Best Practices for Large Terrains

dssstrkl · March 8, 2026 at 2:11 AM

I'm wondering what the best practice is for a large terrain with multiple biomes. Is it best to create a single large terrain with the multiple biomes, or create each one separately and combine them in Blender or in-engine? For example, the terrain I'm trying to build right now is a 12kmx12km grid with the biomes in vertical stripes that will be wrapped into a cylinder in Blender, and then cut into tiles in Blender and exported as fxb files for use in Unreal.

I'm just wondering if I should continue to use a single large object, or create each biome strip/ring as its own terrain and combine them in Blender. Thanks in advance!

Stefan · March 8, 2026 at 9:33 AM Official Post

Good question 🙂

I think it mainly depends on how complex your biomes are going to be and how many different biomes you plan to create. It can also help to work with multiple Biome Layers rather than just one, as this gives you more flexibility. If you are drawing the biomes manually, this may require a bit more work, but it usually leads to better results.

Personally, I haven’t created a terrain of that scale with a large number of biomes yet, so I’m also quite curious to see which approach works best in practice.

One thing to keep in mind: try not to use too many materials per biome. When exporting or working with the terrain in Blender, there are certain limits that can become relevant. 🙂

dssstrkl · March 9, 2026 at 9:22 PM

Thanks, and your answer about the seamless edges in my other question kind of makes my choice here easier. If you’re going to limit the seamless edges to 4 or 8k (8k, please!), then I’ll need to break the overall terrain in half with 2 6k terrains. That actually works perfectly, since I have a ‘sea’ ring in the middle, and it’ll be super easy to fix that seam in Blender.

To answer your other question, I’m going to have 3 or 4 biome rings on each side, with the sea in the middle. I’m still playing with it to see what looks and feels the best.

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