Does the new terrain support holes?

I need proper holes, not just a shader, collision mesh hole. So it can support proper navmesh and so on.
This must be something that was asked for years, right?

 

It was mentioned somewhere that this is planned to come in one of the next versions (i think it was one of the unite talks)

 

I wonder if the terrains with holes will be editable with polybrush as if they were regular meshes?

 

Terrain holes won't be available until 2019.x per R&D Roadmap session at Unite LA 2018.

 

Would definitely be cool to be able to make caves and things. Good stuff.

 

I'm hoping the support for holes are genuine ones - that is physics + particle collisions and the likes will pass through it.

 

I actually felt that it wouldn't be because I've dabbled with physx API - it's not exactly a trivial thing... so well done you lot. Hows you do it, move away from heightfields to mesh?

 

While you're at it, please fix the triangle winding (to zigzag) for better collisions and shading. That would make the terrain finally viable for me (*prettyplease*).

 

Neither of those matter though. It does per-pixel shading and if you look at physics options you have the control over terrain collision in there...

 

Seconded, this question, @ChrisTchou -- are these standard meshes, or are they perhaps 3d vector displacement maps (a la zbrush) converted to meshes?

It sure would be nice to use polybrush on mesh terrains with actual overhangs. Instancing terrain meshes via GPU would be possible with this displacement method too...

 

I was merely talking about the physx geometry, not what's rendered, to clarify... not important

 

For a moment, when i read this, i hoped that i really might have missed something. But then i re-opened 2018.3 just to find that nothing changed:

But maybe you mean something else.
(This is what i mean: https://forum.unity.com/threads/terrain-bad-subdivision.166891/, sharp cliffs in not highly tesselated terrains are not really feasible because of the triangles being aligned in one direction only instead of alternating for example as in the diamond square algorithm) It's such a minor change, but a worthy one.

 

Holes alone, even if they're "real" fully functional holes, only solve half of the problem. The other half is caves and overhangs, which still won't work due to the top down projection limitation of standard terrains. Without going to 3d voxel or mesh based terrains, it will still be difficult to produce scenes like these for instance:



I'd like to see more integration between meshes and terrains - being able to designate a mesh as part of a terrain set, and use the same texture and planting tools on both to allow seamless blending.

 

Have you try increasing the heightmap resolution?

 

That's like saying if my lowpoly game doesn't look correct, i have to go for highpoly instead of fixing it. It's a choice to have a less tesselated terrain, but to be forced to increase the resolution as a compensation mechanism, when the fix is not too complex and probably wont even have any sideeffects just feels unnecessary. In my case, i don't want the look of highly subdivided, round terrain, but ideally use all the benefits of having a terrain (and not have to resort to meshes).

 

This is really good news and should be just perfect for the tool I'm working on: https://forum.unity.com/threads/sim...errains-soon-to-be-on-the-asset-store.587803/

Some people told me that my tool will be useless "as the new terrain system will have caves built-in", but my understanding is that you will only provide the possibility to make clean holes, not the possibility to sculpt cave mesh at the same time. Am I right? Please let me know if my tool will still be useful with the new terrain system or if I should just abandon it.

 

I think the holes support is likely to be just removal of geometry and updating relevant systems so your system would appear to be a good companion for that.

This is because logically, Unity can't assume what would be within that hole from game to game.

 

Thanks, that’s what I thought. Indeed Unity can’t assume what we want to do behind the holes. As you said, my tool would just be a nice companion for that feature as it would allow people to quickly create natural caves/overhangs without the need to use a modeling software. But of course this won’t be useful for someone who wants to create an artificial road tunnel for example.
Just wanted to be sure I’m not doing this for nothing

 

@ChrisTchou @hippocoder
Hi! Any news of the future terrain hole feature? Is it still planed for Unity 2019.2?

It's too bad the Unity roadmap doesn't have any entry concerning the new terrain system BTW

 

No idea, I guess now they're done with shadow moon getting out of bed and scratching his nuts + the latest raytraced cars, we may see some trenches stuff everyone actually NEEDS like holes, vegetation rendering.


(I loved the demos but we are hurting for terrain improvements, frankly).

 

Are there any News regarding Terrain Holes? Does not seem that even 2019.3 has anything new about it. ;(

 

It will be in alpha 6 last I heard, just be patient.

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/preview-of-2019-3-features.678820/#post-4644433

 

Hello, I downloaded the alpha 8, and the paint hole option is indeed there, but it does nothing.

Left clicking on the terrain, with a 100% opacity brush, in Paint Hole mode, does not work.

Is there something obvious I'm missing?

(This happens with a terrain created in that version, and a terrain with or without being created from a heightmap)

 

GPU still draws extra tessellation vertices on Terrain Holes? So its working more like an alpha channel. What is the cost of these?

 

As far as i understood the videos these are real holes, including physics etc.

 

yes collision meshes updates correctly but i can clearly see tessellated unnecessary vertices.

 

physics, navmesh, etc work correctly but regarding the rendering itself, yes this is just transparency in shader, controlled by a new property called _TerrainHolesTexture.
(please let me know if I'm wrong)

 

Also, unless I missed something, this is not supported by LWRP/URP yet.
I'm testing right now with Unity 2019.3 beta 1 and URP 7.0.1 and I can't paint holes to the terrain (it does nothing).
Did I miss something?

 

It seems you have to use the Standard rendering path (no LWRP or HDRP) to actually see the holes. Otherwise they will not be visible. But I am really disappointed about how they look. The holes are obtained be removing terrain polygons, no smoothing added. This cannot be used in a real game/project, I hope they will improve the looks, otherwise it's kinda useless.

 

It's not useless, that's the way it's typically done for reasons. You wouldn't use a raw hole in the terrain in a real game anyway, but build a cave/tunel/etc into it.

 

Just so you know, I updated Digger and Digger PRO to use this new feature with Untiy 2019.3 and by the way I added hole support to LWRP and URP.
But even without Digger, it looks like you'll get it working soon thanks to this commit that was merged on master: https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...mmit/3106f8376c8667a6b083be120ef8ea2bd62d8a96