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[Official] New Terrain System

Discussion in 'General Graphics' started by bibbinator, Jul 4, 2014.

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  1. KheltonHeadley

    KheltonHeadley

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    But instead of 1000 drawcalls you get 1.
     
  2. Eric2241

    Eric2241

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    And that's an improvement I want unity to have.
     
  3. Deon-Cadme

    Deon-Cadme

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    Who are you?

    Professional Game Designer and Programmer, Hobbyist Graphics Artist... etc.
    Going indie and plan to get PRO version when Unity 5 get released

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?

    Mixed genre games with complex game mechanics.
    I use my own voxel-based terrain system with occasional 3D models for complex objects.

    How does terrain fit into that?

    I adapt my own voxel-based system after the needs and requirements of each individual prototype or project.
    There are too many different ways that I use the system for me to start explaining it all here. It can be used for both low and highly detailed terrain (Minecraft, Outcast, Everquest Next etc). It can also be used for objects and other world that got different levels of detail if you generate smaller, isolated chunks. One feature that I personally love is the ability to directly influence the detail level over distance without creating an endless amount of content,

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?

    It feels like the Unity engine could benefit from a standardized voxel framework. It should have optimized systems that handles chunks, loading/ saving with appropriate settings. One such setting should define which mesh generating method that is used. A basic framework could also benefit the asset store. Instead of offering many different voxel-engines, which can still be done btw, people could instead concentrate on developing and selling sub-system assets that easily be made to play nice with each other.

    Interesting possibilities could also grow out from an integrated voxel-system if it as an example allowed users to store the final, mesh with or without textures as a separate object. Why work with deprecated hightmaps when you can simply paint the world, caves and all and then save it?
     
  4. 7DSFinch

    7DSFinch

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    Who are you?
    Indie & Professional systems architect, game designer, coder, etc.

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?
    Interaction-heavy open-world sim / rpg

    How does terrain fit into that?
    Ultra important component of the formula. Needs to stitch seamlessly across multiple terrain types and multiple heightmaps. Big view distances and large navigable areas to support lots of exploration.

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?
    As a lot of people have already said, I think Lars nails down 99% of my wishlist, and the rest of my needs are fairly esoteric. I'm perfectly fine staying away from a voxel solution as realtime deformation is very low on my current list of needs, and I'd translate those cycles to view distance instead. Simulating larger draw distances by using imposters would also make my list, especially if they could be autogen'd procedurally from a single dataset and automatically positioned (I'm doing this myself now, but it'd be nice to have a built-in solution I didn't have to think about).
     
  5. joedezz

    joedezz

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    Who are you?

    Joe, 3D Artist

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?

    one with Terrains

    How does terrain fit into that?



    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?


    Rotatable Brushes to add some variation

    Less UV Skewing

    Possibly some sort of Slider that randomizes your terrain sculpt
     
  6. argosy_ops

    argosy_ops

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    Who are you?
    Producer at SME game developer / interactive visualization studio

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?

    We're building an RTS game and also work on interactive visualizations for clients with real-world GIS data

    How does terrain fit into that?

    For our own game(s), we use terrain for outdoor scenarios to manually sculpt and populate the levels. For our interactive visualizations, we use terrain with some third-party tools to recreate real-world scenarios of several km² using official land registration data.

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?

    • We currently use Unity's terrain in conjunction with TerrainComposer and Relief Terrain Pack. We use the external tools mainly for two purposes:
      • To create large, realistic terrains based on multiple, seamless tiles
      • To add a global colormap and height blending for more realistic texturing
    • What we'd like to see:
      • Better painting tools that would allow us to group objects and sprites and adjust their size/distribution ratio. That way, it would be possible to create diverse vegetation with just one stroke. Equally, deleting foliage from the terrain should also optionally work with just one stroke instead of having to select each individual asset first. For larger work, that can become quite a pain, especially if grass sprites look very similar.
      • The ability to control the rotation of trees. Right now, we're forced to create several rotated versions of the same asset, which is inefficient. In conjunction with the above mentioned painting tools, it would be very suitable to procedurally distribute rotation values as you draw, so the same tree can be added to the terrain with one stroke and still gains some variation.
     
