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Introducing Mesh Terrain: Craft Large Complex Worlds | Unreal Fest Chicago 2026

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Description

Introducing Mesh Terrain: Craft Large Complex Worlds | Unreal Fest Chicago 2026 is an Epic-hosted Unreal Fest session presenting Mesh Terrain, a mesh-based terrain system in Unreal Engine aimed at open worlds that need overhangs, tunnels, and non-uniform detail beyond classic heightfields. Speakers demonstrate how artists author surfaces with destructive-safe modifiers while staying in the engine landscape tooling orbit.

The talk covers non-destructive sculpting workflows, variable resolution patches, integration with Procedural Content Generation graphs for scattering and biome rules, and comparisons to heightmap landscapes on large maps. Environment and technical artists see live editor manipulation intended for AAA-scale outdoor content.

Viewers should use Unreal Engine at an intermediate level and understand landscape layers, materials, and PCG basics. The session targets teams evaluating next-generation terrain for Unreal 5.x rather than programmers writing custom heightfield engines from scratch.

Recording is available on YouTube from Unreal Engine official channels with chapter markers for major features. Feature availability follows Unreal Engine release notes and documentation updates referenced during the fest.

Unreal Fest terrain announcements are primary sources for Unreal open-world teams; Epic's terrain roadmap sessions are commonly bookmarked by environment leads when planning engine upgrades.