Data maps study with UE4 landscape material

With this one I again put to use the landscape material i've been working on for some time inside the Unreal Engine. I actually tried to extend it so it can handle the data maps exported from Gaea or any other tool like this (World Machine or World Creator). What it does, it blends the data maps with the result color of the layer blending. I added handling of Protrusion / Flow and Velocity maps.

So far how I used the data maps, was that I actually created new terrain layers which was very bad from performance point of view. The above terrain contains only 3 layers (rock, dirt, grass) + additional tilling reduction functionalities, like distance tile size blending, macro texture and now the additional data maps that adds that additional level of detail. The data maps are packed into single RGB file so there is only one texture sample which is a lot better than 3 additional layers (at least 3 :) ). I have no clue atm how to tackle it with World Composition inside UE, but I guess sometimes in the future I will try to implement it....somehow.

Inside World Creator I used those data maps as a separate texture layer, it has some downsides, but I think the WC render also looks quite nice :).

Later I think, I will try to recreate such thing in Unity with usage of Jason Booth's Microsplat terrain shader, but need to find out which features nad how to use them :).

As always terrain made with World Creator standalone PRO and Quadspinner's Gaea. Textures from Game Textures.