Using a Satellite Material

The satellite material is a global materials that is applied on top of your Instance if the camera is far enough from the terrain. It is especially useful to keep a terrain looking crisp from far away.

To enable it, simply check the option in Global Settings.

Satellite Material in action, starting from a distance of 75 000.
Option

Start Distance

At which point the satellite material starts to appear.

Landscape Resolution

Samples the satellite material at the correct terrain resolution so that it can fit 1:1 on the terrain. You can click on your landscape and check the "Overall Resolution (Verts)" line on the details to see which values to enter. If your terrain is square and its scale hasn't been changed/is not using World Partition, you can click the wand button to automatically get that value.

Min/Max Opacity

Min and Max opacity of the Satellite Map.

The rest of the options are the same as the regular materials, featuring :

  • ORM w/ Support for uniform values (no Individual Textures)

  • Color

  • Normal w/ Invert and Normal Strength

  • Specular based on color w/ Channel selection.

The Satellite Material is sampled on top of everything else, so the landscape can still be cached while keeping the satellite material.

This can also be useful for having a secondary material with much lower UV scale for far away detail without having to exclude layers from caching, for example.

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