Blending landscape materials
As we’ve seen throughout this book, materials can be used in plenty of places: in 3D models, in UI elements, as rendering passes, and so on. Another place where they are extremely useful is in landscape objects, a special category of 3D models that differ from standard 3D meshes in the way they are created. Unlike traditional static meshes, landscapes are usually huge in size, so the way we texture them needs to be inherently different just because of that reason.
To tackle that problem, Unreal comes bundled with a very powerful landscape system that allows you to have a single material that can blend between various textures through the use of the Landscape Layer Blend node. In this recipe, we will explore how to create and apply such a material.
Getting ready
Seeing how we’ll be working with landscapes, make sure that the level you decide to work on contains one such asset. If you don’t want to create one, feel free to open...