Official Create Landscapes and Terrain Faster

Description
Creating landscapes for your interactive experiences can be difficult. Unity's new Terrain tools help make that process a lot easier.

This session will showcase some of our latest terrain tools like custom brushes for sculpting, material painting, generating holes, and using scripts to interact with the terrain.

You can download the assets used in the video here:
Unity Terrain Samples
The Hidden Valley

When
Tuesday, April 14th @ 9am PST

Where
Watch the session here.
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______________________

Together with this session we are also hosting a Q&A here in this thread to answer as many of your questions as possible.

A team of product experts from across Unity will be available starting after the session. Our Community team will continue to field questions for the next two days to foster an ongoing discussion with the community. Please feel free to ask your questions in this thread.


Some basic rules

• The thread will open up for questions on Tuesday, April 14th @ 9am PST.
  
  
  
• Don’t bundle multiple unrelated questions in one reply. One question/topic per reply.
  
  
  
• Only questions related to the topics of the roadmap session are permitted.
  
  
  
• All questions will be fielded by our Community Managers (@LeonhardP and @AskCarol)
  • Replies will have to be approved by the moderators to show up in the thread.
    
    
    
  • Once approved, the questions will be forwarded to the relevant experts.

We really look forward to hearing from the community.

Thank you

 

Hi Studivo, yes, it is in Youtube, but you can access in this link: https://resources.unity.com/unitenow/live-sessions-to-inspire/create-landscapes-and-terrain-faster
At the moment, the demo assets from the talk are not available to download, but you can access our Asset Store page and download other assets to create nice scenes: https://assetstore.unity.com/publishers/1

EDIT: these are the packs I used
Unity Terrain Samples: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/textures-materials/terrain-tools-sample-asset-pack-145808
The Hidden Valley: https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...ley-stylized-low-poly-environment-pack-112859

 

Hello @Christin2015!

The videos are available to rewatch at any time at the following link: https://resources.unity.com/unitenow/onlinesessions/create-landscapes-and-terrain-faster

All of our sessions will be available on unity.com/unitenow.

To ensure you don't miss any sessions as they are released, add Unite Now to your calendar here.

 

Hey Studivo, when you open the Package Manager, you can scroll to "Terrain Tools" and the button to download the Samples will be on your right. Remember to set "Show preview packages" by clicking on the button on your right top window.

 

Hey there @noeqplease, as the video advances, you will see the demo project running in Unity, in there I will show how to use some of the features explained at the beginning (including where to locate the Terrain Tools). This talk was more about the updates on Terrain Tools than creating a terrain from scratch (I am sorry for that, maybe we should have clarified more).

But we do have some nice materials where you can just learn this

Some useful links, where you can find similar topics and know-hows:


Brackeys (How to make Terrain in Unity!):

Building beautiful worlds with Unity's new terrain features - Unity at GDC 2019:

Digging into holes: https://blogs.unity3d.com/pt/2020/01/31/digging-into-terrain-paint-holes-in-unity-2019-3/


Streamlined landscape creation with new Terrain Tools - Unite Copenhagen 2019:

At the end of the video, we also show some nice links to our Unity Learn page, there are many tutorials there on Unity Editor

Hope that helps.
Cheers

 

No worries! Once they are released, they are available for rewatching later. You can access them anytime at that link

 

Yup, thanks for the feedback and you are right, we should have clarified more. Hope those new links will be useful for you

 

Hey @studivo I will try to answer this one but I believe this is a question for another topic.
If you sign up in the Unity Now page, you should have all the links in your email.
Also, in the blog post, you can add to your calendar and then you will get all the links.
Here is the link: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2020/04/01/were-bringing-unity-to-you-unite-now-starts-april-14/

There is also a post where you can find the Forums for the talks: https://forum.unity.com/forums/unite-now.484/

And the Unite Now page: https://resources.unity.com/unitenow

 

Hey @Feartheway, there are a few ways of doing that.
You are right, doing this directly with the terrain will lose the collision, since it is using the terrain collision data.
Also, through terrain scripting (API) I think would be hard (performance wise), since you would have to iterate through all the details in your terrain (I will try to ask this to our Engineers working on the terrain tools, so we can get probably a better answer) - but maybe doing this once at runtime (to add a collision at runtime, as you said) it could work (and then you would trigger this when needed, I believe).
You also could add your own Prefab game object and iterate through the detail positions to spawn/instantiate when you need (of course, not in an Update, maybe also create a Pooling for this). So I think what you want to do might work.