  7. duke

    duke

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    Who are you?
    Hobbyist

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?
    FPS, RPG, puzzle & action games

    How does terrain fit into that?
    Only for the FPS and RPG's, something to the level of terrain in Battlefield 4 (Frostbite engine).

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?
    * The ability to use a combination of procedural texture and prop placement (based on height, slope, etc.) and specific painted masks, including splines.
    * Procedural virtual texturing or bake to static virtual texture - blend with detail maps (see the DICE paper).
    * Decal support
    * Better LOD for both terrain and props, ie. CDLOD for terrain and regular quadtree LOD, and LOD switching for props as well as density/size trickery (less dense, larger x/z size further from camera).
     
    Eric2241 likes this.
  8. KheltonHeadley

    KheltonHeadley

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    Performance is key.
     
  9. kaarme

    kaarme

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    When this will be ready?
     
    Baldinoboy likes this.
  10. duke

    duke

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    It's these kinds of questions that make them not want to be open about development. Use your common sense.
     
    Eric2241 likes this.
  11. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    I agree it is silly to ask something like this but we are all thinking it (I thinko_O). I would love a thread showing full on development of the new terrain system. They do not have to give a date and if they do they should say something like 2020 in Unity 10 just for the heck of it. Just to see them working on it would be thrilling to me. Maybe even collaboration with some of the community.
     
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  12. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    It would be nice to get SOME kind of feedback from Unity at this point, just to say bibbinator wasn't on drugs when he started this thread, and didn't get sacked afterward, and that Unity is still aware the thread exists, and are doing SOMETHING, other than having a good laugh, with all of our suggestions... I don't need to look over their shoulders while they develop a new Terrain system, but a status report every once in a while wouldn't hurt.
     
    Joviex likes this.
  13. Frednaar

    Frednaar

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    agree , there is nothing wrong in asking for an expected release date... and also if UT is considering open sourcing it as other parts of the system
     
    Joviex likes this.
  14. Whippets

    Whippets

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    I'm not sure they've even started writing anything yet. This thread is more an open consultation as to what we'd all like to see from a new terrain system.
     
    StarManta likes this.
  15. Cygon4

    Cygon4

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    In another thread one of the Unity guys said that most of the graphics team is currently fully loaded with Enlighten integration and related things for Unity 5.0, supposedly one guy may have been working on a new terrain system (but likely did so since Unity 3.5 :p) - so I wouldn't be surprised if it's going to be a Unity 6.0 or later feature.

    Anyway, after going through the comments, it looks to me as if nearly everyone wants streaming volumetric terrain. If that ends up what UT is going to aim for, I'm pretty excited.
     
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  16. kaarme

    kaarme

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  17. larsbertram1

    larsbertram1

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    hi there,

    as there is not much feedback on this you might be interested in one of the unite 2014 talks covering upcoming features:

    (terrain specific topics starting at 8:40)
    joachim says:
    - improved terrain shaders (including terrain surfaces, trees and foliage ?!!!)
    - major performance improvements
    - improved painting/sculpturing tools
    - heightmap based terrain
    - support for holes in the terrain
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2014
    HeadClot88 and Eric2241 like this.
  18. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Sounds amazing. Thanks for the link.

    I hate that phrase 'We want to'. He says it a lot so it is like it is planned but not being worked on.

    For anyone using the beta. Do not know if beta users are supposed to stay quiet or not but is there any change in the terrain in Unity 5 beta besides Speed Tree? I noticed in the speed tree Unite video there were more options like random tree rotation:D, random height and width being locked together:eek:, and maybe it is just speed tree trees but actual color variation instead of just brightness variation. Those are great imrovements. Especially the tree rotation.
     
    Eric2241 likes this.
  19. Whippets

    Whippets

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    Anyone remember the Remington adverts?

    What we want to hear is "We'll make it look better than Cryengine, or your money back!" XD
     
    Eric2241, kaarme and Baldinoboy like this.
  20. DerSchakal

    DerSchakal

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    hey my name is Norman.
    My English is not very good.(google translator)

    I am building a shooter and so far everything good.

    But unfortunately I have a lot of problems with the terrain.

