Is it possible to specify/define areas of a static mesh (or landscape)
where you don’t want foliage painting to plant instances?
E.g.
Imagine a desert terrain that has sparse but specific areas of grass around many oasis.
It would be nice to simply brush the painter over the whole terrain knowing instances of grass will ONLY be planted in specific areas of the terrain.
This would be much quicker than having to go to each and every oasis on the terrain to paint the local foliage.
If this is not possible with any workaround could it be a future feature, i.e. ‘Mask based foliage painting’?
I imagine it could work similar to the ‘ground_slope’ painting logic.
E.g.
you could select a greyscale texture/material (i.e. your foliage painting mask) that represents the terrain surface (at least 4096x4096 for minimal pixelation and better colour checking accuracy). When painting, only white areas of the mask would receive foliage instances and black areas would not.
So,
Instead of:
IF (ground_slope < 45) add_new_Instance() ELSE do_nothing
it could be:
IF (mask_pixelcolour_at_planting_point > 0.5) add_new_instance() ELSE do_nothing
I have used a somewhat similar feature in another engine in the past.