CS304: Game Programming

Lecture 14: Terrains

Terrains

Almost all video games make use of terrains. This could be terrain that can
be actively explored (e.g., first person shooter) or terrain in the background
to create the illusion of open-ended worlds (e.g., racing game).

Terrain can be generated automatically on the fly to create truly open-ended

worlds. Alternatively, another common usage of mountain ranges is to limit
the world available to the gamer.

Note: remember that distant elements will sudently come into view given the
far plane of the viewing furstum. One can use elements like fog to ensure
smooth transitions without the need to raw too many items in the distance.
Terrain generation

A common way to generate terrain is to built a mesh (using triangles) from a

heightmap and to apply a texture to that mesh.

A heightmap is a 2D image in gray scale:

Each pixel corresponds to a vertex.
The colour value of the pixel determines its height

A heightmap may be generated using special tools to simply using an image

editor such as Photoshop to Paint.NET.
Creating and Editing Terrains
In Unity, terrains can be added as game objects from Create → 3D Object →
Terrain, in the Hierarchy View. This creates a completely flat large plane, and
the surface can be modified by using the Height Tools available in the Terrain
(Script) component.

From left to right, these tools are: Raise/Lower Terrain, Paint Height, Smooth
Height, Paint Texture, Place Trees, Paint Details and Terrain Settings. With
the exception of the tree placement tool and the settings panel, all the tools on
the toolbar provide a set of “brushes” and settings for brush size and opacity.
Height Tools *
The Height Tools (the first three tools: Raise/Lower Terrain, Paint Height and
Smooth Height ) are used to paint changes in height onto the terrain. They
essentially work by holding the mouse in one place, similar to the effect of the
airbrush tools in image editors, what elevates the terrain in the area clicked. If
the Shift key is pressed simultaneously, the height of the terrain at that point
will be lowered. The Brush Size and Opacity options vary the area of the
brush and the strength of its effect respectively.
The Paint Height tool has an additional property (Height ), that works as a
target height value. Higher points in the terrain will be lowered (and lower
points will be elevated) when clicking using this tool. Using the Shift key
allows to sample the height of a particular point. Next to the Height property
is a Flatten button that simply levels the whole terrain to the chosen height.
Finally, Smooth Height does not substantially raise or lower the terrain height
but rather averages out nearby areas, softening the landscape and reducing
the appearance of abrupt changes.
You can import and export your terrain height in RAW file formats
(Terrain
Settings → Import Raw and Export Raw buttons respectively).
Textures (1/2)
Textures can be added to the surface of a terrain.
Since terrains are such large objects, it is standard practice to use a texture
that repeats seamlessly and tile it over the surface.
One texture will serve as the background image over the landscape but
you can also paint areas of different textures to simulate different ground
surfaces such as grass, desert and snow.
The painted textures can be applied with variable transparency so you can
have a gradual transition between grassy countryside and a sandy beach,
for example.

Initially, the terrain will have no textures

assigned
for painting. If you click the Edit Textures button
and select Add Texture from the menu, a window
will be shown to add textures.
The standard assets supplied with Unity include a
number of terrain textures that are useful for
simple effects.
Textures (2/2) *

The first texture added will work as a background, painting the whole terrain.
The rest of the textures added will be available for painting using the brush
tools, as seen with the Height tools.
Properties available are Brush Size and Opacity, which work as in the other
tools, and a third setting called Target Strength. This last setting sets the
maximum opacity value that the brush will build up even if it passes over the
same point repeatedly (useful for patches within a single terrain to break the
monotony of a large homogeneous area).
Trees (1/3)

Unity terrains can be furnished with trees. Patches of trees can be painted
onto a terrain in much the same way that heightmaps and textures are painted
but the trees are solid 3D objects that grow from the surface. Unity uses
optimisations (billboarding for distant trees) to maintain good rendering per-
formance, so you can have dense forests with thousands of trees and still keep
an acceptable framerate.

As with textures, initially there are no trees

available. Clicking on the Edit Trees button
allows to add trees to the terrain.
With a tree selected, you can paint onto the
landscape in the same way you paint
textures or heightmaps. You can remove
trees from an area by holding the Shift key
while you paint and remove just the
currently selected tree type by holding down
the Control key.
Trees (2/3) *
Brush Size and Tree Density (which replaces “Opacity”) are used to paint
trees as used for painting textures and changing heights. Color Variation adds
some noise in the color of the trees planted. Height and Width of the tree can
also be determined, with noise factor as well.
The Mass Place Trees button is a very useful way to create an overall
covering of trees without painting over the whole landscape.
Trees (3/3)
Colliders with Trees: You can add a Capsule Collider to a new tree asset by
instantiating it in the scene (from the prefab), adding a Capsule Collider and
saving the prefab for the modified tree object.
Note that the physics engine has a limit of 65536 colliders in a single scene. This is
normally not an issue but when trees are used with colliders, you should make sure
you dont exceed this limit.

