Growing a tree
In order to create a lush forest, we need a proper tree asset that we can place all over our level. I was able to find this great tutorial on YouTube by CG Geek.
This was the tree model that I came up with:
Next, I needed smaller plants to cover the ground. These plants will help distract the player from noticing the rather flat terrain. Because it can be difficult to create proper grass assets, I downloaded a few grass packs from the Mega Scans library.
The nice thing about Mega Scan assets is that bridge will automatically create the grass assets as foliage objects and import their various LOD models.
Planting time
Now that we have collected our plant assets, we can place them on our terrain. To do this, I am using Unreal Engine’s Foliage Tool. This tool allows us to “paint” the foliage onto the terrain.
We can change settings such as brush size, density, and scale. We can also bulk edit our foliage if we need to tweak different setting, usually for performance reasons.
Getting our references
Before I started using the foliage tool, I went on Google and grabbed some reference images.
The first thing I noticed while looking at the reference images was that the forest floor is usually more mud and dead leaves than it is grass. So I went back and removed the old grass texture that I was using for most of the terrain. I then replaced it with a new forest floor texture.
I also grabbed some taller plants from Mega Scans. I plan to place these sparingly.
The Reveal
Bonus: I also added a very simple flashlight to the player using blueprint.
p.s. I have also turned down the flashlight brightness shown in the video.
That is it for this week. Thanks for reading!
