Getting Rid of My Grass

[jeffduquette]

I am interested in “turning of” the grass in certain areas of a terrain map I am making. My basic terrain map is all grass. The grass has some sort of layer of grass blades that stick up through the basic grass texture. Sort of like the wheat field or corn field mesh – except different in that I can’t simply grab onto the grass like I can with a wheat field mesh. In areas where I have painted the terrain to look like a road or the like, I wish to keep the grass from popping up through the dry brown dirt paint color.

How do I select the grass in certain areas and than keep it from appearing on my roads or the like?

Also – speaking of painting a terrain map\level – once I have painted the map\level, aside from instant “UNDO”, is there a way to go back and remove painted areas from a map?

Thanks a bunch for any answers

Best Regards
Jeff

 

[Shurek]

Jeff,

These links should give you some good background information about what you're talking about.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/CreatingDecoLayers.html

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/EditingTerrainLayers.html

-- Shurek

 

[Six_Ten]

decolayer

decolayer

In areas where I have painted the terrain to look like a road or the like, I wish to keep the grass from popping up through the dry brown dirt paint color.

How do I select the grass in certain areas and than keep it from appearing on my roads or the like?

Follow shurek's links then mask the grass; use a map similar or identical to the greyscale map you painted for your roads and dirt.

You cannot select the grass because it is placed by a shader. If you use a high camera angle and fly over your map in the editor, you should see a circular area around the camera xy pos that has grass and none outside it -- this saves rendering the stuff not visible to players.

 

[jeffduquette]

Thanks a bunch Shurek & Six Ten.

 

[jeffduquette]

For posterity and potential future map editor noobs like me -- the UNREAL Editor use write-up is good (see link from Shurek above), but it only put me in the vicinity of what it is I actually needed to do to remove grass decoration layers from a map\level. After fiddeling about a bit I came up with the following dumbass guide (dumbasses like me that is) to adding or removing grass decorations:

1. Select the terrain editor.
2. Select the Painting tool.
3. Click on the Decorations tab
4. Click\select the grass decoration texture.
5. Set the size of your paint brush under the options thingy -- Inner Radius and Outer Radius.
6. Select the area on your map\level where you want to "mow" the grass.
7. Hold down the control key, and than right click the mouse. Click the right key a couple of times and this eventually removes all of the grass decorations within your paint brush tool radius.
8. If you wanna add the grass decoration back -- same deal as above, except you click the left mouse key to make the grass decoration layer "grow". Click it a couple of times and it increases the density of the grass decorations within your paint brush radius.