Thought I'd start this topic to see if I could get some informative insight to something.
I'd recently been checking out Unreal Engine 4, Lumberyard (Crytek 3 I think?), Unity, and some other engines... basically looking for one that would best 'fit me like a glove' for prototyping and/or developing a full game. It's basically down to LW or Unity for me at this point... each has its pros and cons that I'm sorting through.
It struck me how wildly complex some engines are in the area of terrains and terrain materials, compared to others.
For example, with engines like Leadwerks and Neoaxis, or even Unity3D, for example, terrain is super straight-forward. Create the terrain, set some basic parameters, import a heightmap if appropriate, assign textures to the correct layer elements, and you're off and running in a few minutes, at most.
Then, I look at other engines like Unreal Engine 4 or Crytek and their terrain systems are just nuts. The amount of work required just to get a basic terrain setup - nevermind terrain materials - is mind-boggling to me. I was following a video tutorial on setting up a terrain in UE4 and finally just said "oh forget this.. this is ridiculous".
What I'm wondering is... is there a good reason why UE4 and Crytek's terrain systems need to be so complex? I've seen other engines that allow you a lot of control over your terrain materials' appearance - Esenthel, for example, offers tons of control, and has a far more intuitive setup process, though it's a bit more involved than Leadwerks or Neoaxis to set up.
Are they doing anything that couldn't also be accomplished through Leadwerks system's approach, even if it means adding some more tools to the set?
Josh, or anyone else with first-hand understanding of this topic, could you provide some insight to this?
This isn't a veiled "which engine is better" post, and I'm not trying to start a religious debate over which is better. I'm just wondering why the folks at Epic, or Crytek(Amazon) would go to such lengths to yield results that can be duplicated (or darn close anyway) through far more straight-forward and streamlined methods?
Thanks