Vertex paint on splines works in Unreal Engine 5.5, but it doesn’t work in earlier versions. I also made a landscape shader that I could use to paint ground foliage.
Set Dressing & Decals
Once the scene was assembled, I started set dressing to enhance the level of detail. During this stage, I’ve added fallen leaves, branches, moss, and decals. The most convenient tool for set dressing is Dash. It has a Physics tool and scattering that is convenient to use.
Creating moss for this scene was a bit complicated, and I used two different methods. The moss on the roof is made using decals. I created a tileable moss material and then made several opacity masks that I combined in the shader within Unreal Engine. For the moss that appears close to the camera, such as on the sign, I used moss cards. I created small moss cards in SpeedTree and scattered them on specific objects using the Dash tool. Afterward, I manually adjusted their shape by removing some of the cards.
Lighting
First of all, I set up the ambient light. For that, I used Skybox with a matte-painted sky, SkyLight with an HDRI map, and a Directional Light.