Control Rig
This week, I also worked on Control Rig to test character movement in Unreal. In the Forward Solve graph, I set up a Full Body IK (FBIK) node and connected several effectors to drive the character’s body parts. I used this to check how the limbs and body follow the controls, and I tested the rig in the viewport to see if the movement stayed stable. This helped me understand a basic Control Rig workflow for quick animation and blocking inside Unreal.
M⁴ (M4) Landscape System
I tested the M⁴ (M4) landscape system in Unreal Engine for my Narcissus project. Last week, I felt the normal landscape brush workflow was too slow, and my terrain material looked weak. This week, M4 helped me get a better result faster, especially for terrain look and surface detail.
I learned that M4 is built around an auto landscape material and biome / preset style workflow. Instead of painting many layers by hand, I could start from a preset and then adjust parameters in the material instance, such as roughness, colour balance, and the blending between different ground types. This made my terrain look more believable with less manual work. The ground also felt richer, which is important for my project mood, because Narcissus needs a calm and poetic space for reflection.
I also worked on vegetation. M4 uses the Landscape Grass Type system for fast procedural spawning, so grass and small plants can appear based on the landscape material layers. I explored the grass settings and replaced some of the default vegetation with my own choices, then added small details to break repetition. This step quickly made the scene feel less empty and more natural.
Another topic I started to understand is RVT (Runtime Virtual Texturing). M4 provides a quick setup tool, and RVT is useful for caching landscape shading and improving blending between landscape and meshes. Even though I am still learning it, this gave me a clear technical direction for cleaner surface results.