This step can be skipped entirely if you are not planning on using one of the Splatmap Baked or RVT Performance Presets (preset 1 – 4) on your new map or if you’re not wanting to utilize Runtime Virtual Texturing in your project.
These steps can be seen as slightly advanced, though once you do them (and you only have to do them once per new map), they’re pretty simple to perform again.
This process only takes about one to two minutes to perform, start to finish and is standard set up for any new project using Runtime Virtual Texturing.
Splatmap Baking utilizes RVT in order to bake the full terrain Splatmap to an image.
As an additional note Runtime Virtual Texturing does not currently work on mobile platforms as of UE 4.25 and 4.26 and using it with terrains larger than 4k in resolution will cause the Runtime Virtual Texture to be stretched by too much because RVT is basically baking the entire terrain material into one giant texture.
With all of that said, this is how to fully enable its use on your own terrain in order to get the performance benefits from it. In this video I’ll go over both RVT blending and how to first setup RVT to work with your world.
The entire process described below is gone through in this short video to the right. Also, if you have any further questions regarding this topic, please feel free to reach out by clicking the “How can we help?” link at the bottom of the page.
Step 1) First, if there is not already one in your world, go to the “Place Actors” window within Unreal Engine 4 and type “Runtime Virtual Texture Volume” into the search bar, the “Runtime Virtual Texture Volume” actor will then show up in the list similar to the image on the right. Drag and drop the “Runtime Virtual Texture Volume” into the world.
Step 2) Next, click on the “Runtime Virtual Texture Volume” that you just placed in your world and left click the eye dropper icon in the details menu. With the eyedropper selected, left click your terrain, this will tell the volume which landscape you want to talk to.
Step 3) Now click the “Copy Rotation” and “Copy Bounds” buttons within the Runtime Virtual Texture Volume details panel. This will automatically align the volume perfectly to our new landscape.
Step 4) Click on the drop down menu next to “Virtual Texture” and select “RuntimeVirtualTextureLandscape” from the menu that appears. This will fully setup the Volume to work with our world.
Step 5) For the final step, click on the Landscape itself and scroll down to the section called “Virtual Texture”, click the + icon next to “Render to Virtual Textures”, expand the view and select “RuntimeVirtualTextureLandscape” again. Now presets 1-4 will fully work with your terrain.
For further help in using splatmap based materials, please see this article here.
For ease of use, I’ve added a video here, showing the entire process that I just described above. Just watch this video if you prefer instead.