How to make realistic landscapes

So I want to make a landscape with variety. By that I mean if I had a dirt layer a moist one would be on top a flooded one would be near it etc. Like some grounds that have dry dirt on it will have a little dirt mound but the mound would be moist and then if there was a puddle on the dirt there would be some parts on the dry side that would be wet due to the water splashing.So I was wondering how I could do this. I was thinking vertex paint maybe? And also how do I make it where if some object were to fall on the dry dirt the impact causes dirt and dust to fly then when the dust settles down it effects its surroundings but when an object lands on a part with wet dirt a little dust flies out but most stays because it is wet. And if the abject were to fall on water the water splashes but also effects its surroundings like makes dirt wet.

Here is a pretty useful, in-depth tutorial about creating a landscape materials:

Landscape Material Tutorial Part 1 (Unreal Engine 4) - YouTube

This covers things like displacement, layer painting, as well as a nice wet effect. In terms of sound and particle effects based on what objects land on, that can be defined in your landscape physics material.


Can this method be used to make something like this? The video did help but I want to make something like this

It certainly can! One surprisingly challenging aspect of landscape materials can be getting the displacement to work correctly. Thankfully that series goes into displacement pretty heavily as well as tessalation based on camera distance which handle it with performance in mind. There are also some text posts tied to that particular series which can be useful for additional information