    1. No holes in the terrain make :/
    A hole in the ground, I find very important :)

    2. The Color of Grass? Man can not be changed in the game the color.
    From the summer grass winter grass, or autumn grass.
    In realtime mode.

    Or for an RTS game you can not delete the Grass at the position where you hinbaut a building.

    When one clicks where a building down to a position on the site, which he cuts the grass.

    3. Perhaps a voxel terrain for digging.

    These are 3 things just make a lot of problems.

    I am looking for 3 years since the Idie version so after a solution to make a hole in the ground or depth shader and you can cut the grass at a position, all in real time mode.
     
    Baldinoboy likes this.
  21. virror

    virror

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    You can actually remove grass from a specific spot using code, its just a bit tricky
     
  22. N1warhead

    N1warhead

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    I'd have to say the biggest thing that would help the Terrain editor is to make Caves and stuff.
    Even if it takes the use of deformation tools to select and extrude and bevel, then have the terrain automatically apply smoothing as it's done so you can see it..


    Or to make like Overhangs and actual cliffs by pull out the polys/tris.
    If 3ds max can do it, so can the Terrain.

    Not to mention I saw an asset on the Asset store that was AWESOME GRAPHICS, Started with an R, forgot the name of it, but you can actually tunnel into the terrain, not a shader effect, no a friggin tunnel!

    lol.
     
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  23. Rick-

    Rick-

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    Who are you?
    Rick.

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?

    Adventure RPG.

    How does terrain fit into that?
    Terrains are the biggest part in this game.

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?

    A path/road tool.
    A river tool.
    Erosion brushes.
    A brush that can paint different types of meshes in the terrain at the same time,with different rotations.
    Brushes that can use Masks,for making mountains and other features a easy task.
    Advanced terrain LOD system.
    A tool that can "split" the terrain into several parts,at a defined length/width.
    A voxel tool,for making caves and overhangs in the terrain.
     
    trasher258 likes this.
  24. GameFabricator

    GameFabricator

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    Who are you?
    Marcus Lehto - Creative director and co-creator of the Halo universe at Bungie for 16 years.

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?
    I'm currently building an action focused real time tactics game with my new game studio V1 Interactive.

    How does terrain fit into that?
    We are building many complex campaign and MP maps on large open omni-directional terrain maps.

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?

    While the U5 engine is receiving some significant upgrades which is fantastic, terrain seems to be lagging behind on features.
    So here's a bunch of features I for one would love to see at some point soon in order to make terrain editing usable out of the box without having to purchase lots of poorly supported 3rd party tools.

    New terrain shader:
    • Macro color and normal map layer with blending options.
      • Rendering a macro color and normal map makes for such vast improvements to terrain visual quality.
      • Either allow for the engine to render the macro color/normal map for you from your terrain geometry, or import a macro color/normal map from and DCC like World Machine or hand painted in Photoshop.
      • This allows users to push pixel error values on terrain much further up which dramatically optimizes the mesh without too much fidelity loss.
    • Ability to control (import/export) splat maps without use of crappy 3rd party tools.
    • Based on the new standard shader so we get proper lighting and reflection, such as what we need over things like wet surfaces or smooth rock.
    • Control of each material type so we can set proper values for specular response.
    Sculpting/Painting:
    • Ability to import custom brushes right from the Brushes menu rather than some convoluted method like we have now.
    • Ability to rotate brushes manually.
    • Ability to set random rotation, horz/vert jitter offset, scale and value for more organic sculpting/painting.
    • Use of stencils to overlay an image over the terrain, then scale, rotate and translate it to paint in with any custom brush.
    • Basic road tools for sculpting in roads and pathways.
    • Tiling road UVs for texturing would follow path - most likely on a separate road geometry that floats over the terrain with collision and physics attributes. EasyRoads is the only 3rd party tool I know of that does this currently, but it's not well supported or updated.
    • Ability to cut holes in terrain for underground area access or tunnels through mountains.
    Physics:
    • Ability to provide each material applied to a terrain its own physics material so objects react appropriately when driving over, colliding with or stepping on different materials like grass, asphalt, or gravel for example and we can emit the proper fx and sound as well.
    • Ability to designate soft surfaces, for snow and sand that let objects sink into the mesh by some define amount.
    • Real-time mesh deformation.
    Water: (I know it's not technically terrain, but so closely related)
    • Auto shorline edge fade.
    • Underwater "fog" depth control.
    • Procedural ripples with object collision.
    • Flow controls.
    • River tool to lay in water geometry with auto UVs for flow control. (Based on same tech for road tool. We did this at Bungie and it was super simple, but very effective)
     
