TerraHE - Simple Terrain Heightmap Tool - ITS OUT NOW!

TerraHE - Easy , light and effective

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Hello everyone, I would like to introduce you with my simple terrain tool. First , I'm not a pro-coder and I am not aiming awesome features, all I offer is simple helping tools for developers. And this is my first asset ,I'm still learning and improving myself. So lets talk about asset ,

ITS OUT NOW
DOWNLOAD ​

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/terrahe-simple-terrain-heightmap-tool-44383

What is TerraHE?
TerraHE (TerrainHeightmapEditor) is a simple tool for terrain heightmaps. It basically applies a heightmap texture from nearly all formats (.PNG, .JPG, .GIF etc.) without the need to be black & white. You can use colored textures too. It also lets you edit height according to your wish. Therefore, with that asset you no longer need .RAW files or extra effort to change its height tone and such. This was a problem for me when I first started to use heightmaps in Unity. Then I came across the heightmap editing problem and made this asset for developers who suffer the same.

Why TerraHE?
TerraHE is cool because as far as I can see, there are no other assets that give the same result. Since heightmap importing looks easy, most of the asset makers don’t want to spend time on it. Also, TerraHE is cheap. It might be the cheapest. It’s cheap because I’m a developer and I use assets too. So, no one likes to pay a lot for a tiny bump on the road.

How to use TerraHE?

TerraHE is really simple. Just select Terrain from toolbar and select Open TerraHE and you are ready to go. It's a floating window , so you can put it anywhere. Now you can say to yourself "There are some options , what are they?". Let me talk about them more then.

• Terrain Height: As you can understand from Its name , it’s a slider for adjusting the terrain height. It's mainly increase/decrease the height of mountains etc. For best value , you need to make some changes and experience yourself.
• Land Height Offset: In case you want to add an offset to your “land”, you should be using this field. It will raise the area based on that offset
• Use Image as Terrain Texture: If this option clicked, TerraHe will use your heightmap resource as a texture for terrain
• Is Texture Colored: You can check this option If your texture is colored. If your texture is Black and White, don’t check this.
• -Make Flat Areas: Sometimes some textures cause too bumpy results, and sometimes this is not even preferred. In such cases, you can click Make Flat Areas and it will result flattened maps

• Customize Color Heights : You can check this option If you want to customize color heights. But I would recommend that If and only If you don’t have another option like making flat areas and modify total height etc.
• Add a Texture: Click this and select your texture to use for the process.
• Generate Terrain: It simply generates the terrain

Smoothness: This is the smoothness value that you want to apply to Terrain. Can be between 1 and 0.
Smooth Terrain: This will apply smoothing effect to terrain.


Note For Old Unity Versions:
Your texture should be readable before using it. Making your texture readable is fairly easy. Click your texture , on right window(Inspector window) , click Texture Type and select Advanced. When you do that , you should be able to see Read/Write Enabled button. Click it and then scroll down, click Apply. And you are done. You might want to customize your texture for making some tweaks on it before you hit the Apply but I wouldn't recommend that If you are not sure what you are doing. Here is an example


Screenshots :
















ITS OUT NOW!
If you have any advice or criticism , I would be happy to listen. Thanks!

 

Hello everyone , Unity Tech finally accepted my asset , so It's out now! I am still open to new ideas or suggestions to develop this asset. Thanks!
For download link , just scroll to up

 

Just checking in so I can watch this thread. See what updates you make based on feedback I made or do make in future. Still, solid for its simplicity and ease of use. =D

 

I actually made changes according to your suggestions and submitted it but because of Unity's policy , we need to wait for a 5-6 days ):
About the update , Its not working perfectly because I cant determine color values for every single satellite photo or such but It gives user more control over his terrain with that way and I guess that was your wish.
Here is a picture from upcoming update

 

Yeah basically. I mean it's difficult to determine height based on a color photo (I would imagine) other than to just use the main channels of color. I guess you could consider this an interesting experiment. Based on the picture though, it looks like what I was asking for.

See how it works out when the asset is updated on the store. =)

 

I will inform everyone when asset updated on the store.By the way , I changed Its icon and some key images , so don't let it confuse you

 

WoW ^^
Great Asset
Simple& Smart!

Definitely an Asset which comes very handy someday...xD

A few questions:
Is it possible to change the Water... Material/Shader...?!?
Or is it anchored to the Terrain...
Or the User have to paint the ground and add Water manually...xD
Your Asset creates an Unity Terrain file right...?!?

 

Thanks! I hope it will help more developers in the future.
So let me answer your questions,
Your Asset creates an Unity Terrain file right?
No, It uses the terrain which currently active on the scene. By the way , I might forgot to mention about that but If you want to use that process(asset) on multiple terrains, you need to disable all other terrains and leave only one visible terrain in the scene for making changes.Therefore you can do that process for each terrain one by one.
Is it possible to change the Water... Material/Shader?
No, It's not. But If you use external terrain shaders , you can - like all terrains you sculpted by yourself. But If you worried about water , I would suggest you to use a plane with water shader on it and place it top of the water level. Here is an example ,


EDIT : Here is another example which I worked on like an hour

 

THX for reply,
and for your preview with water *-*
But I have some more question...

