Universal Foliage Spawner - A Cluster-Based Instanced Foliage-System
Having done massive amounts of nature-related set-dressing for The Podlands, I though back to an older project of mine, designed to replace Unreal Engine 4's integrated procedural foliage placement - which, like many other parts of UE4, prioritizes physical accuracy over easy workflow and good results.
The older project took a similar large-scale placement approach to UE4's system. While definitely an improvement, it had still had the problem of being difficult to control accurately from an artist's perspective.
This system, rather than being designed to generate large areas from a single set of parameters, is designed to generate single foliage-clusters per spawner. These spawners can be saved as templates and used to quickly populate an area with good-looking foliage clusters, while allowing the artist complete control over foliage positioning.
The system was built entirely in Blueprints, works at runtime as well as in-editor, and could (relatively) easily be network-replicated.
The Universal Foliage Spawner is a system designed entirely using Blueprints, functional in-editor and at runtime. It's intended as replacement for UE4's integrated 'physical' procedural spawners, instead prioritizing artistic control over physicality.
The spawners each spawn a semi-spherical cluster of foliage - the spawning rules are tier-based, and while somewhat messy, entirely artist-defined and easily understood.
Jungle assets used are from assorted asset-packs, with materials replaced.
The performant generation-system makes it easy to duplicate large sections of forest - producing equal-quality results in seconds.
For a deeper breakdown of the system and its workflow, have a look at this video.