    7DSFinch, trasher258, Guile_R and 6 others like this.
  25. elmar1028

    elmar1028

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    At least tell us if it's going to be in Unity 5.x cycle? (hope not in 6.x) :/
     
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  26. walle_ras

    walle_ras

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    Who are you?
    I am a student and CEO of gorkan software
    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?

    Rust and wood, sand box survival
    How does terrain fit into that?
    THe map
    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?

    1.A square brush
    2.Adding rocks just like you add trees.
    3.Giving trees a rigid body automatically.
    4.Built in sci-fi textures, like mars or the moon.
     
  27. elmar1028

    elmar1028

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    Textures are not built into terrain. Those are textures from Standard Assets. You can always make your own or look up in the Google.
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  28. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    All of this is easily done right now:

    1. There's no square brush, but you can square corners, to match building geometry for instance, by making the brush smaller. At one pixel in size, all brushes appear square.
    2. You can already add rocks, grass, and other details using the Details brush, just to the right of the Trees brush.
    3. You can already add colliders and rigid bodies to tree models, save them as prefabs, and then use them with the Trees brush. There will be a performance hit if you place a lot of these trees this way though, as more colliders will add to the physics calculations. Maybe making this process more efficient would be a good feature. ;)
    4. You can already use any textures you want for your terrain. As elmar1028 pointed out, textures are not built into the terrain, and you can add anything you want to the Texture brush slots. You could make your terrain out of rusty metal, or snake skin if you wanted. It doesn't care.
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  29. Eric2241

    Eric2241

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    I feel like he wants it to be more streamlined, quicker, easier and faster. He wants a efficient game engine. I'm sure that wouldn't hurt.
     
  30. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    We all want it faster, easier, and more efficient. That's pretty much a given. But his post didn't mention that. It only asked for specific features which are already available, so I told him how to access them using the present system. ;)

    Of course if Unity decides to streamline the workflows for any of these features, I'm sure nobody will object. The procedure for adding and editing textures, trees, and detail meshes, for instance, seems pretty clunky right now, and could certainly be improved. And why shouldn't users be able to create and add any shape of brush they want as well?
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2014
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  31. JDMulti

    JDMulti

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    Who are you?
    3D visualiser / game developer

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?
    We don't really create games, but more architectural demos. Some project examples:

    - Huge landscape in The Netherlands, showing the flooding of a river and how it changes the landscape. Person can walk trough this landscape on real scale and getting a feeling of how bug the landscape is as well how high the water will reach the hills in this landscape. With a different mode, the user can fly over this landscape and see the changes the water makes in overview.

    - Big architectural project with 100+ houses in Dutch Dunes with forests around it. Person can walk trough it, see the houses in there environment, realtime lighting and the terrain helps creating a real mood for possible buyers.

    - Landscape with nature and historic buildings. People can walk in a period in history and sense the feeling of a building that now lies in ruines. Around the building, there can be an old city seen on the horizon.

    How does terrain fit into that?
    We use the terrain for creating huge landscapes for architectural purposes as well for creating mood in more natural situations as I described above. The terrain must look realistic, give the user the feeling of real scale and at least it must have a certain detail. All this without creating a huge overload in the game environment, since we need to place a lot of houses, props, trees and bushes.

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?
    Currently the terrain lacks a lot of features, workflows and use-cases. Below I described for each part a list of things I came across, which are essential to a terrain.

    Use-cases
    - multiple landscapes for creating a huge landscape together and load or unload terrains to keep the game overal smooth as well limited in RAM usage.
    - terrain for creating realistic landscape with real-scale feeling and small long ditches for water management. Water reflections that reflect the landscape, trees and props without any visible artifacts, popping or z-depth issues.
    - terrains in webplayer, since most of our demos are actually accesable trough a web-version. People find it easy to acces a demo trough web instead of downloading a huge file, unzip or install and view the demo.

