Unreal Engine 5: Constructing Worlds With Quixel Megascans

This text explores the Unreal Engine 5 panorama editor and how one can carry free, high-resolution Quixel Megascans into your challenge to jumpstart your recreation improvement.

It continues from the Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial for Learners that launched the fundamental ideas of working within the Unreal Engine 5 editor. For those who aren’t already conversant in 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 very good 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 out there within the Panorama Editor to construct the world
• Implementing complicated 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 offer this submarine a world to discover!

Observe: This tutorial makes use of Unreal Engine 5.2. Nonetheless, Epic Video games continuously updates Unreal Engine, so your model is perhaps completely different than what’s proven within the pictures right here, and views may change because the engine evolves.

Getting Began

Obtain the starter challenge 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 in your submarine to navigate by way of. Within the course of, you’ll discover ways 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 the whole asset library out there to Unreal Engine customers. Unreal Engine 4.24 marked the start of an built-in workflow to carry Quixel belongings into Unreal Engine video games. Examples of objects and textures superbly captured by photogrammetry and out there 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 then you definitely’ll use Quixel belongings to construct a extra complicated scene rapidly.

Navigating the Unreal Engine 5 Panorama Editor

Start by opening the starter challenge in Unreal Engine 5. You’ll see the fundamental challenge view within the editor, and a World Partition tab needs to 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, should you 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 presently within the map.

Panorama Mode

After you load the area, the scene continues to be empty aside from a post-process quantity that provides the world a bluish tint and an underwater ambiance. It’s time to construct a panorama! So, subsequent, you could activate Panorama mode to modify editor views into the Unreal Engine 5 Panorama editor. Discover the Panorama possibility from the dropdown menu within the UE5 toolbar, or use the Shift-2 hotkey to modify to this view.

After Panorama mode prompts, a brand new panel of controls seems on the left-hand facet of your editor window. After you have a Panorama, these Sculpt controls will likely be out there.

However earlier than you need to use them, you’ll must have a Panorama, both by creating one or importing present knowledge to be the premise of the Panorama. You’ll quick-start a Panorama on this challenge 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:

1. Click on Import from File.
2. Browse to the supplied world map referred to as ocean-trench-map.png included within the world-map folder within the starter downloads.
3. Select a Materials, and choose M_MS_Default_Material to offer a primary beginning texture to see in your panorama.
4. Use the default Total Decision of 2017 × 2017.
5. 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 that you would be able to 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 presently 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 fundamental instrument to boost 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 Power impacts how rapidly this occurs whenever 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 peak.
  
• Ramp means that you can 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’ll be able to Add Ramp to finalize and construct a sculpted ramp into the heightmap.
• Erosion simulates thermal erosion to maneuver soil from larger 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 step by step affected the Landscapes over time.
• Noise means that you can paint onto a Panorama floor with variations in heights.
• Retop or Retopologize instruments alter the Panorama to enhance the vertex densities in areas that will require it, like very steep cliff edges. This may occasionally assist scale back artifacts like texture stretching.

Be happy to attempt all of the completely different sculpting instruments to switch the undersea panorama. Don’t neglect 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.