Unreal Engine: Game Development from A to Z

Chapter 4. Building the Great Outdoors – Exterior Environments

In this chapter, we'll cover the following recipes:

• Creating a landscape
• Building an exterior level using the Sculpt mode
• Creating rivers with the Flatten tool
• Placing trees and rocks using the Foliage tool
• Streaming levels

Introduction

We've seen how to build levels using BSP and meshes. This is really great for man-made structures, such as office buildings, houses, and floors, which are all made of things that look similar to each other. However, things outdoors are very chaotic, with changes in elevation and randomness everywhere. To help facilitate that, Unreal has tools such as Landscapes that allow us to create massive worlds that our players can interact in.