This text explores the Unreal Engine 5 panorama editor and how one can deliver free, high-resolution Quixel Megascans into your venture to jumpstart your recreation improvement.
It continues from the Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial for Newcomers that launched the essential ideas of working within the Unreal Engine 5 editor. When you aren’t already acquainted with the overall interface and ideas, together with Blueprints and Actors, I like to recommend beginning there earlier than persevering with with this one.
After this tutorial, you’ll have a great grasp on:
- Discovering high-quality Megascans belongings through the Quixel Bridge
- Working inside Unreal Engine’s built-in Panorama Editor
- Making use of all of the instruments obtainable within the Panorama Editor to construct the world
- Implementing advanced blended textures through Blueprints
- Portray a number of textures on a panorama
Just like the newbie tutorial, the hero of this recreation is a mighty submarine. Time to present this submarine a world to discover!
Be aware: This tutorial makes use of Unreal Engine 5.2. Nonetheless, Epic Video games consistently updates Unreal Engine, so your model is perhaps totally different than what’s proven within the pictures right here, and views may change because the engine evolves.
Getting Began
Obtain the starter venture by clicking Obtain supplies on the high or backside of the tutorial.
On this tutorial, you’ll use Unreal Engine 5’s Panorama editor and Quixel Megascans to create a wealthy panorama of underwater valleys on your submarine to navigate by. Within the course of, you’ll learn to add textures to surfaces, combine textures for a customized look and add premade belongings to your scene.
Understanding Quixel Megascans
Earlier than you begin, what precisely are Quixel Megascans?
Quixel is an organization that’s constructed the world’s largest 2D and 3D asset library derived from the strategy of photogrammetry: high-resolution picture scans of real-world objects and textures. In November of 2019, Epic Video games, maker of Unreal Engine, introduced the thrilling information that it had acquired Quixel and would make your entire asset library obtainable to Unreal Engine customers. Unreal Engine 4.24 marked the start of an built-in workflow to deliver Quixel belongings into Unreal Engine video games. Examples of objects and textures superbly captured by photogrammetry and obtainable through the Megascans library are proven beneath.
With the discharge of Unreal Engine 5, the mixing of Quixel has improved additional. Now, it’s fairly seamless to look Quixel belongings within the Unreal Engine editor, then obtain and add these to your recreation ranges. On this tutorial, you’ll begin with a primary introduction to the Unreal Engine 5 Panorama editor, and you then’ll use Quixel belongings to construct a extra advanced scene rapidly.
Navigating the Unreal Engine 5 Panorama Editor
Start by opening the starter venture in Unreal Engine 5. You’ll see the essential venture view within the editor, and a World Partition tab must be open within the right-hand facet panels.
If the World Partition isn’t open, open it with Window ▸ World Partition ▸ World Partition Editor. By default, for those who haven’t beforehand loaded a streaming world asset, you’ll want to spotlight after which select to load a area into the editor to show landscapes and belongings at present within the map.
Panorama Mode
After you load the area, the scene remains to be empty aside from a post-process quantity that offers the world a bluish tint and an underwater ambiance. It’s time to construct a panorama! So, subsequent, that you must activate Panorama mode to change editor views into the Unreal Engine 5 Panorama editor. Discover the Panorama choice from the dropdown menu within the UE5 toolbar, or use the Shift-2 hotkey to change to this view.
After Panorama mode prompts, a brand new panel of controls seems on the left-hand facet of your editor window. After getting a Panorama, these Sculpt controls might be obtainable.
However earlier than you should use them, you’ll have to have a Panorama, both by creating one or importing present information to be the idea of the Panorama. You’ll quick-start a Panorama on this venture by importing a pre-generated heightmap. Swap to the Handle tab within the Panorama pane. You’ll create a brand new Panorama however use an present heightmap to hurry up the method.
Click on New+, after which:
- Click on Import from File.
- Browse to the offered world map known as ocean-trench-map.png included within the world-map folder within the starter downloads.
- Select a Materials, and choose M_MS_Default_Material to supply a primary beginning texture to see in your panorama.
- Use the default Total Decision of 2017 × 2017.
- Click on Import to create the brand new panorama.
Utilizing the Scuplt Instruments
After the import, which creates a brand new Panorama, you’ll have a visual ocean trench which you can edit with the instruments within the Sculpt menu.
The sculpting instruments work on the underlying heightmap of your panorama. As you’re employed with these instruments, the left mouse button performs the at present highlighted motion on the heightmap so as to add/increase the terrain. The left mouse button-Shift performs the identical motion, however subtractively to decrease the terrain. Management-Z undoes the final stroke, and Management-Y redoes the final undone motion.
Sculpting Instruments
Right here’s what a few of these instruments do:
-
Sculpt is the essential software to lift or decrease the heightmap utilizing the left mouse button or left mouse button-Shift.
- Erase removes heights from the heightmap rapidly.
- Easy softens and smooths the heightmap. The Brush Energy impacts how rapidly this occurs if you draw on the Panorama.
-
Flatten takes the peak of the preliminary click on of the motion on the Panorama, and as you maintain and drag, the Landscapes rise or decrease to match that top.
- Ramp lets you left-click and drag to mark a beginning and ending level for a ramp. After setting these positions within the Device Settings beneath the motion buttons, you may Add Ramp to finalize and construct a sculpted ramp into the heightmap.
-
Erosion simulates thermal erosion to maneuver soil from increased elevations to decrease ones by pure forces. This may create pure and random removals from the Panorama heightmap.
- Hydro or Hydro Erosion simulates hydraulic erosion, or water flows, to regulate the heightmap. This creates Landscapes the place eroded areas look as if rain has regularly affected the Landscapes over time.
- Noise lets you paint onto a Panorama floor with variations in heights.
- Retop or Retopologize instruments regulate the Panorama to enhance the vertex densities in areas that will require it, like very steep cliff edges. This will likely assist scale back artifacts like texture stretching.
Be happy to strive all of the totally different sculpting instruments to change the undersea panorama. Don’t overlook to make use of left mouse button-Shift to use the inverse motion, sometimes to decrease the panorama.
With the panorama sculpted, now you can add textures to the floor.
