Terrain (Mesh + Imposter) Workflow Questions

So I want to use the new terrain system in Unity, but there are pieces of the "terrain" where I would like to take (after painting it up and aligning it with nearby tiles) and convert that to a mesh so I can do more organic sculpting of it -- and then replace it back into the environment where it was sitting previously (as a terrain tile).

However, this introduces a few problems --

For example, what if I want to put trees/grass on this new "mesh" after I've sculpted a giant tower of rock (around other gameobjects in the scene) that can be seen from a distance?

As I see it now, I'd have to deal with either the lack of grass/trees or the lack of being able to use an imposter (large enough to almost be its own terrain. The uniquely-sculpted rock tower also skirts around (and houses) particular gameplay objects/scenarios in the scene, plus its footprint, 3d shape, and vantage points are all important.


So three questions:

1. What is the suggested workflow for setups like this with the new terrain system?
2. Will Unity ever support Imposters on terrain (with the ability to retain grass/trees/shadows on them?)
3. Are trees/grass improved enough in the new Terrain System to worry about? (Maybe a mesh with instanced tree/grass meshes would be a better option?)

 

This is absolutely awesome to hear!

I assume these density maps / instance lists will be C# job optimized?
Also, would they be paintable on arbitrary meshes too? (Obviously a little more overhead initially during the "placement" phase, but the usefulness of using this on any mesh would greatly outweigh that -- I'm currently streaming both meshes and terrains in tandem -- each huge mesh tile acting as a "terrain" tile in and of itself. I'm not the only one. We're already seeing this hybridization in assets like Voxeland and Map Magic, so I think Unity should support this natively in its "terrain" concept.)



Also -- I think I might need to rephrase my second question:

Have you guys considered adding an option to render (very distant) terrains/meshes as imposter LODs by default?​

Using imposters for giant (dense) meshes like terrain tiles seems like a great fit and would enable huge draw distances for giant terrain tiles -- and any other moderately large-sized mesh instances associated with that specific "terrain" tile, including any notable gameobjects/vegetation instances we might select to be part of the "terrain" (and would work for any large mesh -- whether or not a particular mesh's rendering concept was heightmap-based or standard mesh-based.)

This could greatly simplify the task of streaming terrains and worlds later on down the line too -- especially if you only had to render a single imposter per terrain tile (rather than loads of distant objects/meshes that usually represent nearly an entire "scene" worth of data).
Thoughts?

 

How is this coming along? -- I see we're in 2020 now and we still struggle to support mesh-based terrain. D:

Just curious, @ChrisTchou, if you know how true we're sticking to this?


I've got an entire island I'd like to be a mesh (I cannot use Unity's standard terrain for "non-square" reasons), so I might chop it into chunks that are just imposters or something (since they need to be seen up close and far away and also have vegetation). However, I am worried about seams using the Imposter method, so I'm not totally sold on this way yet...