Feature Request Improvements that I would like to see made to the terrain system

I would like the terrain in Unity to receive some improvements
1) I want the paint tool for trees to have filters similar to those from details (Brush Mask Filters)
2) I would like the vegetation (details) to be able to have LODs (similar to trees). That would help a lot on the performance side.
3) I would like to be able to create custom shader graph materials for the terrain
4) The terrain can have several layers (more than 8)
5) Other things I would like the terrain to have: terrain/object blending, anti tiling, tessellation, triplanar texture
6) To be able to create roads on the terrain using the new spline system


The terrain in Unity is very useful but a bit outdated (many other users share the same opinion). I would like that in the future (probably when Unity 2023.1 / 2023.2 is released), the terrain system will receive some significant improvements (workflow, performance, optimization, etc.).

I'm sure these things aren't hard to implement, and they shouldn't be, considering how big Unity is as a company. Please listen to the feedback of the users on the forum in order to bring other improvements to the terrain ^ ^

 

it took them nearly 10 years to add holes to the terrain. Good luck getting 1 feature request for the terrain system into the system. That obsolete junk seems to be stuck with us forever.

 

Meshcollider support for trees.
trees could follow ground normal, so we could paint rocks as trees on ground.
LOD support for details.

 

Thank you for the answer!
By the way, considering that the shader graph will have better support for terrain, I assume that we will be able to have terrain/object blending, anti tiling, tessellation, triplanar texture, I'm talking about number 5

 

"Anti tiling" means repeating textures. A problem that the default shader ( terrain shader ) has is that the textures are repeated.


This problem can be solved with shade graph, there is even a package for this: Package , youtube video

There are assets that solve this problem, but it would be preferable to have a built-in solution. If there is no solution, at least we have the possibility to solve this with shader graph (for terrain)

 

Yeah hex tiling should solve that just fine after shader graph get terrain support. I feel like surf grad package should be merged into shader graph by default, it's too usefull.

 

Well, since a new guy is taking over the Terrain (not the first one, but let's get our hopes up again).
The current terrain system is pure junk. Let's be honest. There are a trillion assets on the store trying to fix and add what the default terrain system should do.

1) One main thing to fix: performance. Terrain on mobile is horribly bad. To the point of it been avoided at all cost. Everyone who wants decent performance creates the terrain, then convert it to a mesh. This doesn't make any sense, a super large terrain mesh runs faster on mobile than the Unity terrain. This has been the case since the Iphone 2.0 and Android 1.

If someone could improve that terrain performance keeping Mobile in mind, it would be awesome.

2) I brought up this several times over the years. One thing that performed just fine on Unity terrain, probably the only thing, was the Tree Creator. I had 40k trees draw on my Iphone 3, about 10 years ago. Just by drawing the trees and hiding the terrain rendering (because as I explained in point 1, it is SLOW). It worked just fine, it created billboards automatically and then switched to those based on distance.

I can't figure out why, and I will never will, this feature was not implemented the same way on details and grass. If you created billboards from the grass mesh and displayed those based on a defined distance, it would work wonders. Right now we have to do this using asset store stuff, when Unity terrain already did this with trees.

Please, add it to the pipeline for grass.

 

Same answer was provided 8 years ago, 6 years ago, 4 years ago... you may guess is already a running joke for most of us. The way we see things with Unity is that they won't do anything for years and just wait for the technology to get fast enough. It's been like this for most unity "performance improvements".

We lost hope guys. Hard to win our trust back.