Better Looking Vegetation
When you first put vegetation on the terrain you’ll most likely notice it doesn’t look right. That’s why you need to change some settings to make it look natural and believable.
Firstly, go to the Terrain tab and click on Vegetation. For this tutorial I’m going to assume you’ve already placed your vegetation etc.
What I love about the vegetation in Sandbox 2 is you can edit it all in one go after you’ve placed it on the terrain, makes it very handy. Click on the vegetation you’ve already painted on the terrain so we can get started. I’ll be using grass, but the settings are the same for all vegetation.
The Settings
Not every setting is critical to making the vegetation perfect, so below is a table of the important values and what they do.
| Setting Name | Description |
| Size | The maximum size a type of vegetation can have. |
| SizeVar | How much the size varies amongst vegetation. |
| RandomRotation | Allows you to have the vegetation randomly rotated. |
| AlignToTerrain | Places the vegetation on terrain so it doesn’t clip. |
| UseTerrainColor | Blends the vegetation with the texture color below it. |
| CastShadow | Choose whether you want vegetation to cast a shadow. |
| RecvShadow | Choose whether you want vegetation to receive shadows on it. |
| UseSprites | Whether or not you want to use sprites if you’re far away from vegetation. |
Recommended Settings
Well now you know what each one does I’ll tell you what settings I believe work best!
| Setting Name | Recommendation |
| Size | Really depends on the type of vegetation, best just to test it. |
| SizeVar | Around 0.5 to 1 will get best results. |
| RandomRotation | Definitely set this to true. |
| AlignToTerrain | Without this your vegetation will just look weird. |
| UseTerrainColor | Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t - definitely try it out though, |
| CastShadow | A ‘must use’ setting. |
| RecvShadow | Set this to True. |
| UseSprites | You’ll notice a performance hit if you disable this, but it does make the grass look much better at further distances. |
UseSprites You’ll notice a performance hit if you enable this, but it does make the grass look much better at further distances.
Total opposite of what it really does.
UseSprites IS MEANT TO INCREASE YOUR FRAMERATES AND MAKE VEGETATION LOOK WORSE.
Oops, you’re right. Forgot to proofread. I’ll fix that up now.
thank you SOOO much this made my map look from newb to pro!! <3 thanks a bunch dave
Is it not possible to change how many instances of a type of vegetation is placed within the painting thing?
Seriously I can’t stand that it creates like 50 trees in a radius of 2 meters! I have been trying to find a way to change this for days! AAAH!
Chetic, then you have marked alot of vegetation, open the vegetation group up and select the ones you want.
Actually the problem was that I was thinking that since the density was 1 and if I wanted less dense vegetation I would lower it (to decimal values)
But it turns out, as noone writes anywhere (or I’m just blind), that the density decreases while the value increases. Kind of odd…
Yeah, it’s weird and doesn’t really make sense. They should switch it around, or rename it to Stagger or something…
Forgot, you should go over that Pickable value, I previously thought that this meant you could touch it, and when you bump into it it’ll move…not sure what it really means though. And the Bending property, can’t figure that one out. The elevation and slope min and max, should be reviewed too, just for noobs that don’t know it yet, as they are very useful properties.
In reply to Chetic.
“Is it not possible to change how many instances of a type of vegetation is placed within the painting thing?
Seriously I can’t stand that it creates like 50 trees in a radius of 2 meters! I have been trying to find a way to change this for days! AAAH!”
Use your “density” setting for this, lets say “15″ makes a good value.
Crytek uses mostly “15, 20, 40″
with this my vegitation looks plain sexy.
for those of you who dont understand the density thing the reason wy the higher numbers make less is because its the distance the vegatation is from eachother
How do u make it so your vegetation moves when u touch it cuz mine dosnt ?
The non painted vegetation ?
I can only see my vegetation when I am close to it , how do I do so I can see it from far distance