STEP 38 OF 67 · YOU ARE THE ENVIRONMENT ARTIST

Give the ground real surfaces

A landscape material picks rock, grass, sand or mud from slope and height. Photoscanned Megascans surfaces make it look real.

How to do it

  1. Build an auto-landscape material using slope and height.
  2. Use Megascans surfaces from Fab (some free with Unreal, others per asset; all cleared for commercial games).
  3. Record each surface in your asset list.
How AI speeds this up

Ask Duke to explain the material graph. Duke tracks every surface's license in your asset list.

Example from a sample game

Ashfall: basalt on slopes, ash on flats, glass sand near the lake.

Before you move on

In Duke Forger, this step's gate checks:

Words to know

Material
Instructions that tell the engine how a surface looks under light: skin, cloth, metal, wet stone.
Megascans
A large library of photoscanned real-world surfaces and objects, available on Fab for Unreal projects.
Photogrammetry
Making 3D models from many photos of a real object.
Do step 38 on your own game

Included in Creator, Academy and Studio. Duke drafts it with you and checks it before step 39 opens.

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