Its embarrassing how primitive Unitys terrain and open world solutions are in 2023

I remember trying to use the terrain tools in like 2013 and compared to UE4 they were absolutely weird. Looked weird and just primitive with the tools. No auto layer options that places specified instanced meshes on certain layers, no nothing. Now I am checking out the terrain tools in 2023 again and I am shocked how bad those still are. Cmon Unity, not everyone wants to spend hundreds of hours making the most performant world partition system. Unreal takes a fraction of what I am trying to achieve visually but hey, there are always market place solutions right? Stop trying to experiment with random features nobody is interested in and finally make and extend the core tools. Identify what may be difficult to do for smaller developers and give us robust solutions for those instead of announcing new tech and abandoning it after.
I wished someone in the dev team would finally wake up and push unity to be more artist friendly. Identify why your competition is the choice for almost every industry artist and take it from there. Not only is having artists using your engine to create beautiful worlds and scenes a great ad for your engine and new users but it also helps the community as well. Please, I know you guys probably have the resources so identify what problems smaller teams may have and provide robust solutions

 

I've mentioned this before, but yeah. The fact that overhangs and caves are still "yeah, so just model those somewhere else and then use our janky hole painting solution" is honestly pretty embarrassing. This is made even more embarrassing when you consider how "implement a modern terrain system" was one of the highest voted requests on Unity Answers when it was shut down and was first posted in 2013.

 

I think the "hole" system in the terrain tools is usable, if you think of it, it can be an awkward process to do it like an sculpt program for example xD, with the hole thing you can create your cave like a geometry in your 3d software and place it next to the hole (like almost any game) i'm sure i'm very ignorant of this subject, can you show me which game engine has a better process for that, please? i would like to compare.

 

Sure, it's "usable" in so far as I've been able to build custom tools on top of it to do what we want. Cut out a hole, replace it with a custom mesh, clip that mesh against other things, etc. etc.

That said, the purpose of using an off-the-shelf engine is that it's meant to do the common stuff for you, so you can focus on the unique stuff. So I can completely understand why people were a bit bummed when the Terrain update a while back was some iterative improvements on the same system.

 

maybe tecchnology is very difficult to create... btw, do you know a "off-the-shelf "game engine with a better workflow for this very common stuff? like creating a cave in a better way, i'm very curious and interested on that feature, or that "auto layer options that places specified instanced meshes on certain layers" that can be useful

 

To people with the capability to make a game engine, this isn't a hard problem to solve.

O3DE's workflow is immediately nicer.

In Unity we have an API which allows us to flag each terrain cell for being a hole or not. So if we want to have a GameObject which we can place to specify where there is a hole, we need to write at least two bits for ourselves - the hole cutter, and then some little bit of smartness to deal with when we have multiple hole cutters and/or multiple terrains.

Those bits aren't hard for an experienced programmer to put together, but to a level designer or an artist it's a showstopper. And it has to be done before we can attach the hole cutter object to the front of our cave or the basement of our building or whatever and position it somewhere.

In O3DE, that's ready off-the-shelf. Immediately, an artist or designer can decide "I want this bit of the level to go underground" and just do it, non-destructively, without programmer support.

 

I just think it’s incredibly disappointing. Its 2023, give the people tools to do what they want. I dont think myself as a solo developer is very interested in studying hundreds of hours on how to build a better Terrain system is very productive as I cannot even promise results. A team as skilled and populated as Unity is surely capeable but I guess we re working on something new experimental that may work or wont. Seriously check out how disciplined unreal is with their solutions. They didnt show nanite and Lumen until they made sure it pretty much worked and when they delivered, it works. They wont abandon it or get overwhelmed with the tech. Maybe its a bad comparison but it’s notorious how the unity team just abandons interesting things after a while and wont listen to community demands. Clearly shows a lack of vision and direction…

 

https://unity.com/roadmap/unity-platform/3d-world-building
something like this should ve been implemented years ago. Scattering objects / foliage by layer. Having the option to use tri planar based on angles for a base and then use brushes to paint custom details. This approach would making good looking terrains 200x faster and better looking. Instead the out of the box solutions want us to paint large worlds by hand and place every grass mesh with a brush instead of using smart solutions by layer. Its not even an excuse of complexity. If some people on the marketplace manage to do it, so should a team as funded as unity.

 

I wonder, how many games are there released and sold fair amount of copies, which do have holes in the ground, with caves and and overhangs. Something that can not be solved with props otherwise.

Question is, if amount of released games with such features, reflect the worth effort to implement as such.

 

I don't think a single Bethesda game has terrain holes. Not that I would call their Frankenstein's Monster of an engine cutting edge...

But then you have games like both the recent two Zelda games and ones like Elden Ring where they were clearly using very sophisticated terrain tools, including terrain holes among other things. And in those examples - particularly BoTW/TotK - the terrain adds a lot to the experience.

