Easy Landscape Cut Documentation

WHAT THE TOOL DOES

Easy Landscape Cut paints the Landscape Visibility layer to create openings in Unreal landscapes. Click for one cut or hold the left mouse button to paint along the terrain. A circular preview shows the brush radius.

Use it for cave entrances, tunnel openings, pits and spaces where separate geometry needs to pass through a landscape. It removes landscape surface and collision in the painted area. It does not excavate a volume or create tunnel walls, ceilings, floors or underground meshes. Place your own geometry, with suitable collision, underneath and around the opening. Without a floor below a hole, a character can fall into the empty space beneath the landscape.

This is an editor tool. It stores cuts as ordinary landscape visibility data. It has no runtime cutting component, multiplayer interface or Blueprint assets.

FIRST CUT

1. Open the level containing your landscape. For a streamed landscape, load the owning Landscape actor and the terrain sections you intend to edit. 2. Check the landscape material. A writable project material with a straightforward opacity-mask graph can be prepared automatically. See MATERIAL SETUP for other materials. 3. Open the editor's mode selector and choose Easy Landscape Cut. Its settings window opens beside the viewport. 4. If the landscape has several editable layers, enter the intended layer's exact name in Edit Layer Name. The layer must be visible, unlocked and support visibility painting. 5. Set Brush Radius, move the pointer over the landscape and click the left mouse button. Hold and move to continue cutting while the pointer hits terrain. 6. Read the message at the bottom of the settings window if the operation is refused. Allow Unreal to finish material compilation and landscape updates, then inspect the opening and its collision. 7. Save the landscape and any project materials changed by automatic setup.

The brush uses landscape collision for picking. A mesh or another collidable object in front of the terrain can block the hit. Once an opening no longer has landscape collision, aim at its remaining edge to enlarge it.

CONTROLS

Left mouse button: apply a cut. Hold to repeat at the configured interval. [: reduce the radius by 25 units. ]: increase the radius by 25 units. Equals key or numeric keypad +: multiply the radius by 1.1. Minus key or numeric keypad -: divide the radius by 1.1. Undo/Redo: use the editor's normal commands, normally Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y.

Alt, Ctrl and Shift modified mouse input is left to normal editor interaction. Right or middle mouse navigation does not start a paint stroke. Losing viewport focus ends the current stroke. Closing the settings window leaves the cutting mode; select the mode again to reopen it.

A continuous drag is one undo transaction. Undo also restores material changes made as part of that stroke. The tool has no dedicated fill brush: undo the cut, or use Unreal's Landscape Visibility tool to restore visibility where needed.

SETTINGS

Edit Layer Name Default: None. Enter the exact name of the landscape edit layer to paint. None uses the only eligible layer when there is a single visible, unlocked layer that supports visibility painting. If several eligible layers exist, the tool asks for a name instead of guessing. A layer selected previously in Unreal's Landscape mode is not a reliable substitute for this setting after switching tools. For a landscape without edit layers, leave this field at None.

Brush Radius Default: 300. Allowed range: 10 to 5000 Unreal units. The standard Unreal scale is one unit per centimetre, so the default radius is 3 metres. The slider covers the common range up to 2000; type a value to use a larger permitted radius. The brush uses world distance along the landscape's local XY plane and accounts for nonuniform landscape scale. Terrain vertex spacing determines the actual edge resolution. A small brush between vertices may have no effect; increase its radius.

Continuous Interval Default: 0.15 seconds. Allowed range: 0 to 2 seconds. Minimum delay between cuts while holding the button. Zero requests a cut on each applicable editor tick. Larger intervals reduce repeated work but may leave gaps when the pointer moves quickly. The first click applies immediately.

Preview Color Default: green, linear RGBA (0.2, 0.8, 0.2, 0.35). Changes the viewport brush outline. The preview is a circle in the landscape's XY plane, not a decal conformed to every slope or a preview of tunnel geometry.

Auto Modify Materials Default: enabled. Allows automatic visibility-mask preparation of supported writable project materials. Disable it after manually configuring complex material graphs.

Settings are saved per project and editor user. Radius shortcuts are saved as well. Invalid radius, interval or non-finite color values are corrected to valid values.

MATERIAL SETUP

Landscape visibility requires a material whose effective Blend Mode is Masked and whose final Opacity Mask includes Landscape Visibility Mask. The plugin checks the component's existing hole material first, then its landscape material. Existing material assignments are retained.

Automatic preparation supports: - A standard material with the root Opacity Mask input. - A Make Material Attributes node connected directly to the material's final Material Attributes input. - Material instances whose parent material can be prepared and whose Blend Mode overrides do not conflict with Masked rendering.