So it needs some steps, to work/edit it, right...!?!

It uses the terrain which currently active on the scene..
That means it´s not visible in Edit mode...!?!

Would it be possible to convert it as Mesh/Terrain with converter/exporter...!?!

The created terrain have Collider...!?!

 

It's okay my friend , you can ask me all questions on your mind. So let me answer these questions ;
-So it needs some steps, to work/edit it, right.
Yes It needs some simple steps to work. I explained all of them step by step in the documentation file.
-That means it´s not visible in Edit mode?
No Its the opposite actually.It should be visible in the Edit mode and other not. In the inspector at the left of the name bar there is a box. If that box is checked, that means your model/terrain/Gameobject is active on scene. So what you need to do is , you need to make passive all other terrains in the scene and use this process/asset for each terrain , one by one. This also gives you controll over mutli-pieced terrains.
-Would it be possible to convert it as Mesh/Terrain with converter/exporter?
Of course. As I said , Its like all terrains you sculpted by your hand.
-The created terrain have Collider?
Yes. You can also put trees , grasses , rocks etc on it like all other terrains. You can see trees in my last example.(For records , I dont have a good pc system therefore It started to be laggy ,even I used Mobile version trees. So If you have a huge project on your mind , you probably need to set fog settings carefully)

 

All right ^^

I understood ;--)
But can you explain me the part
with the multi-pieced terrain a lil bit more...

With multi-pieced terrain you mean...
The technique like "LOD"...
I mean the terrain must be cut in some/many pieces
which can/must be put together... for performance...
Or
You mean, in build process you have to make some/many pieces
from the terrain picture you want to create as terrain...!?!

I hope the question is clear enough...!?!

 

Since asset using picture to determine heights, If you are working on a detailed project, you need detailed pictures and If you are working/putting efford for a wide area(Like whole Europe) Its better to have 4(or more) high-res Europe Satellite pictures, therefore you can use 4 different high detailed terrains and combine them for creating a huge detailed terrain without putting too much efford. And If Im not wrong, even If you have high-res picture of whole Europe, Unity doesnt support resolution like 5000x5000. So in a way , you always need to divide your images or tweak around and add details after using what asset created.

By the way , here is another example with water (and trees , icons etc)
I made a quick map icon for test purpose , I quite like it actually , I would be glad to hear more opinions about scene,asset and all other stuff we are discussing in here




Editor view :

 

**Double post**
I would like to inform all of you guys , Its now updated on asset store. I would like to hear your opinions

 

Nice,
THX for your explanation... ^_^
Now I got it... =)

The generated landscapes are really impressive *-*
From near it looks quite modest.
But that´s not your fault, more picture/texture fault... ;--p

Would be interested to see it
with google maps pro,
they is a pro vers. with higher quality images... HD ^^

Right now I would use it
to generate Backgrounds terrain ^^
Fast& easy...! ^^
For Strategy or Flight Simulation,
it can be also interesting...!

 

From near it looks quite modest.
No one should get that close to a strategy map anyway =p

You are welcome! You can ask your questions or share your suggestions , at anytime I might also make a map icon asset which contains ancient and modern map icons for ,like you said, strategy or Flight simulation games. But Im not sure right now so I will let you guys know If I made it

 

Sounds interesting -_-
I stay tuned for your next Project/News... ^_^

 

Hello everyone,
I'm sorry about the delay on Icon packs but Im planning to release them in upcoming two weeks, yet, It might took more than that.
I am also planning to create system which takes city/village locations from texture itself. What I'm planning is something like this;
, The dots, as you can guess, indicates where should the cities stay. This will help game developers to create games like Total War. So If I decide to make this, It will probably be a seperated asset which includes both TerraHe and Icons in it with management system. Tell me what you think. I probably will start working on that based on you guys.

//
Also thanks to Joel, I realized that I forgot to add one of the most important step when you are setting up your environment for TerraHe. In short way, your texture should be readable. Making your texture readable is fairly easy. Click your texture , on right window(Inspector window) , click Texture Type and select Advanced. When you do that , you should be able to see Read/Write Enabled button. Click it and then scroll down, click Apply. And you are done. You might want to customize your texture for making some tweaks on it before you hit the Apply but I wouldn't recommend that If you are not sure what you are doing. Here is an example

If you have questions , please email me. Don't hesitate to ask.

 

Is there a possibility to export the Mesh as a normal heightmap? Would be perfect for us...

 

I can't add it to code right away, but an easier solution for you would be extracting mesh ( there should a code fragment online ) as OBJ and putting it to Blender and then getting its heightmap. I think it's not practical to have this functionality in Unity as well but I hope this solution would work for you

 

Hello- is this an editor tool only?

Can it be used to convert images to height maps at runtime in builds?

 

Sorry for super late response!

Version you asked this question didn't have this feature. I just submitted a version for newest Unity version, it will be available in a couple of days. I'm pretty sure you no longer need the answer to this, but for answering the future questions, yes now, it can be used to convert images to height maps at editor runtime. I added a sample Demo scene to showcase this as well.