rdSplatTools User Manual version 1.00
Last Updated: 5th October 2026
rdSplatTools is very easy to use, it shouldn’t take long to come to grips with it and start making your map areas.
To paint your rdSplatMaps, just go to the rdSplatTools Editor Mode (same place as where you would go to Foliage or Landscape Edit).
As you can load rdSplat maps at any time, there is no rdSplat assigned to a level – so when you go to the rdSplatTools Edit Mode to edit an existing rdSplat – make sure to load it from the “Load” button first. It will remember the last mask layers in case you’re wanting them for a new rdSplat and it remembers the last Brush Settings.
The rdSplatMaps Details panel opens with the tools available to paint your maps.
You can immediately start painting, just paint in the same way you paint with the landscape editor. Left-click paints with the brush settings, Shift+Left-click removes paint.
Adjust the Radius, strength and falloff of the brush from the Brush section and paint away.
Note: A good work-flow for creating areas is to paint them with a strength of 1.0 and 0 falloff, then add Falloff manually afterwards.
File Section
From here you can load and save your rdSplatMaps to Baked DataAssets (from the details in Bake section).
I’ll also be added Import and Export options to plain Textures in an update.
Edit Section
Here you can clear the whole rdSplat or just the current layer. There’s also an undo option (ctrl+z also works).
Brush Section
This section describes the brush you use for painting the rdSplat layer. They’re pretty self explanatory and work the same way as the landscape paint brush.
There’s also the option of Line Draw – when enabled, click once to start the line and again when you’re at your desired end point – a line with the current brush settings is drawn.
Falloff Section
This tools allows you to change the falloff amount on a layer at any time.
It’s a lot easier to focus on painting the solid area then adding a falloff afterwards. It’s also very handy if you want to make changes to the layer, just set the falloff to 0, make your changes then set it back.
When “Edge Only Falloff” is enabled – a true SDF type falloff is created, the edge becomes 50% falloff with the gradient reaching in and out from it.
When “Edge Only Falloff” is unticked, a positive Falloff Amount creates the falloff on the outside of the edge while a negative Falloff Amount creates the falloff on the inside of the edge.
Layers Section
You can have any number of Layers in your rdSplatMap, just add them with the (+) and choose a paint color – while editing, only 8 can be visible at a time though. The first time you open the editor there will be 1 default layer.
You can hide any layers by un-ticking their “Visible” property (for Editor only, they’re always inline at runtime if the rdSplat is loaded). Tick the “Active” to select that layer as the current paint layer.
Bake Section
This section describes how the rdSplatMap is saved – whether it’s just one complete map or a set of tiles, either synced with World Partition or you own custom landscape system of choice.
You can specify the resolution of the rdSplatMap here – this resolution is also used during editing, so if you have memory issues, try lowering this to 4096.
The source can be a single map, split up with World Partition tiles, split up with the SM dimensions in a specified parent actor or totaling their size.
There’s also some optimization options there, skip empty tiles just doesn’t create rdSplat Tiles where there’s no painted data and Crop to Painted Area makes the total size of the rdSplat just large enough to encompass the painted area plus skirt.
The size of the skirt is set as the maximum scan size for gradient calculations – if you’re not used those you can set it to 0.
You can also override the options by specifying a Tile Size for each tile. 0 means use the above settings.
The Tile Actor is the actor that contains the SMs to use to tile the rdSplat to. (rdLandTools creates landscapes in this manor).
Using rdSplatMaps during Play.
It’s very simple to use these rdSplats in your games (and they are very fast). You just call an appropriate function from the rdSplatSubsystem – the most common one is “rdGetMaskValuesAt” which returns arrays of values and directions of all layers.
The “Values” are the strength of the rdSplat at that point between 0.0 and 1.0 – if the layer is smooth – if not it’s either 0.0 or 1.0. These values can then be passed to whatever it is you’re wanting to use them for.
The “Directions” are an angle between 0.0 and 360.0 pointing towards the strongest point of falloff based layers. This is 0 for non gradient based layers or if the location is not positioned on a gradient. 0.0 is due North.
For examples on how to use the rdSplat data check out the Tutorials. To find out more about the functions, check out the Reference Manual.