Placing Trees

You can use the Terrain Tool to quickly and easily place any number and combination of mesh objects in your level.

You use this tool to place vegetation such as trees, shrubs, and grasses around and inside your maze.

In the following procedure, you group multiple tree types into a group or category and then paint the trees into your scene. You also learn how to adjust the tool properties to customize the tree placement.

Note
Be mindful when placing a large number of mesh objects, as performance can suffer if there is too much vegetation.

To paint trees into your scene

1. In Lumberyard Editor, choose Tools, Terrain Tool.

2. In the Terrain Tool, choose Vegetation.

1. To paint different types of trees into the scene with one stroke, you must set up a category.

   To do this, under Vegetation, click the Add Vegetation Category icon.

   In the New Category box, enter TreeNear-Aspen-Oak. Click OK.
   

2. Click to select the object category that you just created. Then click the Add Vegetation Object icon.
   

3. In the Pick Geometry dialog box, navigate to StarterGame\Objects\Natural\Vegetation.

   Select am_aspen_01_group.cgf. Click OK.
   

4. To add another tree type to this category, click Add Vegetation Object again.

   Select am_oak_group.cgf. Click OK.
   

5. To paint with all the objects within the category, select the category name (which is selected by default at this point). You can also choose to paint with specific objects within the category.

   Set the Brush Radius to 5.

   Choose Paint Objects.
   

6. In the viewport, drag to place a small grove of trees.
   

   With the current settings, notice that the trees are distributed too densely and have little variation between them.

7. To erase the trees that you just placed, hold down Ctrl while dragging over the trees. Continue until you remove all the trees.
   

8. To change the settings for the placement of the trees, select the group TreeNear-Aspen-Oak.

   In the properties settings that appear below the group, set the following properties. Leave all other properties at their default settings.

   • Size: 1.25

     Sets the base size for the objects that you place.

   • +-SizeVar: 0.2

     Varies the size of each object (larger or smaller) by up to this amount.

   • RandomRotation: Selected

     Rotates the objects in random directions.

   • Bending: 2

     Sets degree to which wind can affect the object.

   • Density: 20

     Defines the maximum distance between objects.
     

9. Set the Brush Radius to 10.

   Drag in the viewport to paint the trees into the scene. Note
   The Brush Radius setting cannot be less than half of the Density setting. For example, if you attempt to paint with a brush radius of 9, nothing happens. With a Density setting of 20, your Brush Radius must be 10 or larger.

   It can be easy to go overboard and paint an overly dense set of trees. Try to achieve a density similar to the following image.
   

10. Press Ctrl+S to save your level.

11. Press Ctrl+G to play your level.

Next: Adding Shrubs and Grass