    Features
    - stitch multiple terrains together or blend them together, to get seamless transitions between them
    - seamless texture painting between multiple terrains or blend them together
    - using multiple terrains, in game, load them without any hickups or visible popping and without any additional scripts
    - non-streched texture by default
    - export all terrain maps without any hassle and reimport them. Not only heightmaps, but also maps for textures, trees, props. Also on import, being able to populate the terrain with data from example: a props map, where color defines and ID.
    - smoother terrains and better blending between detail levels. With realtime shadows you can clearly see a vissible change of resolution when furter away and noticeble popping of details that fade away.
    - realtime shadows in far distances that are cheaper for realtime lighting
    - terrain with a lot of better performance
    - Creating caves, hanging pillars and such. Now everything is paint in height, but everything else must be modelled and added to terrain
    - Blending models into the landscape. For example a rock on sand, and have the rock blend with the sand around it. Now it's just sitting on it and I have a hard edge of sand around the rock.
    - Way better bumpmap support, looks incredible flat now
    - New terrain shader, current is like from terrains made in 1995, the whole default terrain right now is something totally not compareable with any other engine that supports terrains. I feel we are a bit behind with this.
    - Tree billboards still behave strange with things like reflective water. On the terrains they appear, but in water reflection they disappear now and then.
    - Bigger radius / density grass when painting. There is now a max, when over this limit, user won't get notified, but instead on other places where paint first, the grass disappears. Anoying when you are painting for 2 hours and noticed that 1 hour work before is undone because the density was too high. At least notify the user when things like this happen.
    - Creating roads, now we make splines, have a shader with offset but it's a pain to make it blend nicely into the terrain.
    - Higher detail terrains, sometimes I want to paint little things on the terrain, like a little midpool, but the resolution holds me back. I have 1 grid unit 0,5 meter, but can't paint smaller then 0,5 meter. I would like to do that to make a small mudpool for example or little details under a hedge.

    Workflow ( would like to see )
    - External heightmaps, texture maps, tree placement, props placement. On import, landscape gets automaticly filled in.
    - Creating a landscape that exist of 6 x 6 terrains. Load external maps, auto fill, make changes by hand, export maps for additional finetuning in external paint program. Start game, landscape loads and unloads parts automaticly with set viewdistance and without hickups or popping. This dynamic loading can not only be done with terrains in the scene, but also replacing terrains with external asset files contain the terrain and loading them external into the game while playing.
    - Import terrain data, GIS files and such?
    - External tools to create terrains and import them without any hassle.

    I think everyone can increase this list of features and such, but the main issue with the current terrain is that it's outdated a lot compared to other engines and there terrains. But at least I wrote down the anoying things, missing features and the workflow we have or would like to have.
    I'm really curious how this turns out, because a terrain in our architectural demos is something that makes it a good or a bad demo.

    Demo's
    Huge landscape - Munnikenland, Dutch waterworks project

    Issues: landscape exists of 25+ terrains to get at least desired detail in birdview and first person view. Popping and visual artifacts are visible, and we had hard time keeping detail in both views, but keep it running in the browser as well.
    Further on, loads of water reflection issues when you walk first person. Trees are placed well, but cost huge performance. We needed also realtime shadows, which made it even worse.
    http://www.beeldenfabriek.nl/maquette/munnikenland/

    Landscape - Wellerwaard, visualisation of nature and tourisme
    Issues: Water reflection and landscape, performance terrain with realtime shadows because they wanted a sunlight simulation. landscape is 2x2 terrains, seamless painting was a huge issues as well stitching them together, Painting only in editor took ages, we needed something external to speed up and from there to de details in editor to finetune.
    Still hickups in birdview when flying over the terrains, popping trees ( tried al kind of settings ) Just a pain in the ass, but customer was amazed with results =)
    http://www.beeldenfabriek.nl/maquette/wellerwaard

    I hope I helped out a bit on this subject. I also hope people enjoy watching the demos. What we want is something to make those demos even better. So a better terrain then we now have, is something I'm waiting for a long time. =D
     
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  32. Eric2241

    Eric2241

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    Right, though they really should streamline it though.
     
