Terrain that players dig, build on and save, in a shipping game

Version 1.0 has no caves or overhangs, because the ground is a heightfield, and no Nanite terrain. What 1.0 does not do

Sculpt at runtime

Players shape the ground while the game runs

Raise, lower, smooth, flatten and paint, stroke by stroke, with the ready-made brush tool or from your own Blueprint or C++. Every stroke can be undone and redone, and 32 strokes are kept by default. Texture brushes and height stamps are Experimental.

Sculpt at runtime

Plates and corridors

Yards, roads and rail beds that cut and fill the hill

A plate is a flat area, a corridor a road, rail bed or canal bank along a spline. The terrain cuts the hill, fills the valley and slopes the sides back to the natural ground. Evaluate gives the cut and fill volumes before you commit, and a committed feature can be undone or removed later.

Plates and corridors

Large worlds

Worlds tested at 64 by 64 km, with the far ground always drawn

Tested at 64 by 64 km with a 1 m cell. Full-resolution tiles stream in around the cameras and the invokers you register (2000 m by default), and a far field draws the rest from an always-loaded coarse copy.

Concepts

Paint layers

Paint ballast, gravel, grass and rock onto the ground

Up to four paint layers per ground point, from 256 layer ids, painted with the brush tool, from Blueprint or from C++. Use the default material with its automatic rules, or your own material with the plugin's layer blend.

Materials and layers

Real elevation data

Start from real ground

Import 16-bit PNG and RAW heightmaps, GeoTIFF elevation models, or a Landscape once, in the editor. The Alpine_Hero sample is 64 by 64 km of the Jungfrau region at 1 m, from swisstopo's swissALTI3D.

Import a heightmap

Multiplayer

One ground for every player, with no network code of yours

On a listen server the server keeps one ordered log of edits and sends it to every client, and every machine ends with the same ground. A player who joins late receives the edited ground, then follows live. Listen servers only in 1.0, and the net layer is Experimental.

Multiplayer

If the ground never changes during play, use Landscape. What this plugin is good at, what it is not for, and how it compares with Landscape, row by row. When it fits

• Alpine_Hero64 by 64 km of the Jungfrau region at 1 m from swisstopo swissALTI3D, with a station yard, a double-track rail formation and a switchback road in cut and fill. Needs the Orrery Alpine Hero Pack.Plates and corridors
• EarthmovingA 40 m plate and a 300 m corridor committed from code, with the cut and fill volumes on screen.Plates and corridors
• RealWorldDEM10 by 10 km of USGS 3DEP elevation around Mount St. Helens, imported from a GeoTIFF (U.S. public domain).Import a heightmap
• World64The 64 by 64 km world. Fly anywhere and sculpt there.Concepts
• MultiplayerA listen server and a client sculpting and painting the same ground, each in its own window.Multiplayer

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#include "OrreryTerrainSubsystem.h"
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void ADigger::Dig(const FVector& Where)
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{
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    UOrreryTerrainSubsystem* Terrain = GetWorld()->GetSubsystem<UOrreryTerrainSubsystem>();
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    if (!Terrain || Terrain->GetEditAccessAt(Where, 500.0) != EOrreryTerrainEditAccess::Allowed) return;
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    FOrreryTerrainBrushBP Brush;
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    Brush.Kind = EOrreryTerrainBrushKind::Lower;
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    Brush.Centre = Where;
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    Brush.Radius = 500.0;
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    Brush.Strength = 30.0;
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    const int64 Stroke = Terrain->BeginStroke();
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    if (Stroke == 0) return;
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    Terrain->ApplyBrush(Stroke, Brush);
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    Terrain->EndStroke(Stroke);
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}

This example in the guide, with the answers each call can give

Machine for every row unless the row names another, Intel Core i7-12700H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU (6 GB), 32 GB RAM, Windows 11.

Graphics card time the terrain adds

Over the same view with no terrain, in a Development build with Shader Model 6, on the 64 km example world with a plain sky and the default material, 2026-10-31.

Thread time

In the same build and world at Epic, with nothing else running, 2026-10-31. The plugin starts no threads of its own. Its background work runs on Unreal's task system, with limits you can change.

Memory and disk

On the same world, with a 3 km residency radius.

One scene against Landscape

Whole-frame graphics card time, 1920 × 1080 rendered, with Lumen and virtual shadow maps off, two paint layers and no painted weights, 2026-10-28. This is one comparison with these conditions, not a claim that either is faster in general.

Machines it ran on

These are what we tested, not a line between what works and what does not.

Costs by pass and by part, threads, and how to read them on your own PC with `stat terrain`, in any build Plugin costs in the guide

Refunds go through Fab Support under Fab's refund policy. List prices in US dollars.

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