Non-Destructive Tools and Internal Properties

Hey Unity team,

so first of all I love Unity and I'm really glad that the terrain system finally got a rework... However, I'm trying to extend it for our project and we have two needs that the terrain system doesn't meet, as far as I can see at least.

1. Non-Destructive Tools
The first one are non-destructive tools like splines that change the terrain height but shouldn't write into the terrain heightmap. I don't use unreal but apparently they have multiple layers of heightmaps that are merged together for the terrain but not in the editor (https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/BuildingWorlds/Landscape/Layers/)
I mean I see that there are "Terrain Layers" but they appear to be texturing only... This kind of feature for heightmaps would solve any problem related to that. Sort of like photoshop layers for heightmaps in the terrain tool.

2. Internal Properties
I know it's always good to keep your code as private as possible but properties that are essential for editing a terrain like brush size, brush strength, etc. should be accessible from the outside... Otherwise it's impossible to extend the tool. I know they are in the terrain editor class but I don't want to use reflection to make our tool work with unity's terrain system.
In that regard I'm a bit sad given that creating tools for Unity was always easier than in other engines but actually accessing the code is not possible in some parts...

It would be a charm if these requests could be considered...

Many thanks in advance

 

I've suggested something like this a while ago (https://forum.unity.com/threads/suggestion-deformation-layers.738368/#post-5263559), usually the answer from unity is, that they're considering, discussing or working on it, but in the end you'll not see anything like it for some years or often nothing at all even.

 

Oh I haven't seen that thread... Thanks for pointing me to it. This ominous Environment System is, next to the forum, only mentioned in a roadmap video (for like 2 minutes)... Doesn't sound like we'll get this anytime soon and it makes finding information about it virtually impossible... It's not even on the roadmap website...