Looking for some ideas

Hey fellow Unity users, currently in a small dilemma as far as my design goes. I am goofing around with the tools on Unity and decided to try my luck making a snowy mountainous game.

My big issue with the design so far is that I seem to lack the creative aspect of what a snowy cliff like area would look like. Ill be honest. Im down to using free assets right now. I am not code-inclined so making my own tools is a bit out of my reach right now. I was hoping to find a tool like ShaderForge for making icicles and snow accumulation. instead ill be using a different shader tool which isnt bad by any means but realism will take a small hit for it. I know my scene still needs trees, bushes, some sort of water or ice and of course a windy fx. maybe a fence..? I know ill probably get some flak for starting my map at the edge but I planned to give it some illusion of height and block out the bottom of the map, add a plane around the terrain with billboard trees to add to depth. Any input would be appreciated!

 

Everything looks alright, except for the last image. I see what you mean by "what a snowy cliff like area would look like"
My advice, go to a sandbox with a funnel. Let sand fall through the funnel and make mountains. In fact, make an entire terrain. That should give you a good idea about how terrain sits.

 

What reference images are you using? If you're not working with reference images, considering minimizing Unity temporarily and find inspiration material on google images first.

If you are using reference images, what parts are you having trouble reproducing? Lighting? Geometry? Camera angles? Scale?

 

Thanks for replies guys. TonyLi, I have been scouring Google images for inspiration on what would look nice. Its been a hassle since a lot of images dont involve what I have started to build. Some older videogames have a good idea so I have been using some pics for reference. I have never been able to get my terrains proportionally correct, but I planned to attempt the use of illusion to give it a feeling of vastness.

My biggest issue without a doubt is placing items withing the game that make it feel "alive". I started importing some boulders and rocks, scaling them up to form cliff like structures. Next would probably be an old wood fence along the cliffside. I want to make it look convincing but not have to sacrifice much performance with overuse of effects.

 

While I don't recommend you approach buying assets with a "build my game quick" mindset, if you are interested in designing terrain/worlds, you might research Gaia or World Machine. Gaia is Unity specific, World Machine I think is a separate 3d application.

These will give you a comprehensive set of tools designed just for what you are doing.

But... you still need to do the due diligence of reference collecting, studying, etc. These assets won't build the terrain for you. They will give you more powerful tools to build what you envision more readily.

 

This is a great opportunity. Save off your current scene as "draft #1". Then start again from an empty scene, this time grayboxing everything. Avoid textures or any other details. Only use untextured primitives. This will let you get your proportions right and playtest for the feeling of vastness and life that you want, without the visual and technical distractions of details. You may need want to do this a few times until you get the result you want in graybox. Then either add mesh details (without textures) or lighting. Once you're satisfied with that, add the other (light or mesh details). Then add textures. This is the way most professional level builders do it.

Or, as BIGTIMEMASTER suggested, use Gaia and maybe get some of @Shawn67's nice stamps for Gaia.

 

Appreciate the responses guys. Will do that. It certainly makes sense.

Gaia, while I would be very interested in using this program, I havnt found much documentation on snow or icy mountains. The video by the developer made some awesome landscapes but they were not quite what I was looking for. I dont know if the program has what I need.

CTS was another program that seems to have what Id like to use but would be best suited to work with Gaia. Since im not quite an experienced developer yet I am a bit hesitant to spend that kind of money.

TonyLi, I will definitely try to build a map again based on your input!

 

You could import some height maps of actual real snowy mountains, and either build off them directly or use them as a model for inspiration.