what is unity’s terrain engine capable of?

hi there,

we all know about the limitations of the built in terrain engine, but what can we still achieve using it? and how?
this is a thread about showing your terrains, landscapes and all the related stuff.

so just post some pictures, webplayer or whatever showing your efforts on working on natural environments.

i hope this will end up in a nice overview of what can already be achieved.

lars

 

or watch it in action: http://bit.ly/zFLUEa

tools used to create the terrain:
- geo control for heightmap
- unity terrain toolkit on basic texturing: http://sixtimesnothing.com/terraintoolkit/
- advanced terrain shader v2 for bump mapped terrain, waving grass and foliage such as fern and blackberry and advanced billboard shading: http://u3d.as/content/forst/advanced-terrain-shaders-v2/2Bo
- unity’s tree creator for modelling the pine trees

the terrain uses just 3 textures but all with bump maps assigned and a modified version of the ats terrain shader to reduce tiling artifacts especially on the rock texture.
grass is planted as mesh model – no billboards or simple quads. fern and blackberry are placed as game objects outside the terrain engine (to make them cast shadows) but are batched on rendering and culled at about 70 meters so they are pretty cheap to render.

lars

 

Looks cool. Very RPG like.

 

These are some screenshots of the prototype forest scene I put together for my project.





This is an example of a 3rd person terrain where you are constrained and can't look off into the distance - basically a diablo cam. This gives you more freedom to be heavier on the amount of content and you don't need to worry as much about LOD and sweeping vistas - although I intend to try and do this with some kind of cliff scene at some point.

My philosophy with my project is to create smaller scenes (terrain) with denser detail and richer game content vs having lots of open space where you need to find stuff. You end up moving among many smaller scenes that simulate different places (story setting) in a seemingly lager environment with an overland map to keep things in perspective - like the Baldur's Gate approach.

The scenes used art assets from the Nature Pack on the asset store and the free Unity Terrain Package and some models from Dexsoft.

There are 4 ground textures and I used the modified terrain shaders to do bump mapping. It also uses dual lightmaps with the ruins and terrain baked. It has some post processing effects including SSAO and DOF.

Everything was done with the terrain engine tools, such as sculpting and placing trees, bushes, grass, mushrooms etc. - all of which was time consuming. The rocks and ruins are hand placed models.

For my gen2 prototype I want to start off with procedurally generated maps for everything which should give a more organic look. I also want to invest in tools to automate placement of objects that are instances of prefabs such as stumps and logs. I just need to invest the time to learn the tools and workflow.

There are some more screenshots on my blog under media.

 

Botumys first fantasy world shows that the unity terrain engine is capable of the most beutifull scenes

 

I've combined these 3 things:
Shader from this: http://u3d.as/content/allegorithmic/substance-terrain-tool/2pv
In combination with this script: http://blog.sixtimesnothing.com/2010/10/bump-mapping-for-built-in-unity-terrain/
And we generate terrains with this: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/118820-TerrainEdge-3-(need-testers-feedback-ideas-etc)

Besides massive artifacts when using more than 4 textures, I have no complaints.

 

@Michael Schenck: that looks pretty nice.

 

My terrain work, some of it is quite old now.

Seasons Change

Glacier

Tools, large terrain generator, photoshop, terragen

Terrain shaders used for bumped specular.

 

Most terrain tool extensions for Unity seem to have the slope/elevation rules - so I've decided to start working on some other types... starting with flow-map-controlled splatmap generation...






I'm really liking some of the work others have done on their terrains too.

EDIT: Legend411 - Did you use any procedural generation for the 1st and 3rd terrains? They all (including the 2nd) look great - and I'm guessing tri-planar shader on the rock textures?

 

@Syanyde: that looks pretty cool. nice efforts on extension.

lars

 

I've posted these before, but I figure they're appropriate here

 

@legend411: Can you give us a short list of tools and techniques used to produce the terrains or a link if you have already explained it elsewhere

@Syanyde: Your terrain tools are getting better and better, I will definitely take a look at them when I get to working on my next prototype

 

A test to create a swamp (top down view)

 

Great stuff guys, gave me a few game ideas just looking at these !

