[UE5] Landscape Basics: Sculpt Hills, Paint a Path, and Decorate with Foliage

Your character moves around on a flat floor. Next you want a path winding between hills, and you want to walk it.

UE's Landscape lets you raise and carve a wide ground with brushes. Here we build a small practice terrain and run a dirt path across green hills. Finish by lining the path with objects using Foliage and you have covered the whole flow of building an outdoor stage.

What You'll Learn

• Splitting terrain work into sculpt, paint, and place
• What Layer Blend and Layer Info do
• Drawing a dirt path across green ground
• Placing grass and objects along the path with Foliage

What We Build

• Two low hills on a 252 m square of ground
• Green and brown painted separately, forming a path
• Objects placed along the path with Foliage, verified by walking it

We use a Third Person template project. The painting is flat color and the placement practice uses the standard sphere, so no extra assets are needed. If you have plant meshes, the same steps place them. The diagrams illustrate what each operation means.

Split terrain work into three tasks

Even "make a grassland" means building the ground's relief, the ground's color, and three-dimensional grass separately.

Task	What you use	What changes
Raise hills	Landscape's "Sculpt"	The ground's height and shape
Draw a dirt path	Landscape's "Paint"	The ground surface's appearance
Line up plants and rocks	"Foliage" mode	Three-dimensional objects on the ground

Painting green does not grow three-dimensional grass. And drawing a brown path does not make a steep slope walkable. Shape the ground first, then add appearance on top.

Create a 252 m square Landscape

Prepare a practice level

In a Third Person project, choose "File → New Level → Basic" and save it as L_LandscapePractice . Starting from a small level with a sky and lights lets you focus on terrain.

Delete the "Floor" that is there initially, since the Landscape we build becomes the floor. Keep the light and sky Actors.

Decide the ground's size

Open "Landscape" from the mode switcher at the top left. The shortcut is Shift + 2 . Enter these values in "Manage" for a new creation.

Property	Value here	Meaning
Section Size	63 × 63 Quads	How many ground squares fit in one section
Sections Per Component	1 × 1	How many sections gather into one component
Number of Components	4 × 4	How many components across and down
Scale	100 on X, Y, and Z	X and Y at 100 means 1 m between adjacent points
Location / Rotation	Both 0	Built from the origin, untilted
Material	Unset	We create and assign it in a later step

Turn on "Enable Edit Layers" in versions that offer it. It holds edits separately, but we work with a single first layer.

A Quad is one square of the subdivided ground. Here one section is 63 m wide. Four across gives a total terrain width of 63 × 4 = 252 m .

"Overall Resolution" of 253 × 253 and "Total Components" of 16 means the settings are right. 253 is the number of points recording height. Including the edge points, 252 squares need 253 points. It does not mean the terrain is 253 m wide.

Press "Create" and flat ground appears. We only need one corner of it. The relationship between settings and size is also covered in the official Landscape Technical Guide.

Sculpt hills and leave somewhere to walk

Switch to the "Sculpt" tab. Rather than filling the ground with mountains, start by leaving a corridor down the middle and raising low hills on both sides .

1. Select the "Sculpt" tool.
2. Set "Tool Strength" to 0.1 , "Brush Size" to 2000 , and "Brush Falloff" to 0.5 .
3. Click briefly where the path's sides will be to raise them. Holding raises them further, so add gradually.
4. Switch to "Smooth" and trace the hills' bases to level out sharp steps.

Tool Strength is how much one operation applies, Brush Size is the area you touch, and Brush Falloff decides how much the effect weakens from the brush center to its edge. These are starting values; adjust while watching the circle on the ground and how it rises.

Holding Shift while tracing in "Sculpt" lowers the ground. If something gets too tall, Ctrl + Z immediately.

Flatten matches the surroundings to the height where you started clicking. It suits building flat spots like rest areas. Start tracing from the height you want to keep. Starting from a tall hilltop raises the surroundings to that height.

To connect two heights in a straight line, "Ramp" also works. Specify both ends, adjust the width, and use "Add Ramp". Since our path is the low area left between hills, we stay with Sculpt and Smooth.

Prepare green and brown

With the shape done, prepare the painting. A material decides a surface's color and gloss. We build a terrain material holding two colors, green and brown.

Start with flat colors rather than texture images. Where you painted becomes obvious and you skip hunting for assets.

