[ HELP ] Massive Terrain - NON-LOD Looking for Scale Solution!

Hello,

Here is my current scene, issue will be listed below the photo.



Problem: The white you see is the terrain, is should be brown, however the model terrain is a lower elevation and unity terrain covers it. Additionally the brown which is covered has additional painted detail, so making the unity terrain brown is not an option.

It is my understanding from reading other posts...

1. That you cannot make the terrain invisible.
2. Terrain is the only surface on which you can paint trees, and receive the benefits of the system, billboarding, etc.

So the only thing I can think of is... elevate the offset of my vegetation about another 3m then drop the terrain down below the lowest point. Is this the best way to handle the effect that I want?

 

The "benefits" of using the Unity terrain are often very subtle though. I don't know how large your game is, or how many trees you're wanting, but you might be able to get away with not using the terrain system. You would have to place all of the trees by hand, but you could get the effect that you want.

Another thing to try is placing your terrain on a different layer, and simply excluding that layer from your camera renderer. Of course, if your trees are a part of the terrain, then you wouldn't be able to see them. Which is why I think you should do one or the other.

I don't think your performance will get hindered too much if you don't use the terrain system honestly. Especially now that you can use "instanced" shaders and whatnot.

Anyways, just throwing some ideas out there.

 

Can you tell me about Instanced shaders please? or send the link.

My goal is: Create a massive open world terrain for my game where you can see for miles, using cube style graphics which are hand designed NOT procedurally generated. Which looks like this except in a cube style.

Further details below the following image



The Approach: The square outlined in red represents a tile which is 80x80 voxels converted into mesh to make a box.

the blue square represents 6x6 tiles equals 1 region ( 30 tiles )

The idea would be high detail would be seen @ level 1 or the closest 30 tiles. Now the entire surface area you see in green would be covered in red tiles, however you wouldn't see them that far out.

Each level of detail would eventually become 10x larger than the last until the "curvature" of this imaginary planet makes it impossible to see past the horizon. The effect would be like the image above yet in block style.

Creating a sort of manual false LOD that hides under the more detailed layer as you come closer. Giving the appearance of mountains and various terrain in the far far distance.

I would use LOD, but you cannot really lower the lod on a square of this low geometry already.



Maybe I am approaching this wrong, I am just trying to figure out a system which will allow the style I like, while optimizing very long range distance view without huge popping.

 

Still looking for help on this.