Water Biome

BP_PCG_BiomeWater

Spawns and Manages PCG Biome With Water

BP_PCG_BiomeWater spawns water biomes like rivers, lakes, swamps etc. It is designed to be flexible and efficient, providing multiple biome parameters to adjust. Each biome can have various preset. Biomes and presets are stored in Data Tables. More info at Biome Presets.

Our assets are not designed to be used with world partitioned levels. They still may work, but be ready to get unexpected bugs.

How to Use

Create new regular level with landscape actor and add "/EasyBiomes/Blueprints/BP_FoliageManager". You don’t necessarily need to use our material with your landscape, our assets are independent from landscape material.

1

Place "/EasyBiomes/PCG/BP_PCG_BiomeWater" where you want your biome to be. Adjust its height, as it controls water level across your terrain.

This actor includes spline, which is used as a biome boundaries. To adjust spline, move each point individually. Note that you cant scale or rotate spline. You can remove points by selecting it and pressing delete. You can add points by selecting point, holding shift and dragging it.

Note that you cant have multiple BP_PCG_BiomeWater actors on the same level, they would cause conflict and constantly override water level. You need to select spline inside of an actor and duplicate it if you want multiple areas to be covered. There is also an option to cover entire landscape with one actor.

2

Notice that water preview plane is exactly at actor position level. This is useful if you want to adjust water level by moving actor up or down. This plane will be disabled once you spawn PCG.

Once you happy with your biome shape, select BP_PCG_BiomeWagter and press Spawn Chunks. This will prepare all necessary data for PCG. Next press Start Growing, this will start PCG calculations and spawn your Biome.

3

Now your Biome should be spawned. Spawn Sound and Particles options are disabled by default to speed up testing and experimenting process. Feel free to enable them at any point.

You need to respawn biome if you change any option. To do that, first press Clear Chunks. This will remove everything spawned by  BP_PCG_BiomeWater. Now repeat step 3.

Enabling Cover Entire Landscape option would spawn this biome across the whole landscape.

4

If you have some manually placed geometry on a level, areas under it would be automatically excluded from biome, so that foliage wont spawn on top or inside of it. Like in my example I’ve placed this wooden huts, and all plants are only spawned around them.

5

Water Biome would always intersect areas of other biomes, like in this example river cuts through the forest. Notice how trees are only spawned at some distance from river banks.

6

If you want to remove any specific foliage from any specific area, there is a tool for that. You can find details on this page: Remove Foliage.

7

Actor Options

BP_PCG_BiomeWater

  • Biome Preset - allows to assign biome to BP_PCG_Biome and select its variation.

  • Data Table - it stores all biome data (PCG logic, meshes, attributes, etc.)

  • Row Name - biome preset. Biomes can have variations, like forest, meadow, field.

  • Quality Preset - changes biome generation quality. It affects foliage density, draw distances, WPO, shadows and GI. High preset targets 60-70 fps on rtx 4090 4K resolution at 50% Epic settings. Cinematic preset has same foliage density as High, but it disables mesh culling and all meshes drop real shadows and affect GI. Use it for Cinematics :-) Lowest preset has WPO disabled.

  • Cover Entire Landscape - spawns this biome on a whole landscape instead of area inside a spline.

  • Landscape Index - if there are multiple landscapes on your level, assign desired landscape here. Although it is strongly recommended to have only one landscape per level.

Biome Preset

  • Water - if you are using your custom solution, you can disable spawning water surface of this biome

  • Sound - spawns sound actors if biome has any.

  • Particles - spawns particle actors (insects, falling leaves etc.) if biome has any.

Spawn Options

  • Clear PCG Link - removes all PCG logic from biome and creates Instanced Static Mesh Components out of biomes meshes.

  • Clear Chunks - removes all chunks, actors and meshes spawned by biome.

  • Spawn Chunks - spawns chunks and prepares all PCG data.

  • Start Growing - spawns biome in generated chunks.

Controls

  • Pause Regeneration - prevents biome from updating when you make changes to the scene (like sculpt terrain, edit splines etc.)

  • Resume Regeneration - resumes biome updating.

Regeneration