 

What did you use to make that?

 

Here are two shots from an on-going project.
I think I'm going to find out just what Unity is capabale of .
.

 

Looks like this:
http://sixtimesnothing.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/displacement-mapping-with-unitys-built-in-terrain/

 

That looks great TerraSame!

 

Very nice work botumys - looking forward to seeing more or is this your next LandscapeElementsV02 ?

 

Nice work Michael
can i ask what size terrain sizes you use?

thanks
Hans

 

Trees in this scene are from landscape elements 1

 

My work so far







BTW it needs a lot of improvements, such as lightmapping and a high res heightmap

Here's my discussion about it ---> http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/12...errain-how-to-achieve-a-udk-or-cryengine-look

PS I saw a lot of beautiful terrains here, could someone tell me how to create a high resolution heightmap in unity or from a 3rd party solution?

 

@Hans - These are the terrain settings for that scene if that is what you are interested in:



@botumys - I really like your swamp scene. Any tips on how to do the lighting in the distance which seems to combine well with fog, especially in the third snapshot - am I seeing water reflection here making it seem brighter?

 

Heres something I have been working lately.

 

@KurtLoeffler: very nice. looks as if you have some kind of volumetric fog...

lars

 

@ Michael Schenck Freakin' epic... this is probably the most realistic environment I have seen in Unity, THUS FAR!

EDIT: Here is something I've been putting together in my current project, getting used to Unity's Terrain toolset... I wish I could have used smaller textures for the rocky parts of the level... And learned how to use Beast in some of these designs.

 

This is EPIC!!!

 

Thanks, I like your work too! I don't know why, but now I want to play again with baldur's gate 2 but using your graphical style !
In this project, I used DOF and color correction using Z to change the background's atmosphere (more blueish for back and higher yellow/red for foreground) . I have big particles moving to simluate fog and mist. And I used the water 3 shader (I replaced foam by little plants floating on the water's surface).

I'm glad you like my work

 

my latest work



Please leave a comment if u like it or if u can just tell me what to improve

PS this is a old preview, as I am looking for better textures

 

@cod: very nice efforts, but:
> 5000 draw calls seem unacceptable to me... come on: it is just a terrain!
i guess you will have to lower the hightmap resolution and raise the pixel error amount. i think a scene like yours (without any trees, grass and of course any other game objects should not force more than 200 draw calls max!
it is no big deal to create a very high res terrain if you just do not look at performance at all. so:

- lower your hightmap resolution
- raise the number of pixel errors
- lower the the number of the basemap distance
- add fog to make it look more realistically and hide all artifacts produced by the steps mentioned above

- use bump maps to compensate the low res hightmap

finally: show us your terrain not causing more than 200 - 300 draw calls.

lars

 

Neptune_Imaging,

What cloud system are you using?

 

you are absolutely right, btw I wanted to show the best resolution on terrain. I have removed about 2000 drawcalls from a helicopter and a airplane in the scene, and using terrain's LOD I can achieve various results :

With 1 pixel error

with 5 px error

really low resolution (200 px error)



is it good this? If u have any other question just leave a reply

 

Sorry, just noticed this. I use World Machine, Tom's Terrain Tools and farfarer's triplanar terrain shader. I posted a short explanation a while back in the old WAYWO thread here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/70252-What-Are-You-Working-On?p=762817&viewfull=1#post762817

 

How about some more sexy terrain from ground level?

 

The sky was created in Vue

 

That is cool...now if I could do this with Vue

 

awesome stuff:

 

@legend411

this is amazing ! love the textures and their organic feel.

 

How to create good looking terrains? Practice.

 

rofl that picture cracked me up! lol

 

A bit old thread, but I guess some screenshots apply (from my RTP 2 package):

 

Some great looking terrains in here!