Showcase Terrain Builder - Preview

Wyatt shows something awesome on his web page which is using the Noise of the Unity Terrain Tools in order to create entire terrains. This is exciting in a way as you don't have to start from scratch with a flat terrain. Such a time saver! However Unity released no information when or even if we will ever get that feature, so I thought I'd try on my own.

For that purpose I downloaded the Unity Terrain Tools 4.0.3 and extracted the Noise code. Which means: This is heavily based on the Unity Terrain Tools, is Unity's work and hence the license is also the Unity Companion License. I tried to keep the code as close to the original as possible in order to allow future adaptations easily, so I wrapped mine around the Noise library and modified namespace, package folders and whatever was necessary to have a working prototype up in no time.

The results were very exciting, so I thought I'd share a first draft of this for feedback. But please keep in mind in case you want to try yourself:

This project is highly experimental and will modify your existing terrains irreversible. Please create a backup or use this only in a new Sandbox project!

You can install via package manager git url:

https://github.com/Roland09/TerrainBuilder.git?path=/Assets/TerrainBuilder

Here's a quick usage video to see what this is about:

Or in combination with the Gradient Picker I released recently and MicroSplat Global Texturing:

Thanks a lot and all credit to the awesome guys at Unity who provided the Terrain Tools, especially the source to work with!

 

Loving what I see here, definitely this is awesome for fast prototyping! Eager to see how this develops.

Edito: definitely loving this. Tried today and it works nicely, so easy to use )
Fast procedural terrains, nice workflow. An unexpected surprise that I had was creating a new terrain using unity's terrain toolbox, if you had an active noise preset, the new terrain uses it.

 

Looks cool! Will it also work with previous Terrain Tools versions?

 

It's on its own. Independent of the Terrain Tools. I had to copy Unity's code and modify it because the Terrain Tools source is unfortunately tightly locked with internal and private declarations and what not.

I'd really love if Unity would provide something like that, i.e. an alternative to flat terrain to start with.

 

Ah, I see... what a bummer. It's good that it's independent from the Terrain Tools, though.

+1 That would be ace, but... we both know that this won't happen anytime soon
.