Unreal Engine 5 Environment Art Masterclass - Landscape PCG

Name: Unreal Engine 5 Environment Art Masterclass - Landscape PCG
Rating: 3.0 (4 reviews)

Create a full Landscape Master Material, Nanite Trees, Foliage, Splines and PCG

Created byJan Benkwtiz

Last updated 11/2025

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Create a complete Landscape Master Material with all functionalities
Create an Environment with PCG
Create a detailed Nanite Tree
Create detailed Nanite Grass Foliage
Create a Spline Path with TemporalDither
Cinematic Lighting
Water Shading with Depth Fade
Learn to use the Movie Render Queue
OCIO - Color Management for Export to DaVinci
Learn the Essentials about Textures and PBR
Parallax Occlusion
Endless Material Functions
Learn how to use Displacement
Create a 5km Landscape in GAEA and import into Unreal Engine 5

Course content

6 sections • 39 lectures • 20h 39m total length

Introduction1:52
Learn Unreal Engine 5 environment art by building a cinematic forest, muddy road, and mausoleum with Blender, Substance Painter, Gaia, and Nanite PCG, plus dynamic landscape materials and wind-animated assets.
The Black Spruce Tree8:48
Lets discuss what we will create in the first section. Its about a black spruce. An unsettling and scary Spruce Tree I always dreamed of creating.
Modeling the Branches of the Black Spruce1:35:10
Texturing the Branches of the Black Spruce in Substance Painter23:53
Modeling the Trunk of the Black Spruce21:53
Texturing the Trunk of the Black Spruce in Substance Painter22:04
Create the Black Spruce Tree1:00:41
Import the Black Spruce into Unreal Engine 5 with Wind Animation55:20
Import and animate a black spruce in Unreal Engine 5 for landscape PCG, using wind animation and nanite foliage. Set up an HDR backdrop, skylight, and post-processing for rich lighting.
End this Section with a short Quiz

Create a Tiling Function9:33
Create a landscape material and a tiling function to control texture coordinates in Unreal Engine 5, exposing a scalar tiling parameter in a material instance for adjustable near tiling.
Distance Blend Function11:26
Add Texture Functions23:00
Add Layer Functions1:10:26
Create and organize landscape material layers in UE5 by building MF layers and MF albedo controls, enabling saturation, tint, brightness, contrast, and Fresnel-based specular with roughness, normals, ambient occlusion.
Adding Paint Layers29:47
Organize landscape painting by creating the MF layers material function, wiring layer zero one to three with albedo, normal, roughness, and ambient occlusion, and applying a slope responsive rock layer.
Download Textures11:33
Pack RGB Channels - Roughness - Displacement - Ambient Occlusion6:02
Learn to pack the red, green, and blue channels in Photoshop to fuse roughness, displacement, and ambient occlusion into a single PNG for Unreal Engine landscape materials.
Paint Landscape Materials25:47
Height Blend Function10:11
Add Slope Function33:55
Learn to build a slope-driven material function in Unreal Engine 5 that blends albedo, specular, roughness, normal, and ambient occlusion across landscape layers using alpha and slope falloff.
Create 5km Landscape in GAEA27:03
Create a 5 km Gaia landscape by blending alluvium, erosion, and multi fractal layers, export a 4k height map, and import with precise Unreal scale.
Add Parallax Occlusion Function19:32
Add Parallax Occlusion with Displacement and LightVector51:31
Add Runtime Virtual Texture to the Landscape28:18
Enable RVT Height Blending Mesh Material39:23

Create the Grass Foliage50:03
Learn to create grass foliage with speedtree, build base albedo, normal, roughness, and opacity textures in Photoshop, refine in Substance Painter, and export optimized grass clumps.
Prepare Grass Foliage13:25
Texture Grass Foliage19:35
Import Grass Foliage to Unreal Engine 5 and create Subsurface Material22:37
Import grass foliage into Unreal Engine 5 and create a masked, two-sided subsurface material with parallax occlusion; paint and blend grass across a landscape with color correction.

Setting up PCG39:18
Learn to create a dark spruce forest landscape in Unreal Engine 5 using PCG to scatter grass, trees, and Megascans assets with surface sampler, mesh spawner, and transform points.
Finish PCG System12:59
PCG Spline Path19:01
Final Steps for the Environment1:03:43
Water Shader with Depth Fade10:53
Create a Cinematic with the Movie Render Queue59:02
Export with OCIO and Import into DaVinci with Color Input12:51

Requirements

You need to know how to open up Unreal Engine 5

Description

Hey there, future environment artists! Welcome to the Unreal Engine 5 Environment Art Masterclass: Create a Cinematic Black Spruce Forest. I’m thrilled you’re here to dive into this 20-hour journey with me, where we’re going to craft a jaw-dropping, foggy, and just a little unsettling black spruce forest that could easily star in a AAA game or cinematic masterpiece.

Picture this: you’re standing in a dark, misty forest. Towering black spruce trees sway gently in the wind, their branches casting eerie shadows. A muddy tiretrack road snakes through the scene, leading to a haunting mausoleum glowing faintly under cinematic lights. Thick, volumetric fog curls around the grass and stones, creating that perfect, spine-chilling vibe. By the end of this course, you’ll be the one building this world from scratch, using industry-standard tools like Blender, Substance Painter, and Unreal Engine 5.

Whether you’re a beginner dreaming of breaking into game development or an intermediate artist looking to level up with next-gen techniques, this course has you covered. We’ll start by sculpting a high-poly black spruce tree in Blender, unwrapping clean UVs, and texturing it in Substance Painter. Then, we’ll bring it into Unreal Engine 5 as a Nanite asset and make it dance in the wind. From there, we’ll create a master landscape material packed with pro features like parallax occlusion, runtime virtual textures, and automatic slope blending. You’ll also learn to craft a dynamic tiretrack road with spline meshes, master Procedural Content Generation for scattering foliage, and build custom grass to bring the forest to life.

The grand finale? We’ll tie it all together with a cinematic scene, importing a mausoleum scan, adding ultra-volumetric fog, cinematic lighting, and all the moody details to make your portfolio pop. This isn’t just a course—it’s your ticket to creating something that screams “hire me” to game studios or indie projects.

No matter your skill level, I’ll guide you step-by-step with clear, hands-on lessons. You don’t need to be a pro to start—just a passion for creating immersive worlds. So, grab your coffee, fire up your computer, and let’s get lost in this dark, beautiful forest together. Ready to make something unforgettable? Let’s jump in!

Who this course is for:

This course is for artists getting into Unreal Engine 5
Artists who want to create impressive worlds in Unreal Engine 5
Artist who want to create their own Assets and not copy paste Megascans

Unreal Engine 5 Environment Art Masterclass - Landscape PCG

What you'll learn

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Course content

The Black Spruce Tree8 lectures • 4hr 50min

Landscape Master Material15 lectures • 6hr 37min

Tire Track Spline4 lectures • 3hr 6min

Creating realistic Grass Foliage4 lectures • 1hr 46min

PCG - Procedural Content Generation in Unreal Engine 57 lectures • 3hr 38min

New Vertex Paint Master Material1 lecture • 43min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: