Convert subset of terrain into Unreal landscape

[nithinp7]

We would ideally like to have everything streamed just-in-time not only for rendering, but also for physics objects that may require terrain geometry to interact against. Eventually we will be able to provide a more consistent physics experience by reducing LOD-popping and implementing context-aware pre-fetching. But in the short-term, it may be worth implementing a way to convert local areas of a tileset into persistent Unreal landscapes that can allow for consistent physics off-camera as well as take advantage of a suite of tools including water simulation, navmeshes, terrain-editing, runtime virtual textures, and more. Edited landscapes could even be retiled into the terrain and uploaded back to Ion.

[argallegos]

I think the most likely way to do this is to convert an area of terrain into a heightmap (Or otherwise retrieve a heightmap for a given area.) Then, it would be relatively straightforward to create Unreal landscapes from the heightmaps, to help with physics, enable terrain editing, everything Nithin mentioned above. How difficult is it to create a heightmap from terrain data?

[mattvb91]

Looking to edit the cesium import as a landscape too. Any updates on this? Any way we can export a heightmap out and reimport it into the landscape tool?

Perfect for me at the moment would be the ability to export a 20x20km heightmap and associated material and just use the import heightmap functionality + stick the material on with the correct coordinates. Doesnt even have to be more than that as a start

[kring]

@mattvb91 unfortunately what you describe is likely to be a violation of the Terms of Use of the data providers, Bing Maps in particular. If you just need a real-world heightmap for a particular area, there are plenty of sources for such data on the internet, very often free. See the Attribution section at the bottom of this page for the source data in Cesium World Terrain: https://cesium.com/platform/cesium-ion/content/cesium-world-terrain/