Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Additionally, terrains allow for some basic sculpting of the landscape. It's a bit
like the Sculpt Geometry tool in Maya where virtual brushes allow the user
to push or pull soft clumps of the geometry. Once this geometry is painted,
Unity provides for a similar experience to MAXON's BodyPaint texturing
scheme, where the user can layer texture in various opacities and size over the
terrain. So you want a beach that gently transitions into a rocky shoreline that
transitions into grassy plains and then to rocky mountains? It will probably
be easier and quicker to do it with terrains in Unity than to model that sort of
thing in Maya.
To further empower the user, custom trees can be brought in or built within
Unity itself. These trees will blow in the breeze (along with the grass beneath
them) and will adjust their level of detail as well. There is not much that
restricts getting a custom look in a scene and getting very expansive scenes.
In fact, there are many games where the vast majority of the actual level was
created exclusively within the Unity Terrain system.
Restrictions of Terrains
Terrains can definitely do some great stuff but not everything. For instance,
the tools to sculpt terrains will allow for meshes to be moved essentially in
the Y direction only. This works great for hills or mountains or even canyons,
but this means no caves (unless the cave is going down into the ground as
opposed to straight into a mountain).
Terrains are great for broad strokes of organic surfaces. It's quick and easy
to make forms gently rise from the surface. However, it can be tricky to be
very accurate in the painting of forms or textures. For instance, recently I was
modeling some custom homes for a builder and attempting to put grass
around the home but not have it poke up through the sidewalk that I had
modeled in Cinema 4D. Alas, getting that grass to neatly edge the sidewalk
was nearly impossible and I ended up spending more time on trying to get
that look right than I did modeling the outside of the house.
Still, even with the accuracy issues and restrictions on forms, terrains can be
a powerful tool to make some beautiful game assets. As is the case with all
tools, making believable terrains is an art and takes some study. True, with
Unity's tools, anyone can make a terrain with hills, mountains, grass, and
textures, but to get a terrain that looks believable or stylistically appealing
takes some study of good research and careful refinement. So be sure to
surround yourself with the look you're after.
In this tutorial we will be building the mountain that the submarine base was
carved out of. This mountain will do a few things for the scene. First, it will
provide a visual masking of the edge of the scene so the player can't see where
the model stops. And second, it will provide a physical barrier to the player so
he doesn't go traipsing off into parts of the level where there is no geometry—it
keeps him from falling off the end of the world.
Step 1:
Turn off the fog. Do this in Edit>Render Settings and flip off the
