From 2D to 3D wip

So, I'm making the leap to Unity (from flash) and this would mark my first-ever attempt at 3D anything. I've been working on this game for many months now, but I've decided to try to make some of the backgrounds from the levels into actual 3D models without actually changing the 2D game play.

I'm finding it to be incredibly difficult. So far, I'm only using Unity's heightmap tools, but it's very hard to use for precision.

I was hoping that I could turn my "Hills" picture into a real 3D environment, but I need perfectly round hills and not these blotchy ones. Should I be using a completely different program for this?

 

Hey man.
Your game looks cute, like the artstyle. Mind telling us what it's about?

As for your question: I'd stay away from unity terrain as far as you can as it's pretty broken and borderline unusable without heavy use of 3rd party tools.
I'd recommend to just model the hills in blender, or if you have to know-how just write a simple heightmap-to-mesh script for yourself instead of relying on unitys buildin stuff.

That’s much cleaner, more reliable and not engine dependent.

Good luck with your project!

 

Hey Barzona

How 3D do you want your game to be?

I'm wondering if using Meshes (terrain or otherwise) is the best approach for you. Perhaps you could use a bezier solution?

Also, the blotchyness of the terrain is partly because of the shader you're using. It may be that an unlit or toon shader would help you get the style you want.

 

It's an adventure/avoider about dodging fruit and fighting bad guys. It's explained in more detail on that steam page I linked if you're interested.

I'll give Blender a try, but I'm still extremely new to 3D models. I've been a 2D man for so long that it never came up.

 

2.5D, really. The idea was to just make 3D backgrounds for the levels, but the sprites and gameplay elements would stay 2D. It's more of a design decision than having anything to do with functionality. If I can't make this work soon, I'll probably try to just keep everything 2D like it is in the flash game.

Alright, this is all new stuff to me, so I have some learning to do.

 

One thing you could do is instead of using an actual model for your terrain, if you know how to 3d model IDK, but if you do you could model your moutains right, well, then get a perfect orthographic camera angle of it (In your 3d modeling program) and RENDER it, and save the render as a png or tga with transparency... There's your non-CPU killer background and you can make it as real as you want in a 3d program. If you want it to look like a real friggin moutain IT WILL LOOK LIKE IT, I mean with every bump and all, if you modeled it that way, that's a great way on making really great backgrounds as they can look as real as you make them with that image.