Foliage

Set up foliage types, paint foliage, run procedural foliage and edit instances.

What it’s for

This area works with Unreal’s foliage: the foliage types that describe what gets scattered, the procedural foliage volumes that scatter it, and the foliage already placed in the current level. Ask your assistant to set up a foliage type from a static mesh, place or paint instances, tell you what is already there, or clear instances out again.

Use it when you want to dress a level with grass, rocks, trees or debris. It handles the density, scale, alignment and rotation settings that make a scatter look natural. It can also set up a procedural foliage spawner over an area so the engine fills the region for you.

Prefer this over placing individual actors whenever the content should be foliage. The instances stay cheap and behave like the rest of the level’s foliage.

Things you can ask

Turn a static mesh into a foliage type

You get a new foliage type asset with the density and scale settings you asked for.

You: Make a grass foliage type from SM_GrassClump, denser and with some scale variation.

Created FT_GrassClump in /Game/Foliage with density 250 and scale 0.8–1.4.

Paint foliage at a set of points

Name a foliage type and the spots to fill, and an instance appears at each one.

You: Scatter that grass along these three points near the path.

Painted 3 grass instances along the path.

Clear foliage out of the level

Remove one foliage type’s instances, or wipe all foliage at once.

You: How much grass is placed? Then remove all foliage so I can start over.

There were 3 grass instances. I removed all foliage from the level.