So I think having some more advanced terrain tools is definitely something Unity should provide.

 

It's not a matter of "can not be solved with props otherwise" but that this represents a workflow issue that has existed for over a decade. This is something that CryEngine has supported since at least 2009.

 

I remember them announcing some improvements years ago, but it seems like nothing major came from them.

 

How is it nicer to create a volume instead of painting immediately on the terrain?

Note that I do not defend Unity's solution, it's just the O3DE's solution is the same thing: create a hole on the terrain, create the cave system in a software made for creating meshes and import it back. I don't see where the difference is.

 

The terrain holes is a useful feature but not necessarily for creating caves. Painting holes in inaccessible spaces helps speed up light baking while placing holes under cities (structures) should improve performance.

As far as I remember, terrain hole doesn't affect the collider which means it doesn't change the process of creating caves.

 

Making a cave or bridging terrain can be navigated around using a blend shader etc. what Imho should absolutely be worked on is a better terrain streaming system out of the box and better procedural terrain painting tools. Placing grass and rocks procedurally based on a layer mask natively. I watched the URP terrain youtube tutorial and was shocked to see them painting the entire terrain by hand. This is like 2010s tech. Unity literally did like no effort to improve those essential tools. This is really embarrassing for a company of that size… but hey maybe another render pipeline next year.

i hate to bring out unreal but they had a really solid open world terrain pipeline in 2014 already and recently they added new tools ontop that are incredibly powerful. What does this show? It shows other than team unity unfortunately they are much better in identifying pitfalls teams may have and try to provide better tools for them. They have a new system utlizing splines and SDF creating nice terrains quickly. Unity seems to be stuck in 2010. Again, not trying to hate on unity. The engine does alot of things right but its frustrating to see how disconnected the team apparently is
Just feels like every team or department at unity is disconnected and dont work towards a common goal so every department spends their time toying around with features they realise they cant maintain any further and yeet it out sooner or later or just abandon it.

 

This is entirely wrong.

 

then tell me what's wrong.

It's exactly how the terrain holes are used in games.

 

i find unity's approach better

Then, dod you know a better game engine with a better workkflow? (o3de's workflow is the same if not worse)

Edit:

wrong, It does...


What i'm trying to say is, maybe we are not there yet, same as why avatar take so much to start being produced? because technology is difficult to evolve, maybe we are not there yet... I'm not a unity's fan boy i know it has disappointed, but if you want to make a point, then show something better that we can compare and properly rant xD

 

Hello! just passing by in implicit "unity don't make game problem" thread.

It's like the unite about the unity physics package, in which unity discover, helping the V rising project, they have to keep separate dynamic objects from static for performance, and try to pass that as "every project is unique", worse is that it was an easy fix, BUT they spend weeks diagnosing that on a real commercial project, introducing risk to that project. It's not malice ...

I stopped commenting on these issues entirely because they cannot get it.

 

I made such a system on blitz3d, using basic language, being a beginner at programming ...

They showed you:
- O3DE
- CryEngine
- Unreal engine 4 and 5
- asset from the asset store

What else do you want as proof? most of them are more than 10 years old! And these features were asked since at least unity 5, where people asked to the CEO on stage about terrain, then after the non committal answer stormed off the conference, incidentally that's when godot started to get traction ...

 

I am not making these post to front unity or sabotage its development. If people seriously say that we should seek another engine or whether I can do it better than unity, thats a weak comeback. Really, all I want is the engine to open up possibilities and make development as seamless as possible. The ideal game engine in my eyes would cater to the most common game mechanics / features (semi open world, or larger worlds in general just are the norm nowadays) so I feel as if Unity, being a game engine company, should maybe sit down and think of various of ways making the average life easier and pool their skills together and give us something robust.
I know even within the community there are many gifted and specialized people who like to do everything with their own system but lets say even if you re good with game logic and programming, that doesnt make megood in shaders or terrain generation etc. It may just not be something I would like to deeply think about when making games. If people want to do their own solution they should be free to do so but I feel an engine should at least offer something head to head as what the competition offers. How long did we have to wait for a shader graph? I think the unity user base is not very diverse and maybe why there arent many people complaining about these things. Most people here are probably more of a technical background. I have good experience in both so and I have used unreal extensively so I know where unreal is definitely better and where it isnt and I can say for sure that the Unreal team is doing a much better job identifying what the community wants and what overall yields better future for the engine. I can say 95% of game industry artist will choose unreal making environments. How huge is the ratio of game artists breaking down their unreal scenes for the community compared to unity? Most of these artist arent technical either, but they have been given tools so that they can leverage the engine quite well. I really hope unity adopts a more frictionless aproach as well.

