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Greymarch
Joined: 07 Jun 2007
Posts: 83
Location: Augusta, GA
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 Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:56 pm Post subject: Enhanced Terrain Features |
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1) A way to cancel/abort calculation of lightmaps (an absolute necessity!!)
2) Ability to get realtime shadows on the terrain. If it can do it on any object and has the distance falloff controlling the area that it's creating the image from, why can't it apply to the terrain surface as well?!
3) Type in value fields for all sliders. It annoys me to no end that every time I re-open Unity if I need to clamp terrain to a specific height I can never get the slider to increment the same or get exactly the same numbers with the slider.
4) Visual representation of brush size (another absolute necessity!! it doesn't have to represent the shape, just the total affected area size)
5) Selection area calculation of lightmaps or multiple lightmaps per object. For example, I could either select a limited area of the terrain in which to calculate the lightmap at the specified resolution, or rather than 1 large lightmap spread over the entire terrain calculate several (# configurable) maps then pack (or not) them into one image (ie. one 2048x2048 terrain size with 9 1024x1024 lightmaps calculated on a 3x3 segmentation of the terrain and packed into a user defined final image size or left individually loaded). The last realtime engine I worked with divided the terrain into a quad or oct tree and each quad leaf could have the lightmaps calculated or not for it and each at whatever resolution desired so focal areas could have higher res maps and distant one could be left empty or set at lower resolutions.
6) Rotation variation for brushes. I can vary the height and width of trees but not the rotation they're placed on the terrain. If I choose a shaped brush to paint trees or grass they will always place in that orientation. Why can't I select a random or min/max random rotation of the brush for more variation in the look while keeping a specific shape type of placement.
7) Unlock(able) height to width variation for trees. Why does the variation of how tall my trees are have to be exactly the same variation of their thickness? |
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Eric5h5
Joined: 19 Jul 2006
Posts: 6930
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 6:38 pm Post subject: Re: Enhanced Terrain Features |
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| Greymarch wrote: | | 2) Ability to get realtime shadows on the terrain. If it can do it on any object and has the distance falloff controlling the area that it's creating the image from, why can't it apply to the terrain surface as well?! |
Because the terrain shader doesn't support it. (Shadows only work on shaders that have shadow support built into them.) I think this is under development though?
| Quote: | | Why can't I select a random or min/max random rotation of the brush for more variation in the look while keeping a specific shape type of placement. |
Because trees are rendered to billboards when they're beyond a certain distance. Although maybe there could be a few set rotations that could be randomly chosen? It's not really possible to have any arbitrary rotation, but that might be a compromise.
| Quote: | | Why does the variation of how tall my trees are have to be exactly the same variation of their thickness? |
Because two trees which are different heights but the same thickness would have to be two different models. So this isn't feasible. The only way around it would be to have a procedurally generated tree system, where the trees could be physically generated with different parameters for height/thickness. But then you'd run into the billboard problem again....
--Eric |
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Greymarch
Joined: 07 Jun 2007
Posts: 83
Location: Augusta, GA
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 6:50 pm Post subject: Re: Enhanced Terrain Features |
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| Eric5h5 wrote: | Because two trees which are different heights but the same thickness would have to be two different models. So this isn't feasible. The only way around it would be to have a procedurally generated tree system, where the trees could be physically generated with different parameters for height/thickness. But then you'd run into the billboard problem again....
--Eric |
But you can have two trees from the same single mesh that have different heights but the same thickness with the 'tree height' and 'tree width' sliders which aren't tied together, you just can't have them currently with different variations for height and width because those two sliders are tied together. Why can't my heights vary by 50% but my thicknesses by only 5% or the other way around is what I was getting at. |
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Eric5h5
Joined: 19 Jul 2006
Posts: 6930
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:47 pm Post subject: Re: Enhanced Terrain Features |
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Oh, the width...that's not really thickness, that's just scaling the tree in the x/z dimensions as opposed to y (height). As to why the variations are tied together, not sure....
--Eric |
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Dragon Rider
Joined: 17 Jan 2008
Posts: 279
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| Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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Here's one that you missed:
8)Fix the Lights/Projectors problem. The only kind of light that I can get to affect the terrain is a Directional light, which works fine, but Point and Spot lights do nothing to it. The ability to Project things onto the terrain ( burn marks, shockwaves, WoW-style selectrons[Pardon the Torque terminology]) is a must-have.
Other than that, there's not much I can think of.
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Aras
Unity Graphics Developer
Joined: 07 Nov 2005
Posts: 3171
Location: Unity Technologies
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| Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Dragon Rider wrote: | | 8)Fix the Lights/Projectors problem. |
We're on it. As well as shadows and other things.
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Dozycow
Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 14
Location: Sydney, Australia
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 7:09 am Post subject: Re: Enhanced Terrain Features |
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| Greymarch wrote: | 4) Visual representation of brush size (another absolute necessity!! it doesn't have to represent the shape, just the total affected area size)
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I'll second that one. Don't shoot me for saying this but I liked the Torque integration of this which had a colour gradient which represented the area of effect. Even a simple visual representation like in photoshop would be useful.
Can I add...
9) Some progress indicator for when you are Importing a Heightfield for the terrain, just so you know that its working and that Unity hasn't crashed  |
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AngryAnt
Unity QA Engineer
Joined: 25 Oct 2005
Posts: 1914
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
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Dozycow
Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 14
Location: Sydney, Australia
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| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 5:16 am Post subject: |
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I've got another one.
10) When you import a heightmap the byte order options are Mac or Windows, since Macs are using Intel processors now wouldn't this be better to have the options read Motorola or Intel?
Or perhaps some other clarification such as Motorola (big-endian) or Intel (little endian), as the difference is ordering is processor based and not OS based.
More on ordering can be found here for anyone interested - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness |
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Eric5h5
Joined: 19 Jul 2006
Posts: 6930
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| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 5:33 am Post subject: |
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IBM would be more appropriate than Motorola. (Macs haven't used Motorola processors since the G4, but even a lot of G3s are IBM. Motorola pretty much just does, what, cell phones these days? IBM is still heavily into POWER and PPC.) Best not to mention specific companies at all, but other than that I agree.
--Eric |
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