  33. Not_Sure

    Not_Sure

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    Well hell, if this thread is still twitching I guess I'll throw out one I forgot.

    I would really like to be able to adjust how sharp of a transition there is between textures. As it is now the transition has a fade between the two that is one unit wide. Would it be possible to make it so the transition could happen more abruptly? Like, giving it a value of zero would make it go from one texture to the next without any blending, then I could paint pixel tiles as textures for a retro look. Or tweak it between the one and zero so you could blend it to your liking.

    I hope that makes sense...
     
  34. JovanD

    JovanD

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    Are you guys gonna look in to voxel-based terrain?
    Having ability to create concave terrain features would be nice.
     
  35. Not_Sure

    Not_Sure

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    That's why so many people are asking for terrain holes. Holes may not be dynamic, but it is a lot more organic looking. Consequently, it has been confirmed. :)
     
  36. reptilebeats

    reptilebeats

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    its a shame a new terrain system wasn't implemented in the beta. hopefully it wont be to long for one to be put in as its a major weak spot for what i think is an amazing release.
    i've only been playing with five since last week, but with minimal effort i got a scene looking really nice using speedtree trees. then the terrain really lets it down.
     
  37. Whippets

    Whippets

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    There was a thread in the 5 Beta forum, in which one of the Unity devs said they were hoping to get a terrain PBR shader running very soon. Whilst this isn't the full terrain revamp that we're after, it certainly will be a welcome upgrade.
     
    Eric2241 likes this.
  38. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Yeah. Do not expect full terrain system for a few years but at least add in a few things in Unity releases. Starting with the shader. A Physically Based shader with colormap, normal, detail normal, and specular texture slots added to each texture. That would be a great start. Would keep me satisfied till the next update:).
     
  39. Nemox

    Nemox

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    I have only one thing to add, but it is critical.

    The current terrain physics are all kinds of messed up. If you make a cliff/wall type of thing, you would expect to hit it like a cliff or wall, right? Any rigidbodies that touch it will get shot up into the air, essentially teleporting to the plateau. I'll make a video of this tomorrow.
     
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  40. reptilebeats

    reptilebeats

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    better grass options and physical based shader is all i ask for, for now.
     
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  41. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

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    I'm just curious, is any of the feedback in this thread are considered by the unity team (i believe some of it). So is there any plan from the unity about the terrain upgrade??
    I know that i haven't posting any feedback here, it's just everything that i have in mind are already posted in this thread.
     
  42. reptilebeats

    reptilebeats

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    i very much doubt that they will reveal anything until they have something to show, they could be a month away from finishing a new terrain system or not even started no one knows apart from them lol
     
  43. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    Who are you?
    Lane, hobby/indie.

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?

    FPS ( www.cleverous.com )

    How does terrain fit into that?

    If you're walking on terrain, it needs to look good and be simple to produce.

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?

    The only thing I would care about being improved is this: Horizontal/Vector displacement with built in tools for painting on it.
    http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1277/HALO-WARS-The-Terrain-of

    Lars posted this as well, but as the "dream" feature while the rest of his post was about "reality" features... But I think its the other way around, the horizontal/vector displacement and supporting tools should be the primary backbone for a terrain upgrade while everything else can take a second place position. Making cliffs and good looking terrain is a problem. LOD/Tesselation, Stretching, Stiching, Streaming.. These are all core problems.

    Shaders, day/night, wetness, snow.. Asset Store problems. Leave it at that, people can extend the core, but don't neglect the opportunity to throw super functional tools at your users, like being able to paint vector maps to make good looking cliffs. All existing workflows for decent looking cliffs are total crap compared to a good horizontal/vector displacement toolset built in.

    Things I don't care about are weather systems, snow, rain, etc being built in. Focus on core improvements, let the Asset Store fill in the blanks.
     
  44. Gekigengar

    Gekigengar

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    Better overhangs, cliffs, craters.
     
  45. EurekaOW

    EurekaOW

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    Who are you?
    Hobbies

    What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?
    Life RP (Like ArmA 3 RP Mods)type game.

    How does terrain fit into that?
    It's pretty much the backbone of the game. Other then all assets!