 

good boy

I'm not asking for proofs... again, i'm not defending unity
As fas as i know, Unreal uses the same approach... painting holes and then pasting some geometry, is not exactly different from unity. (am i worng?)

o3de is IMO worse, is painting holes but with but a volume xD

CryEngine:

Yeah sure lets (slowly) make a hole and call it a cave, sorry but i can not see this as a useful feature, no on that context, but yeah it can be "better",but at leats on that video, imagine creating a complete cave interior like that.

asset from the asset store: i found DiggerPro which looks very cool and useful, is basically a sculpt app inside unity xD definitely better.
Edit: Maybe is not a highly requested feature (i'm talking about companies or studios that DO make games, at least successful games)

 

Company and studio, with at least successful games, will hire specialist to the job, and buy source code access to make their own version of the engine. They can afford because the cost would be relatively cheap (probably one dedicated person) and the return massive comparatively (whole team of artists having a workflow improvement). You can watch some of the making of to see that just happening.

 

It does affect collision and the overdraw issues are only going to be meaningful targeting extremely low end hardware unless you have a remarkably complex terrain shader compared to what Unity offers.

 

I recently played Breath of the Wild and I'm fairly confident that it's just large static meshes. Quite possibly just one for the entire world but it's possible it's one per zone or something similar.

 

its definitely terrain mixed with static meshes i believe.

 

The biggest problem with Unity terrain system is that it forces game developers to either build their own systems or try to piece together something using 3rd party assets. Unity needs to try to build a full game using HDRP, and take detailed notes of what they had to do to overcome the short comings.

It is not really possible for any game developer to build a complete game using HDRP with only Unity's native solutions at this time. For example, set up a Unity terrain and add 8 texture layers. Then add one more texture layer to the terrain, and then watch the entire camera view turn completely black. Or try placing lot of trees and other vegetation on the terrain, and then measure the framerate.

There 3rd party assets to address these issues, but Unity cannot and will not fix these issues for the native built-in terrain solution. The cost of the assets is not the problem. The problem is that game developers end up at the mercy of 3rd party assets, and nobody knows when everything is going to break due to some update in Unity or other assets. Multiple updates in Unity 2021 broke 3rd party vegetation rendering assets. In fact, billboarding in Vegetation Studio Pro still does not work properly with HDRP without unofficial fixes from strangers on Discord. Unity repeatedly places VSP in sales, but the author of VSP has completely stopped answering questions or providing any updates.

If Unity tried to build their own full game using HDRP and their built-in terrain system, then Unity would know exactly what the problems were and would have quickly fixed this mess already.

 

It's a quadtree heightmap field with mesh as cliff...

You can look at the file structure decoded by the mod scene:
https://zeldamods.org/wiki/TSCB

 

Use case: I need to move my cave / building with a basement / crater with underhangs / whatever.

Unity solution: Move the thing. Manually fill in the old hole. Manually create a new hole.

O3DE solution: Move the thing.

That's it. Job done. No more steps. That's why it's better. If you only think about the hole in isolation then, sure, painting it makes perfect sense. But if you think about why you need a hole, and the workflows around what you do with them, then it becomes quickly apparent that painting them is a pain in the backside.

Importantly, that O3DE method (which is pretty similar to a part of the stuff I made for Unity) means that you can make the hole cutter a part of the object which needs the hole. So when I decide to move my building with a basement, or my cave, or whatever, then I don't need to go and paint a bit of terrain back in, and cut a new bit of hole, and then groan when it's not quite in the right spot. You just grab the building and move it and the job is done.

It makes iteration time much faster, which means that you can spend less time doing silly chores and more time on things which make your game better.

I already pointed one out. It's certainly not "the same". As someone in the late stages of a project where we've had to stick many things in the ground with holes, I'll take the O3DE approach over the Unity one any day, thank you very much.

(Like I said, that's equivalent to just one part of the custom tools we made. The more detailed the tools are the more game-specific they'll get, though, of course.)

 

This is the actual link - https://portal.productboard.com/dzcznunfgebtky7ipmhrc22z/c/2211-non-destructive-contextual-workflows

I might just make something like this myself. It can't be that hard. Just layering/masking black and white images.

Map Magic and other tools are constantly spamming console errors.

 

Very interesting. While playing I was paying close attention to the terrain to see if I could spot any seams or the shifting that comes from LOD but I never managed to spot any so that's why I assumed it was just static meshes.

 

Check out Jason Booth's MicroVerse, does this already

 

Digger is a hybrid between voxel for overhangs, and heightmaps for the rest.

 

this. Thats the reason the unreal team quickly addresses problems. They have a core team that actually uses the engine themselves. Whatever fortnite gets, chances are UE devs will also get

 

This looks interesting actually, will check it out, thanks. The problem still remains though. What if dev decides to stop support or the engine breaks this soon?

 

Then you move to an engine that has the tech you need by default, and doesn't charge you both to use the engine AND every time users install your game.