QUICK GUIDE

Dash is a new and immersive approach to world building.
Let’s take a look at the creative process with Dash!
(Work in progress)

Procedural Mesh Creation Tools

Does these tools use a custom mesh type?

The tools below that creates actual meshes of any sort does so with a custom mesh type we have created internally. This custom mesh is highly optimized to work well with the procedural tools in Dash that is creating and adjusting it. If that mesh type is not working for your given workflow or if you want to share the mesh/UE scene to someone that does not have Dash installed, you can of course convert the mesh to a static mesh. Just search for "convert to static" in Dash.

Create Terrain

Creates a simple procedural mesh to be used as a ground - This terrain can of course be adjusted as you see fit with the easy to use controls within the Terrain Tool. For example you can control the UV Scale, Height and Turbulence. If you have scattered some assets on the terrain and want to go back and adjust the terrain, just select the terrain, hit the edit button in Dash and you can adjust the terrain again, and like magic the scattering adjusts automattically to the new shape of the terrain!

Cable Tool

Create procedural cables between splines, objects, or scattered on top of meshes - It comes with a bunch of different settings making sure you can create cables fully procedurally easier than ever before. Perfect for city environments or jungle environments in Unreal Engine 5. Of course you get full control of the amount of cables, the size of them and much more!

Vines

Create vines on the specified surfaces - This is perfect for any forest or overgrown environment as it lets you create procedural vines within 2 seconds on any surface or asset. As vines tend to have leaves on them, we have made it super easy to just drag an leaf atlas from Dash's Content Library onto a surface and in 1 second you have vines with leaves attached spread throughout the asset/surface. You can control the amount of growth, the sizes of the branches and the leaves and much more. As easy as it can get!

Road Tool

Creates a road/path mesh along the input curve/spline - If you ever have felt the need to have a procedural road in UE5, you will be happy to use this! Just draw a spline with Dash, assign it to the road tool and voila, you have a road perfectly matching the shape of your spline. If you change the spline or the underlying surface, the road of course adjusts. And as always you can customize the road with the normal sliders and toggles, getting the perfect result for your environment. Pro-tip, after you have created a road, you can assign it as a proximity mask in Surface Scatter, making sure there are no grass etc on the road.

Quick Pipe

Create mesh pipes along the input curves - If you think it is easy to draw splines just the way you would like to have pipes/cables, Quick pipe is for you. Just assign one or several splines to the tool and you instantly get meshes created along the splines. These meshes are of course customizable!

Create Dust Particles

Create a particle system with dust particles - If your Unreal Engine scene is in need of some dust particles to get the perfect look, Dash got you covered. One click and you got small particles floating around in your scene. You can control the sizes, the speed and direction. Right now it is a simple system, but as it is super easy to use it will definitely come in handy for some of your environment art projects.

Create Fog - Volumetric

Create a dense, realistic volumetric fog - If you want to add even more feeling to your UE5 environment, the volumetric fog might be a good option! You can add it with one click and then adjust the thickness, godrays and other settings to get the perfect look!

Create Fog - Plane

Create a plane with a fog material - We’ve revamped our fog cards from the ground up, and they now feature much better lighting interaction, animation, density control, and everything else you need to give your scene some character. All fog cardadjustments are available from the Material Edit panel that can be opened with the Material icon once you have selected the fog in the viewport.

Create Water

Creates a plane with a water material assigned to it. This must be the quickest way to get some water into your UE5 environment. It is not a advanced water system at all, but after creating the water plane you can adjust the water material through the Material Edit tool in Dash. You can for example adjust the Hue, Tiling, Depth and the wave Speed.