In the new release of Errant Biomes we streamlined the process of adding input in Mask Materials, added affecting generation based on volumes and actor/component bounds, integration with Unreal's PCG, new showcase levels, improved instanceable blueprints, and much more.
Unreal Engine 5.2 support
Errant Biomes is now fully compatible with Unreal Engine 5.2!
Streamlined graph workflow
We simplified the process of adding new inputs (ex: weightmaps, masks) to Mask Materials. You no longer need to add these parameters at the Species level. Instead, you can use one of the new nodes to access the data directly in the Mask Material.
Access volumes and actor/components bounds in graphs
BiomesBoundsTexture node allows you to access volumes/actors/components world-space bounds in the form of a texture.
This way you can easily disable/enable generation around the objects in your world.
Here is a video showing an example use of that node:
Improved instanceable blueprints
Instanceable blueprints allow you to arrange multiple meshes in a BP and then spawn them as instances for efficient rendering (instead of spawning the entire BP). Starting with this version, properties set for the components inside of instanceable BPs will carry over to the spawned instances (ex: overriden materials, collision settings). We also added custom component types that let you specify biomes-specific settings.
Procedural Content Generation (PCG) integration
Errant Biomes 1.3 brings integration with Unreal's PCG framework (Procedural Content Generation). You can now use PCG on top of Errant Biomes to have even more control over the generation, without sacrificing the usability or user-friendliness of Errant Biomes.
Here is a video showing PCG spawned instanced being affected by Errant Biomes' Sub-biome:
Example maps and assets
In this release, we added two showcase maps that explain the basics of Errant Biomes, aiming to facilitate the learning process. We plan to expand these maps in the future with more examples. Additionally, these maps include a collection of models that you can freely use in your stylized scenes.
And more
- Added a new feature to force generation via a button or a shortcut.
- Added Errant Landscape mask sample nodes.
- Added Weightmap sample node, species sample material node, and MaskSample material node.
- Added an Actor/Component bounds input node, enabling the passing of actor bounds into biome generation material graphs.
- Fixed landscape alignment feature to only affect landscape proxies and not the main landscape actor.
- Fixed the error message for incorrectly typing a product's license key.
- Fixed support for foreign characters in license paths.
- Fixed a glitch that caused problems with Undo/Redo operations in hand-painted masks.
- Improved support for instance components in instanceable blueprints, ensuring correct extraction and spawning of instances.
- HUD messages are now cleared when the world is ready for generation.
- Modified the default shortcut for 'Sample', resolving previous conflicts in the level editor.
- Fixed an issue where dependent species were not invalidated upon species changes.
- Fixed removing of empty mask assets.
- Errant Biomes now handles all biome masks for other Errant Worlds plugins, leading to improved performance.
- Fixed an issue with the paint palette object duplicating DataAsset creation menus.
- The biomes generation component/tile selection is now respected when starting generation from other plugins (such as Errant Landscape and Errant Paths).
- Fixed problems with creation of excessive biome actors.
- Fixed unnecessary modification of biome-generated actors.
- Fixed an issue with the spawn points cached object constantly being recreated.
- Fixed the issue with Biomes constantly updating the world info object.
- Fixed unnecessary modification of the world actor in biome mode.