This new version brings support for Unreal Engine 5.3 and many new features, improvements and bugfixes. We introduced an advanced Layering System for Stamp Brushes, greatly improved mask/brush visualization, added tools for organizing your brushes, fixed many bugs and much more.
Unreal Engine 5.3
This release brings support for Unreal Engine 5.3.
New Features
Layering System for the Stamp Brush: The new Layering System allows blending multiple inputs within a single brush and comes with extra controls for contrast, sampling, and falloff. Layering facilitates combining heightmaps/weigthmaps with noise/erosion patterns and allows tweaking them conveniently.
Multi-Mask Visualization: The Visualization Tool can now display multiple Biome Masks and Weightmaps at the same time and allows grouping masks into folders and filtering them.
Spline Static Mesh Component: Added a new component class for creating meshes aligned with the spline. It can be used for creating the water surface in rivers, for example.
Selected Brush Visualization: Visualize masks from selected brushes. This auto-enables visualization of weightmaps and biomes masks for the brushes you select.
Replace with Threshold Blend Mode: Added a new "Replace with threshold" blend mode.
Disabling All Updates in Brush Subsystem: Added an option for temporarily disabling all updates, which helps in managing VRAM when making significant changes to large landscapes. This option can be found in the Settings Tool.
World UV Sampling in the Stamp Brush: The new World UV sampling mode in the Stamp Brush facilitates working with tiling textures and heightmaps.
Text as Brush Visualization: Added the option of using text as a "sprite" for brush visualization.
Integration with Errant Biomes: Version 1.4 of Errant Biomes is now supported.
Improvements
Nanite Landscape: Brushes now invalidate Nanite landscape allowing it to be updated properly.
Heightmap Precision: Fixed the banding artifacts, by increasing the precision of heightmap calculations.
Clamp Output in the Blend Mesh: A new clamp output option has been added.
Transparent UI in the Create Mode: Transparent visualization in Create mode makes it more obvious that it's not possible to select brushes.
Property Order in the Blend Brush: Changed the order of properties to match the order of operations in the Stamp Brush.
Actor Selection in the Spline Mode: You can now select all actors with SplineComponents.
Garbage Collection on Clear Memory: Added a garbage collection step to the
ClearMemorybutton.Notification Handling: Improved notifications. They now properly hide after the loading of resources is complete.
Ratio Locking in 2D Brush Properties: Added ratio locking to 2D properties in brushes.
Quick Access in UI: Added quick access sections in the details panel for brushes.
Visualization Mesh in Creation Settings: Added the ability to change the visualization mesh while creating a brush instance.
Limited Brush Update: Only aspects that brush requires are modified for improved performance. Meaning brush that updates weightmaps only won't re-calculate heightmaps.
Performance: Made general performance improvements.
Bug Fixes
- Unreal Landscape Spline Support: Errant Landscape now properly handles Unreal Landscape Spline Edit Layers.
- Whole Landscape Editing by Brushes: Fixed an issue where brushes occasionally edited the entire landscape.
- Brush Duplication Issue: Fixed a problem where duplicating a brush always made changes in the middle of the map.
- Post-Process Masking: Fixed Render Target created for post-process material masking not clearing properly.
- Offset Calculations in the Blend Brush and Stamp Brush: Fixed invalid offset calculations.
- Brush Updating: Fixed brushes not updating on some changes.
- Spline Width in Stamp: Fixed invalid spline width on scaled SplineComponents.
- Crash in Forward Rendering Configurations: Fixed a crash issue in forward rendering engine configurations.
- Blueprint-Created Spline Components: Added support for SplineComponents created from blueprints.
- Update All Loaded Landscape Tool: Fixed the Update "All Loaded Landscape" tool.
- Crashes in the Spline Stamp: Fixed occasional crashes.
- Biome Invalidation: Fixed biomes not getting invalidated in certain instances.
- Single-Point Spline in the Stamp Brush: Fixed a crash when using a spline with only one point.
- Negative Values in the Blend Mesh: Fixed negative values not working properly when blending brushes.
Other Changes
- Opacity Threshold in Masks: Introduced an opacity threshold value for visualization. It allows hiding the visualization in places where masks aren't painted.
- Removal of Instanced Input Properties in the Stamp Brush: Removed instanced input properties which were not working properly for some users.
We hope you will enjoy this new relese of Errant Landscape! And thank you for sharing your feedback, encountered issues and suggestions!