normal to density (Rock)

Rocks with moss (What's new?!)

Ok, the rocks with moss gig is getting old...or is it? Why stop at layering materials on a mesh when you can layer meshes with meshes?! The effect looks pretty cool to me and is fully adjustable in only a second with instanced parameters.

Table of Contents

Reference Summary

Base Setup

Blueprint Properties

Feature Demonstration

Conclusion

Resources

Reference Summary

The biggest change I wanted to try out was to make the moss more volumetric, in the event that I wanted to swap the material later for a slime or something.
I used the default Unreal Starter Bundle material moss to quickly get me something that looked like this.

Source: https://askmarystone.com/let-lichen-and-moss-be/

Base Setup

For the PCG setup, I started with a mesh sampler and gave it a variable to be able to swap that mesh out later. I then used normal to density (and a filter) to be able to select the amount of moss I wanted to grow on the rock. Finally I added some transformation adjustments and allowed the end user to be able to adjust these as well.

Blueprint Properties

Here I needed to add a construction script that is part of the process to allow a user to swap the mesh out and have the PCG content still work with it. This is also where I added the moss scale, rotation, amount and variation variables.

Feature Demonstration

PCG_02_apowell1.mp4

Conclusion

Having meshes be able to stick to one another in this way seems to be a relatively useful workflow and can already imagine a few other use case possibilities, such as planets with stars around them, or similar.

Resources

Environment: https://www.fab.com/listings/1e9f098e-5157-4cbf-b8a0-803eda37474b
Moss material: Unreal Start Bundle
Rock mesh and material: Unreal Start Bundle

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