    What use-cases, features, workflows do you have or would like to see?
    • Dynamic Weather
    1. Create puddles after it rain depending on the terrain height or texture depth. Then disappears after a while of sun shine.
    2. Random weather. (I guest you could just create script for this).
    3. Like rain, snow could be pilled up over time, depending on how long, and how much snow is coming down.
    4. After the rain the textures now have much reflective look to it.
    • Road system - Unity lack the road system that other engine have. You will be able to create fences, path, railroad, road, and sidewalk. Which uses a system of connection, and you can move around with a point from the edge of the last place road/fence/railroad/sidewalk/path. You get the ability to change the texture, the size of the road.
    1. Railroad default size, is the size of normal railroads).
    2. With railroad you can change out the model of the tracks, with your own model.
    3. Road system also flatten the terrain, but have a opinion to turn it off. The road system also bring the terrain to the road, but have the ability to turn it off too, because of bridges.
    4. When two or more road intercept, it creates a cross roads. Also have the ability for pedestrian crosswalk. Which you can change the texture of the crosswalk.
    5. When sidewalk hits a crosswalk the sidewalk creates a ramp/slope, have the ability to turn it off.
    • Texture of the Terrain - The size of 1 isn't small enough, and gets in the way with texturing the map. I was think about having the Size 1 way smaller, so you can detail the map way better. Also have the ability to texture other texture. Which using the depth of the texture.(I think it's called blending) (I don't know technical words for this stuff).
    • Terrain - Cliff, hangover, cave, and other stuff! Also a voxel terrain. Better water, with collision. Streams, river, lakes.
    1. Like the road system, you can also create river/streams using the same system.
     
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  46. Waz

    Waz

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    Starting an "Official" thread then abandoning it is insulting.

    But I'll add my opinion to the void nonetheless:

    I don't need roads, etc. - all such things are best added by per-game editor extensions or by Asset Store extensions in the case a generic solution will suffice.

    UT should focus on the things that cannot be added without completely discarding the built-in system:

    * holes
    * shaders
    * billboards
    * performance

    Others here have described what needs to be done on each of those points.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2014
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  47. superpig

    superpig

    Drink more water! Unity Technologies

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    Yes, all the feedback in this thread has been taken on board internally and worked into the team's planning documents. Nothing to announce yet but the thread isn't being ignored.
     
  48. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

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    Yay...great to hear that, since we really need an upgrade for the terrain engine :)
     
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  49. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    Oct 15, 2011
    Posts:
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    This is great news! Also the first feedback from UT since this thread began, so a bit of a milestone. I'm just guessing here, but "taken on board internally and worked into the team's planning documents" sounds like requests for feature x, y, and z are being tallied up, and the most requested features are (if feasible) being given the highest priority. So don't stop requesting caves, overhangs, holes, and standard textures just because others have already mentioned them. Every vote counts. ;)
     
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  50. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

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    Good point, so i guess i'll put my request then.

    Mostly what Lars posted.
    1.
    Terrain Decal, Something like Spline (roads) and Quad Decals (puddle, explosion mark,foot print , etc) would be awesome. This can be used without extending more additional texture call in the terrain material.
    2. Detail group, a group of Detail Mesh that can be painted/placed into the terrain. A group can contain of multiple object ie : grass low, grass tall, bush small, bush ground cover, etc. And every object inside the group will be picked randomly when painting/placing into the terrain. See Farcry 3 editor.
    3. Erosion Brush/Tool, to paint erosion effect in the terrain of course.
    4. Terrain holes . Come on UT, i know you guys can do it :D
    5. Better multiple terrain blending and streaming.
    6. Use terrain color for grass
    7. Support for Cliff, overhangs, with texture blending
    8. River tool
    9. Better performance, for a high speed game (racing for example) this could be a great deal.
    10. Able to paint Trees, Grass and Detail mesh on non terrain (Cliff edge, overhang top side)
    11. Deformable terrain support :D , btw this can also be combined with Quad Terrain Decals.
    12. Better built in terrain shader and material, maybe also with GPU tesselation for a very close up detail. And height map based blending per layer.
    13. Tree and detail mesh rotation
    14. Tree, Grass, Detail placement via texture mask.
    15. A Combination between Cryengine terrain and Frostbite 3 terrain would be golden btw :D
     
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