Overview

This tutorial shows you how to create a basic setup for vegetation categories and vegetation objects, and how to place and modify them in a level.

The best results are achieved by manually placing the vegetation objects, as it gives you the most control. However, by setting up interesting vegetation categories, you can create a good looking base that needs only minimal reworking.

To create nice looking presets, you can tweak the values that will be discussed towards the end of this tutorial.

For information on creation and tuning of AutoMerged vegetation objects, see Bending Setup and also the Vegetation Parameters below.

Vegetation Toolbar

By default, not all of these icons are visible as the RollupBar is too thin to fit them all.

All of these options are available in the Right-Click context menu and inside the Vegetation DB Tab.

1. Add Vegetation Object
2. Clone Vegetation Object
3. Replace Vegetation Object
4. Add Vegetation Category
5. Remove Vegetation Object
6. Export Vegetation
7. Import Vegetation
8. Distribute Vegetation on Whole Vegetation
9. Clear Vegetation
10. Scale Vegetation
11. Merge Vegetation
12. Put Selection to Category

Vegetation Setup

On the RollupBar, click Vegetation to select the Vegetation tool:

Adding a Vegetation Category

Click the Add Vegetation Category button:

Enter a name for the new category:

Confirm the name by clicking OK or by pressing Enter. This creates a new category called "Forest" that will be available in the objects list.

Click Forest to select it:

The square to the left of the name toggles the visibility state of the category. It also controls whether the object/category will be exported to engine. This allows you to experiment with vegetation setups in Editor and only export to pure-game what you want.

At the moment, no objects have been added and therefore, it is not active. By clicking the grey triangle, you can show and hide the vegetation objects stored inside the category.

Adding Vegetation Objects

Make sure the new "Forest" category is selected. Click the Add Vegetation Object button.

A file dialog will be displayed where you can select the object to add.

Navigate to the folder: <GameFolder>\Objects\natural\trees\jungle_tree_large\

Select the jungle_tree_large.cgf file. Click Open or double-click the file.

The vegetation object will now appear in the list, inside the Forest category.

Placing Vegetation Objects

Select jungle_tree_large in the Objects list.

The text will be highlighted to indicate that the object has been selected and can be painted or manually placed.

Manually Placing Single Objects

You can manually place selected objects by holding down Shift while the vegetation object is selected in the Vegetation Tool and then clicking the mouse button in the Perspective viewport. The selected object will be placed on the terrain, based on the position of the mouse pointer.

In the image below, the tree has been selected, which is indicated by the green and blue ring around the tree. If "Highlight Selected Vegetation" is enabled in the Sandbox Preferences, you will also see that.

Hold down Alt, click the mouse button, and move the mouse pointer to scale a selected vegetation object.

Moving the mouse pointer up/down while holding down Ctrl+Alt and clicking, rotates the vegetation object.

Keep an eye on the status bar, as quite often helpful information is shared about the currently active tools.

Painting with the Paint Objects Tool

Now click Paint Objects and increase the Brush Radius by clicking and moving the slider to the right. You can also specify more exact dimensions in the input field above it.

If you move the mouse pointer into the Perspective viewport, you will see the brush, indicated by a green circle. Click and move the mouse pointer around to paint some vegetation. You will see the trees being distributed on the landscape.

The distribution will be very regular. However, you can adjust the options within the vegetation tool panel to give the vegetation brush some variety (size, sizevar, random rotation and bending used here):

By holding down Ctrl and clicking, you can erase the vegetation objects. You should see the remove text appear in the middle of the brush. Try it on the trees that you just painted.

Before Removal	After Removal

Moving Vegetation Objects

As of CRYENGINE 3.5.3, there have been some tweaks to the way moving vegetation objects are handled. A problem which became more evident when dealing with very dense vegetation (auto-merge grass) was that moving vegetation to an invalid location resulted in seemingly sporadic behavior of the Editor.

If you've ever noticed vegetation jumping back and forth as you move it around, this is because the vegetation system was unable to find a valid location to place the moved instance (too dense, not enough room). When this happens, the vegetation instance is moved back to its last-known-good location. How we've improved this behavior is the important part though. The process is outlined as follows...

Select a chunk of vegetation:

Moving to an empty area is no problem:

Now, try and fit this dense chunk of grass on top of another dense chunk of grass.

The vegetation that fails to find a valid location will still return to its last-known-good location but now it will be highlighted red:

Pressing ESC will then de-select the successfully placed vegetation and keep the failed vegetation selected.

This allows you to either delete it or proceed to move it again:

This readability on exactly what the vegetation system is doing should make it much easier to control placing vegetation assets, as well as ensuring no wasted resources and over-packing of assets.

Vegetation Parameters

Below you'll find a list of available parameters for vegetation objects. Keep in mind that you can adjust properties for multiple objects or entire groups at the same time by selecting multiple objects, or selecting the group (such as "Forest" as we created earlier).

Results

To conclude:

• Add two vegetation objects like you did for the tree:
  • Objects/natural/ground/grass/grass_big_dense.cgf
  • Objects/natural/bushes/cliffbush/cliff_bush_yellow_mini.cgf
• Adjust their Size, SizeVar, RandomRotation and other properties as described in the steps of this tutorial.
• Select the Forest vegetation category, adjust the Brush Radius to a suitable size, activate Paint Objects, and start painting.

You should see a result that looks something like the following screenshot. Move the camera into the jungle, slightly over the ground to get a real feeling of the jungle that you have created.

You don't need to add many vegetation objects to create a lot of variation. Use the brush to paint an area without trees, just by selecting the bush and grass object.