When an opacity expression is already connected, automatic preparation multiplies it by Landscape Visibility Mask. It preserves that original expression, output selection and channel settings. An already recognized visibility-mask connection is reused. Unconnected Make Material Attributes nodes are not used as a substitute for the graph's real output.

Automatic changes are made only to writable, uncooked project base materials. Engine materials, plugin-owned base materials and read-only files are not rewritten. A material already configured correctly can be used without needing automatic modification. To customize an unprepared protected material, create and assign an appropriate project-owned copy, or prepare the material yourself in its owning project.

Material instances share a base material. Changing that base can affect every instance and object using it. The plugin refreshes dependent instances after its changes and after Undo/Redo. Save the changed material when you intend to keep the setup. The plugin marks assets dirty but does not automatically save them to disk.

Manual preparation for complex graphs: 1. Open the material that actually supplies the landscape or hole surface. 2. Set its effective Blend Mode to Masked. Check any instance Blend Mode override too. 3. Route Landscape Visibility Mask into the final Opacity Mask. If you already have an opacity mask, combine them so a landscape hole remains transparent while retaining your existing mask logic. 4. For functions or layered material attributes, make the connection in the graph that actually reaches the final output. An unused visibility node alone does not make the material correct. 5. Compile and save the material, then turn off Auto Modify Materials in Easy Landscape Cut.

Graphs using functions, layered attribute chains or Substrate Front Material may require material-specific work. Automatic setup is not guaranteed for every custom graph or rendering configuration. The tool does not replace your material with a fallback, force texture switches, or infer custom grass controls from parameter names.

EDIT LAYERS AND STREAMED LANDSCAPES

Cuts go into the requested editable visibility layer. Hidden, locked, procedural or otherwise unsupported targets are refused. If the brush overlaps locked levels, locked landscape actors or unregistered components, the stroke is refused rather than partly editing that region.

For World Partition or streaming proxies, load the owning Landscape actor and all terrain sections you intend to paint. The operation works with loaded landscape data; it does not load or edit every distant tile for you. Visibility from other edit layers can affect the final merged result, so inspect the landscape's complete layer stack if a cut differs from the selected layer's data.

COLLISION, GRASS AND UNDERGROUND GEOMETRY

Unreal rebuilds the visibility result and associated collision through its landscape update process. Wait for that work to finish before testing the opening. The brush radius calculation does not use the reduced collision-mip grid, although landscape resolution and collision settings still affect the final edge detail.

Landscape Grass requires visibility-aware density logic in your material setup if it should disappear at openings. The plugin does not automatically erase painted foliage actors, PCG output or objects created by another spawning system. Configure those systems separately.

A landscape is a surface, not a solid underground volume. Build tunnel interiors from separate meshes or another terrain system. Give walkable floors and walls suitable collision and check the transitions at the cut boundary in your own level.

TROUBLESHOOTING

No brush preview: Check that the pointer is over the editor viewport and an actual landscape collision surface. Move away from an existing hole, or remove an intervening collision obstruction from the picking path. The tool does not paint during gameplay.

Several edit layers are available: Set Edit Layer Name to the intended visible, unlocked visibility-paintable layer. Check spelling and whether the layer supports manual editing.

Material needs manual setup: Follow MATERIAL SETUP. Check the material's final output and the effective Blend Mode of its instances, then disable automatic modification for a manually authored complex graph.

Material is not a writable project material: Use a prepared material or an appropriate writable project copy. Check source-control checkout or file read-only state if the material belongs to your project.

Brush falls between landscape vertices: Increase the radius. Visibility is stored on the landscape grid; the preview does not add terrain resolution.

Brush covers too many vertices: Reduce the radius. A very small landscape scale can put an unusually large number of vertices inside a world-space brush. The tool limits the sampled region to avoid excessive allocation.

This area is already cut: Move to remaining terrain around the edge. Repainting an already cut region does not create extra depth or a larger underground space.

The surface disappears but nearby objects remain: The cut changes landscape visibility. Independent meshes, foliage and other generated objects need their own handling.

Changes disappear after reopening the project: Save the affected landscape actors and materials. Settings persistence and asset saving are separate: saved brush preferences do not save a modified level.

SUPPORT

Discord: https://discord.gg/9Zc4wbwqG9

For an issue report, include the Unreal version, plugin version, Edit Layer Name and layer state, brush settings, material setup, collision mip level, and whether the landscape uses streaming or World Partition. Include the message shown in the tool's settings window and a small reproducible example when possible.