 

Hey @Feartheway, to bend I saw some developers doing this using custom game objects with scripts and colliders (can be triggered). Idealy is not instantiate and enable it all during runtime, maybe per chunks or region depending on your scene. Also, if you are a programmer, I would encourage you to try the new DOTS (Data Oriented Tech Stack), which you can achieve dozens of hundreds of objects interacting in a better way with your player or any other game object (well, in this case entities, which replaces the game object - but you can mix them).

 

Hey there @Ares13 ,

You can create big maps and terrains using the multiple terrain system (with Terrain Tools, which will help you). I recommend creating a big terrain width and height, but splitting in many tiles, so each tile will be a smaller terrain. They will connect when you paint (meshes or textures). You can use heightmaps to import or export, or layers also as you said, but I don't believe it will work as you want with the current Terrain Tools. Good news is, we are creating a new Environment system and we should have more updates still on 2020.

But for custom worlds and procedural creation, maybe it will be better if you create your own procedural mesh generation system, so you can also customize how textures are loaded and create those effects you saw in that game (I don't know how they did that, maybe also checking how procedural works and some topics about their system).

The current terrain (the one you saw in my tech talk) does not current support integration with ECS, but as I said above, our new Environment will have many new features, which we will say more throughout 2020

 

Hey @ROBYER1
You can use terrain API to extend the creation of brushes, but not, at the moment, to create any new slot in your layer based system. We do not have plans to add that for now, but we have a new Environment system coming and will have more news throughout 2020.

 

I recommend you to check the Roadmap video (if you did not already), where we say a bit more about what is coming for world-building. This is the link where it starts:

I still don't have much more information besides that, so stay tuned in our blog post and Unity social channels to know more, still for this year

 

Hey @raysoyama can you provide a screenshot of your prefab that you are using as detail? This should not happen. Also, check if your Navmesh is scanning for colliders or meshes instead.

 

Hey @unity_2023284 are you using the latest Unity 2019 version? URP or HDRP (or neither)?
Try also closing and opening again the windows/layouts in the Editor (for example, go to Window - Layouts - Default).

 

Hi @seldemirov , strange, it should work, what tool are you using inside Terrain? It will not work with Grass or Tree details, only with Textures, Sculpts, etc. Also, go to Edit - Shortcuts - Terrain and see if the shortcuts are there.

 

Hey Seldemirov
Could you solve this? I wonder if you use a different version and try the shortcuts again it helps. I was checking here and could not find a single case that this happened. Also, if it is still happening, could you please submit a bug report? You can find more about how to do this here.

 

Hey there @DragonRider

No worries

Try these settings:
- A terrain with a 2049x2049 heightmap resolution (it can work with less, but the details will be smaller).
- If you import the terrain samples, I used the "builtin_brush_4". It can work with other brushes that has similar details you saw on the video.
- I added a Noise brush mask filter, scale varying between 26-30, frequency 1.45 and 3. The rest are default. The more you play with these values, the different (maybe better) results you might have.
- Painted a high slope mesh
- Use the hydraulic option (I decreased the strength value to 10-20%, so I could see it painting with the details).
- I did it without a texture (layer) first, so I could see in the blank map.
- I used the latest 2019.3 version, URP or HDRP.

Usually, heightmaps that are not big, will not end up doing the effect you want.
Maybe that's the reason.

 

Great that it worked for you

 

Hey @unikum
It is a complete new system for sure, it will have grass support as we did before, but I can't say when it will be available, sorry. If you have a game in production already, it might be good to try some different systems to see if it will work for you. Remember to stay tuned here in our roadmap: https://unity3d.com/unity/roadmap

 

Hey @Waterlane, sadly it will not be available for 2019.