I need help creating a good looking terrain/play environment in unity

Hi, does anyone know how to create a decent looking landscape to be used in unity? This means importing a mesh or creating a unity terrain that then can have a splatmap generated for it that auto places sand, ground, and rock textures where they should go. I don’t think handpainting would be an option when trying to achieve a realistic look. Any ideas would be appreciated.

yup there’s actually a few assets that do that.

I use terrain composer https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/65563

This being said, I think you’re wrong if you think handpainting is not a valid option. It’s actually a must.

You’ll get dull repetitive scenery if you don’t go in and handpaint details. The result you get from terrain composer is like a base layer, but it’s not good enough to make a good looking game.

Leonardo didn’t make the Sixtine chapel by throwing buckets of paint onto the ceiling

I appreciate your reply and asset store suggestion. Is is possible to paint and it look good? I would totally love to do it by hand if it doesn’t look like finger painting lol. I unfortunately bought Gaia thinking I could import meshes or heightmaps like it says I can and bake out a nice texturemap. I have my eye on Megasplat but I feel like I’m spending a lot at this rate. Let me know if you have any tricks up your sleeves for nice hand painting especially if it means on a mesh.

TC has an option to create a terrain, and then turn it into a mesh. You can use heightmaps and color maps, and there’s another asset they have called Node Painter https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/85286 to do manual stuff (never used it though so I can’t tell you much about it)

But by manual painting I’m talking about using the built in tools.

here’s a great example of hand painting a dull landscape generated by world builder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szm7JtD-54o

Oh I just came across this video:

the asset used is this one
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/56762

looks nice

I wonder how the guy in the speed video got his textures to actually look good with bumping and everything. Unless something has changed they all look like spray paint by default. Maybe I should have bought map magic instead of Gaia. :C

One thing is for sure, these kinds of addons have come a long way in the past 2 years. Before I refused to buy any because none were user friendly or had proper user manuals lol.

Also I noticed none of these show tropical settings like beaches and islands in their screenshots. I’m just going to guess its more work to add all the varying vegetation. Thanks, again for the friendly tips and software suggestions.

Yes, the default splat textures provided in unity by default don’t look too good. Luckily you don’t necessarily have to buy textures from the asset store, there’s plenty of free game art.

You can always ask Maverick which textures he’s using. He usually replies to those questions

If you look at the mapmagic video in full, you’ll see he’s making beaches at some point (about 30% into the video i’d say)

As others have recommended, Terrain Composer is an option. I find TC’s GUI is not intuitive, it has a steep learning curve.

Another option is GAIA.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/gaia-42618

GAIA is much easier to use, it outputs a realistic looking terrain, and you can easily customize the generated terrain. You can also auto generate rocks and villages and trees. In my opinion, it’s the best option out there.

Auto-generated terrain tools are convenient but don’t skimp out on how to use the Unity terrain tools - they’re just as important.

Good luck!

Regards,

Ryno

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