Build the node that blends two colors

1. Create a LandscapePractice folder in the Content Browser.
2. Right-click inside it, create a "Material", name it M_LandscapePractice , and open it.
3. Right-click search in the graph and add "Landscape Layer Blend".
4. Select that node and add two entries with the "+" on "Details → Layers".
5. Configure them as follows.

Layer Name	Blend Type	Preview Weight
Grass	LB Weight Blend	1
Dirt	LB Weight Blend	0

Layer Name is the paint target's name. Choosing Grass paints green and Dirt paints brown; that mapping is made here.

Next add two "Constant3Vector" nodes, which hold a color as three RGB numbers. Open each node's color and make one green and the other brown. By numbers, use green R=0.15 / G=0.35 / B=0.05 and brown R=0.25 / G=0.10 / B=0.03 .

• Green output → Landscape Layer Blend's "Layer Grass"
• Brown output → "Layer Dirt"
• Landscape Layer Blend's output → the material's "Base Color"

Add a "Constant" node with value 1 and connect it to "Roughness". Leave "Metallic" unconnected at its default 0 . That gives non-metallic ground with muted gloss. Press "Apply" and save.

LB Weight Blend mixes colors according to per-location weights. 100 percent grass is green and 100 percent dirt is brown, while the path's edges mix both. "Where is what color" is decided by the Paint operations next. The official Landscape Materials page also summarizes the node's role.

Prepare Layer Info and paint the path

Assign the material to the ground

Return to "Selection" mode and select the Landscape in the Outliner. Assign your M_LandscapePractice to "Landscape Material" in "Details".

Then open "Landscape → Paint" and confirm Grass and Dirt appear in "Target Layers". In versions where they do not, use "Create Layers From Assigned Materials" in the layer list. Hovering an icon shows its name.

Assign Layer Info to Grass and Dirt

Layer Info is the settings asset making a paint target usable in the Landscape. Beyond naming colors in the material, the Landscape side must register them as paintable.

Create one from the "+" on the Grass row and save it as LI_Practice_Grass . Create LI_Practice_Dirt for Dirt as well. If auto-creation already assigned them, open them and check the settings.

Version and display	Setting here
Versions letting you choose a kind at creation	Choose "Weight-Blended Layer (normal)" for both
UE 5.7 and later without that option	Open the created Layer Info and set "Weight Blending Method" to "Weight Blending (Legacy)" on both

Here we make painting grass reduce dirt's weight and vice versa. That the setting moved in UE 5.7 is also documented in an explanation from an Epic staff member.

"Edit Layers" and "Target Layers" are different things

Target Layers are our paint targets, Grass and Dirt. Edit Layers are working layers holding terrain and paint edits separately. We do not add Edit Layers; we paint grass and dirt on one selected layer. Keep it visible, unlocked, and at Alpha 1. You do not need one Edit Layer each for grass and dirt.

Fill everything with green first

Right-click "Grass" in Target Layers and run "Fill Layer". The whole ground turning green means you are ready.

Ground looking black right after assignment can simply mean no weights are in yet. The "Preview Weight" you set in the material is for previewing inside the material editor. It is separate from painting the Landscape, so use Fill Layer on the actual ground .

Select Dirt and draw the path

With the "Paint" tool, select "Dirt" in Target Layers and trace between the hills. Start with "Tool Strength" 0.3 , "Brush Size" 400 , and "Brush Falloff" 0.5 , using the visible brush circle as your path width.

If one pass looks faint, trace the same place several times. To narrow a path you overdrew, select Grass and paint back over it .

If the whole ground turns brown, check whether you ran "Fill Layer" on Dirt. Grass is what fills everything; Dirt is brushed onto the path.

If nothing changes color, review this order.

1. Are you editing a different Landscape : check the selected terrain and its material.
2. Do the Grass and Dirt names match : compare the material's Layer Names against Target Layers.
3. Is Layer Info assigned to both : confirm an asset shows on the row you want to paint.
4. Is the Edit Layer editable : check it is not hidden, locked, or at Alpha 0.

Place objects along the path with Foliage

Foliage is the mode placing meshes such as plants in bulk with a brush. The name means plants, but it works for objects like rocks too.

So you can test without extra assets, we place standard spheres as stand-in stones. If you have plant assets, choose a shrub instead of the sphere. In a project with Starter Content, StarterContent/Props/SM_Bush is another candidate.

