? How is that possible? I don't think enabling MDF is a wise idea.

[@righy2711]

hard to follow. i could not understand what to plug and where to plug it.

[@rajav3214]

Where can i get the grass wind material funcion ?

[@atlas8094]

Where do u get the kite demo at?

[@MrAhoyGaming]

You can get it at the marketplace

[@atlas8094]

@@MrAhoyGaming thnx for telling me. i didnt figure it out when u said that tho cause i didnt know i was supposed to look in the learn tab but thnx anyway

[@maistrogaming7911]

When I saw the video I was like hey ho hey ho .....XD

[@JagoJPiano]

has anyone got any tips on how i can improve performance while using this grass?

[@istanatepti]

Hey Kris! Thank you for your grass. Can you give us a tutorial on how to change the emissive property throughout day and night? I've asked around a decent bit and no one knows. Please and thank you! :D

[@Kenzu-dev]

it s not free ?

[@mmckn1885]

@@Kenzu-dev No, why would he let it go for free?

[@DarXtalker]

Hi ! :) Thank you very much for doing this ! I'm trying to follow but I'm stuck early on, as I can't fid this "car demo" you're referring to ! :o Could you point me in the correct direction ? Thanks !

[@DarXtalker]

Oh it's KITE ! ^_^ I found it ! But with my lousy connection, 30GB downoad for just the grass stuff seems a bit much ! Is there a way I could get just this grass somewhere ? Thanks ! :)

[@legato3067]

will it work on 4.24 ?

[@KrisLucenDev]

You are able to create it in 4.24 as I'm not using anything specific to 4.25, however the project files on Patreon/Gumroad are made with 4.25 so they aren't backwards compatible AFAIK.

[@CGIadviser]

I wish Unity had the possibility of grass as good as this :/

[@KrisLucenDev]

I'm sure it can do something similar! I'm not doing anything specific to Unreal in terms of the shader, so a similar setup should definitely work in Unity :)

[@morgan4130]

Unity does. You need to know what you're doing.

[@skyacaniadev2229]

I’ve seen grass assets in Unity asset Store with similar quality. Maybe you can check there.

[@BhushanKad]

You can do the same with unity just change the render pipeline to URP or HDRP, and I played some with post processing and it was looking decent.

[@CGIadviser]

@@BhushanKad but thats really time consuming on an indie dev. (Assuming you cant buy texture maps) and even if you can it is. I will try technique from this vid in my next project and see what happens

[@coffeediction]

Looks good but 700+ instructions just for the grass, Im not sure how this'll be performance wise since even epic suggests not going over 500 or? Thanks though!

[@KrisLucenDev]

That suggestion refers to deferred rendering - this project was made with forward shading, which calculates the lighting in one pass, so the shader instruction count is misleading as it gets inflated substantially while being more performant than deferred

[@Hasmatix]

Is this grasa project on your patreon?

[@MadpolygonDEV]

can you cover the rock painting next (grass layer on top)

[@kevinrosso8649]

Amazing work! I've also followed the attached tutorial for the grass interaction, but I'm having some trouble connecting it to the AdditionalWPO, any suggestions?

[@alexr8968]

Help! Where can I get GrassWindAlt?

[@caelinhobbs7647]

you have to make a duplicate of simple grasswind and then modify it and name the duplicate grass wind alt and stuff

[@momomadi2]

materials instruction too damn high ? while its simple -- is that bc off forward shading?

[@nickgennady]

really nice. This scene really lags on my PC lol. I have a scene about 4 times larger on RTX 2070 Super and Ryzen 6 core.

[@JagoJPiano]

have you found any fixes to the lag?

[@nickgennady]

@@JagoJPiano No its just a grass that requires alot of GPU power.

[@JagoJPiano]

@@nickgennady are you using it in any of your projects or have you found more optimised grasses?

[@nickgennady]

ifjmadeit right now I’m using it since I’m just a c++ programmer and get someone else to make better one later

[@monushaw6819]

Is it GPU heavy for my game.?

[@Mater-code]

bro! i want those grass for real but i got no money! ☹️

[@areh3918]

can h make lucen available for android mobile

[@senpai5274]

whats the model person he using assets?

[@FreeLeaks]

He made his own

[@MadpolygonDEV]

may i ask is it the default sky?

[@JesseSep.]

Dat windows xp bg

[@blackpanda1302]

Can you make some tutorial including Houdini and unreal

[@mohamedhazeem411]

Are you make whole game using blueprint only?

[@KrisLucenDev]

So far, yep!

[@amolambhore6815]

What is Vanilla Unreal?

[@KrisLucenDev]

Unreal downloaded from the Epic launcher or built from source without modification, as opposed to a custom version built from source (which is what I use for Lucen).

[@amolambhore6815]

@@KrisLucenDev thanks, I was already gonna by the game, now after this answer its fixed I am definitely gonna buy it. Thanks

[@FreeLeaks]

@@amolambhore6815 How does the difference in the engine dictate if you buy a game?

[@yoeymeme]

It kinda looks like Fortnite STWs grass

[@PLanTonN]

Witchcraft.

[@japano62]

how the fuck did you came up with all this, i am struggeling to understand all this

[@mostafaeid2275]

Can anyone give me the file cuz i don't have much money to buy this please !

[@SimonLArt]

Did you write the custom Unreal version you're using for Lucen yourself or is there some handy source out there I could check out? :)

[@KrisLucenDev]

I didn't make it myself! Some kind souls on the Unreal Engine forum have been - forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/rendering/1537277-toon-shading-models-stylized-rendering-experiments

[@DylanBurke]

@@KrisLucenDev Hi, are you using this repo? github.com/kusogaki77/UnrealEngine It seems to say in the thread that it doesn't support forward shading.

[@itsgmartin2172]

be more clear bro wtf is this

[@YumeOwArt]

unreal makes me aggressive.. i really really don't like that software....