Edit Vegetation

What is the Edit Vegetation tool?

The Vegetation tool is used to import, set up and place vegetation within your level.

It can be found under RollUpBar > Vegetation.

Alternatively, you can access the Vegetation Editor from the Database View, which has the same properties as the Vegetation Tool, except the information, how many objects are placed in the level and how much texture memory they consume.

An introduction tutorial for the Vegetation tool can be found here, in the Level cookbook.

The Vegetation Tool lets you organize your Vegetation objects and you have many properties.

Vegetation groups can be sorted in categories, i.e. the Frozen category contains many different vegetation objects with different individual settings (see below).

The amount of vegetation objects placed in the level is displayed in brackets next to the objects name.

Objects can be painted on the terrain or placed as single objects. To do that select a Vegetation group and use SHIFT key + left mouse button to place them on the terrain.

Edit Vegetation options

Add Vegetation Object

In the object browser you can choose any object to be placed as vegetation object (objects in natural folder are appropriate)

Clone Vegetation Object

Allows you to clone the currently selected object

Replace Vegetation Object

Exchanges the currently selected object with the one you are going to select in the object browser.

If you have a category selected the name of the category can be changed.

Add Vegetation Category

Allows you to add a new category, a new subfolder

Remove Vegetation Object

Removes a vegetation group

Export Vegetation

Exports all vegetation settings and placement on the map data as a backup so it can be imported later.

Import Vegetation

Imports vegetation settings and placement data from a previously saved .veg file.

Distribute Vegetation on Whole Terrain

This function can be used to automatically distribute vegetation objects accross the entire level. Use a higher density than 10 and slope and altitude values that fit the type of distribution you want. E.g. For Palm Trees use an altitude from 5 to 20 meters higher than the current water level…

Clear Vegetation

Clears all vegetation data of the currently selected vegetation group

Paint Objects Button:

When this button is pressed and left mouse button is pressed you can paint the currently selected vegetation groups onto the heightmap. Make sure you change the radius (displayed as green circle on the heightmap) to the setting you like.

Vegetation Object Properties

For each object you can change following parameters:

SizeVar	Changes the size variation +- of newly placed vegetation objects
RandomRotation	Randomly roatetes objects while painting new vegetation objects.
AlignToTerrain	Sticks the vegetation object to the ground, so on cliffs they can actually point away from the surface instead of growing straight up.
UseTerrainColor	Makes the individual object receive the color of the underlying terrain so that it matches better.
Bending	The Bending value controls the procedural bending deformation of the vegetation objects. It ranges from 0 to 1, 0 meaning no bending effect and 1 meaning the maximum effect. Try 0.8 to get a nice bending effect.This value works globally, for all vegetation objects of this type.
Hideable	Can be set to hideable so that AI used it as hard cover, or to secondary so that AI used it as soft cover.
GrowOnVoxels	Make the objects placeable on voxels
Pickable	Allows the player to pickup the object
AIRadius	Used to tell the AI how wide the object is
Brightness	Changes the brightness of the vegetation group
Density	Adjusts the density, e.g. how close individual objects are near each other while painting new vegetation objects.
ElevationMin	Limits the minimum height at which you can paint vegetation objects.
ElevationMax	Limits the maximum height at which you can paint vegetation objects.
SlopeMin	255 equals 90 deg. With a higher than 0 slope value specified you can no longer place objects at flat grounds.
SlopeMax	255 equals 90 deg. With a lower than 255 slope max value specified you can no longer place objects on very step areas.
CastShadow	Turns on the shadow casting for all the objects in the selected group.
RecvShadow	Turns on the effect that objects can receive shadows.
AlphaBlend	Turns that alpha blending for textures with alpha channel.
SpriteDistRatio	Adjusts the distance when the sprite rendering should be enabled.
MaxViewDistRatio	Adjusts the maximum view distance per vegetation group
Material	Specifies a material to apply to the vegetation
UseSprites	Turns on / off the use of sprite rendering in the distance.
MinSpec	Makes the group only be rendered at the specified system spec.
Layer_Frozen	Turns on the frozen layer material settings
Layer_Wet	Turns on the wet layer material settings
Use_OnTerrain_Layers	Sets up the vegetation group to be procedurally distributed across the level on the selected surface type with the specified density, slope and altitude parameters.

Object preview

A preview window of the currently selected vegetation

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