Auto Landscape Material

I spent several weeks researching landscape shaders and this is the culmination of that effort. This landscape auto material has 5 base layers: grass, dirt, cliffs, shoreline, and snow line with blending and contrast controls. This landscape material is a plug-and-play system: once you create the material layer functions, you can then use the main auto material function to feed those material layers into, along with manually paintable “path” layers; adjusting the parameters and textures to your liking. It utilizes runtime virtual textures (RVTs) to optimize shader performance. There’s also support for distance tiling/texture variation for masking repeated details and nanite displacement is used to add height to the landscape’s geometry, all fed into the RVTs. Although I’m not showcasing it, multiple biome support is also available. This material was also developed alongside a PCG system for spawning foliage which is showcased in the “Procedural Foliage (PCG)” post.

This video highlights the key features of my auto landscape material: