Mesh-Based Tools
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Dash contains various tools which generate geometry: Road Tool, Terrain Tool, Cable Tool, etc...
These tools all generate an actor of type DashPreviewMeshComponent. This custom type allows us to have full control over the mesh generation performance & algorithms.
The first thing to know about mesh-based tools is that a baking icon on the Tools Panel is always just a click away, and will delete tool attached to your mesh, then convert the dash mesh to a regular UE5 static mesh.
There are many reasons why you may want to bake your Dash generated meshes:
Making them usable/visible on other computers that don't have Dash installed.
Using Nanite, vertex painting and other UE features.
Cleaning up your scene of tools you may not need anymore once you're done editing them.
Besides the baking feature in the Tools panel, you can also select the component of this mesh, and it'll have a button Create Static Mesh to convert it to a static mesh.
Creates a procedural mesh to be used as a ground - This terrain can be adjusted as you see fit with the easy-to-use controls within the Terrain Tool. For example, you can control the Height, Turbulence, and UV Scale, but you can also deform it with a height map or with splines. You can find the terrain tool by searching for it in Dash or by finding it in the Create menu.
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, their size, their gravity, and much more! You can find the cable tool by searching in Dash or in the Create menu.
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 CTRL drag and drop a 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 then control the amount of growth, the sizes of the branches and the leaves, and much more. As easy as it can get!
You can of course also open the Vine tool by searching in Dash. Then you can assign an origin (it can be an empty actor or a curve) and a surface you want the vines to grow on. The third way of opening it is by searching for Draw Vines in Dash, this opens our Draw Mode and once you draw a curve you will see we automatically create vines along this curve for you! You can exit this Draw Mode by clicking ESC or the STOP button.
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 need it to align even more to your surface, you can find a Projection Mask under the Geometry section. Then, if you change the spline or the underlying surface, the road auto-adjusts. You can find the Road Tool by searching in Dash.
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.
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 with our normal sliders and toggles! You can find Quick Pipe by searching in Dash.
If you need a mesh in a custom shape, our Draw Mesh tool lets you draw any shape and we create a basic mesh in this shape. You can open it through the Create Menu or by searching for it. Once started you will be in our Draw Mode and once you draw any shape, we will create a matching mesh for you. You can continue and create how many you like and then just exit the Draw Mode with ESC or the STOP button and delete the ones you don't like.