Register the mesh to place

1. Enable "Show Engine Content" in the Content Browser's "Settings".
2. Find "Sphere" under Engine/BasicShapes . It is a Static Mesh asset storing the sphere's shape.
3. Switch to "Foliage" mode. The shortcut is Shift + 3 .
4. Drag Sphere from the Content Browser into the Foliage panel's mesh list.
5. Check Sphere in the list and select that entry.

The point is registering the mesh asset in the Content Browser , not a sphere Actor placed in the level. Handling it as "Static Mesh Foliage" uses the mechanism that draws identical shapes together.

Place a few and check the sizes

With the sphere selected, start with these values. If you substituted plants, adjust Scale for their original size.

Where	Setting	Value and meaning
Brush settings	Brush Size	1000 . Start with a small area along the path
Brush settings	Paint Density	0.3 . The fraction multiplied against placement density
Brush settings	Erase Density	0 . Leave zero density when erasing
Mesh settings	Density / 1Kuu	10 . The density baseline per 10 m square
Mesh settings	Radius	100 . Spacing preventing the same kind from clustering too tightly
Mesh settings	Scaling / Scale X	Uniform, Min 0.4 / Max 0.8 . Mixes sizes while keeping proportions
Filters	Landscape	On. Turn other surface filters off here

Density appears in two places. The mesh's "Density" is the baseline and the brush's "Paint Density" is what fraction of it to use. Spacing and other conditions also apply, so an exact count is not guaranteed.

Choose "Paint" and trace briefly along the path. Several spheres appearing at slightly different sizes means success. Being standard spheres, they look like round placeholder stones.

If nothing appears, check Sphere's checkbox and the Landscape filter and try on flat ground. The mesh's "Ground Slope Angle" and "Height" can also limit where placement is allowed.

If you placed too many in the middle of the path, keep Sphere checked, hold Shift , and trace to erase. Decorate only the path's shoulders at first, leaving the walkway clear. The official Foliage Mode page also covers registering and placing meshes.

Play and tune how walkable it is

Terrain that reads well from above can have slopes too steep or paths too wide from a character's eye level. Walk it at the end and confirm.

1. Return to "Selection" mode and move Player Start to the path's entrance, at a height where the capsule's bottom is not buried. If there is none, search "Place Actors" for Player Start and place one.
2. Set "World Settings → GameMode Override" to BP_ThirdPersonGameMode . If World Settings is not visible, open it from the "Window" menu.
3. Set the play location to "Default Player Start", press "Play", and walk the path.

What to confirm	Where to fix it when it bothers you
Can you walk to the end of the path	Level steps and steep slopes with Sculpt's Smooth
Does the path width read naturally at character scale	Repaint Grass and Dirt
Are the roadside objects too large	Adjust Foliage's Scale, erase the practice area, and place again
Does the player fall through the ground	Check Player Start's position and the Landscape's collision

The slope a character can climb is set by Character Movement 's "Walkable Floor Angle". Open BP_ThirdPersonCharacter and select "Character Movement" in the components list to check it. The template uses about 45 degrees, but before raising it, try easing the slope where you want to walk.

The sphere placement is decoration, so a character passing through them is fine. To make tree trunks obstacles, you need collision shapes on the mesh and Foliage-side collision settings. Placed objects do not necessarily block passage.

Bonus: where to go next

Once you can walk the path, add pieces gradually to match the scenery you want.

To pattern the ground , the next step is replacing our green and brown Constant3Vectors with grass and dirt Texture Samples. Tuning UVs, which set where and how large the image sits, and Normals, which represent fine bumps, adds richness. Tackling it as a continuation of Material Basics keeps things organized.

When more foliage makes things heavy , review density and display distance first. For regular meshes, "End Cull Distance" hides distant placements. Fading them out naturally needs material-side support, though. And Nanite meshes do not apply that cull distance and fade the same way, so do not assume settings alone make it lighter; check the display and the cost.

To let enemies walk the terrain too , move on to NavMesh Basics. Cover the terrain with a Nav Mesh Bounds Volume and confirm the walkable area. A green area appearing does not by itself make enemies move; movement commands and AI settings are still needed.

To build caves and overhangs , combine separate meshes. A Landscape holds one height per ground point, so overlapping a cave floor and ceiling at the same location is not possible with it alone.

Summary

Shape with Landscape's Sculpt, color with Paint, and place objects with Foliage. Working through those three in order makes it clear which part of terrain building you are touching.

Here we built a material with Grass and Dirt, assigned Layer Info, and drew a path across green ground. Once you can walk it and adjust the slope and width, you can start thinking about what goes at the end of that path.