Making trees bend in the wind: When a Wind Zone is available (see later),
it is possible to make the trees bend with the wind. The trees need to be
specifically set for this, in Edit Trees → Edit tree. Setting the bend value
to
1 will cause the trees to bend with the wind (notice that you must also adjust
the wind strength to determine the overall effect).
Unity has its own Tree Creator (Assets → Import Package → Tree Creator ).
Trees can be created as a game object (3D Object → Tree ), and you can
specify settings as branches, leaves and materials, and also how are they
affected by wind zones. Check the manual for Tree Creation at:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-Tree.html
Grass and Other Details (1/3)
The Paint Details button on the toolbar enables grass/detail painting.
You
must click on the Edit Details button to enable these.
Add Grass Texture: This allows to specify a
texture for the grass. The texture is simply a small
image with alpha set to zero for the empty areas
(note that “grass” is rather generic: you could create
flowers or other objects with different textures):

The Min Width, Min Height, Max Width and Max Height values specify the
upper and lower limits of the size of the clumps of grass that are generated.
Grass and Other Details (2/3) *
The Noise Spread value controls the approximate size of the alternating
patches,
with higher values indicating more variation within a given area. The alternat-
ing patches of grass are considered more “healthy” at the centres than at the
edges and the Healthy/Dry Color settings show the health of grass clumps by
their color.
If the Billboard option is enabled, the grass images will rotate so that they
always face the camera.
Grass and Other Details (3/3)
Add Detail Mesh: This allows to scatter copies of a mesh around the terrain.
When you select the Add Detail Mesh option, you will be prompted with the
following panel:

The Detail property is used to select a prefab from your project which
will be scaled by the Random Width and Random Height values for
individual instances. The Noise Spread and Healthy/Dry Color values work
the same as they do for grass. The Render Mode can be set to Grass (the
instances of detail objects in the scene will be flattened into 2D images - like
grass textures) or Vertex Lit (details will be rendered as solid, vertex lit
objects in the scene).
Wind Zones *
You can create the effect of wind on your terrain by adding one or more
objects
with Wind Zone components:

The Mode can be set to Directional (affects the whole terrain) or Spherical
(blows outwards within a sphere defined by the Radius property). Directional
winds are more useful for creating natural movement of the trees while
spherical winds are more suitable for special effects like explosions.
The Wind Main property determines the overall strength of the wind but this
can be given a little random variation using Wind Turbulence. As mentioned
above, the wind blows over the trees in pulses to create a more natural effect.
The strength of the pulses and the time interval between them can be controlled
using the Wind Pulse Magnitude and Wind Pulse Frequency properties.
Terrain Settings (1/4)
Base Terrain:

Show: If terrain should be shown or not.

Pixel Error: Higher values for lower accuracy (relation height/textures
and terrain) but lower rendering overhead.
Base Map Distance: The maximum distance at which terrain textures
will be displayed at full resolution. Beyond this distance, a lower
resolution composite image will be used for efficiency.
Cast Shadows: Does the terrain cast shadows?
Material: The material used to render the terrain.
Reflection Probes: How reflection probes are used on terrain. Thickness:
How much the terrain collision volume should extend along the
negative Y-axis. (to prevent high-speed moving objects from pene-
trating into the terrain).
Terrain Settings (2/4)
Tree and Detail Objects:

Draw: Should trees, grass and details be drawn?

Detail Distance: The distance* beyond which details will be culled.
Detail Density: The number of detail/grass objects in a given unit of
area. The value can be set lower to reduce rendering overhead.
Tree Distance: The distance* beyond which trees will be culled.
Billboard Start: The distance* at which 3D tree objects will be replaced
by billboard images.
Fade length: Distance* over which trees will transition between 3D ob-
jects and billboards.
Max Mesh Trees: The maximum number of visible trees as solid 3D
meshes. Beyond this limit, trees will be replaced with billboards.
* Distances indicated from the camera.
Terrain Settings (3/4)

Wind Settings:

Speed: The speed of the wind as it blows grass.

Size: The size of the ripples on grassy areas as the wind blows over them.
Bending: The degree to which grass objects are bent over by the wind.
Grass Tint: Overall color tint applied to grass objects.
Terrain Settings (4/4)
Resolution:

* Modifying the resolution will

clear the heightmap!

Terrain Width/Length: Size of the terrain object in its X/Z axis.

Terrain Height: Difference in Y coordinate between the lowest possible
heightmap value and the highest (in world units).
Heightmap Resolution: Pixel resolution of the heightmap.
Detail Resolution: Resolution of the map for the separate patches of
details/grass. Higher resolution gives smaller and more detailed patches.
Detail Resolution Per Patch: Length/width of the square of patches
renderered with a single draw call.
Control Texture Resolution: Resolution of the splatmap that controls
the blending of the different terrain textures.
Base Texture Resolution: Resolution of the composite texture used on
the terrain when viewed from a distance greater than Basemap Distance.
Terrain Collider *

Terrain Collider: The Terrain Collider takes a Terrain and builds its Collider
based on that terrain.

Material: The Physic Material used for the terrain surface to specify its
friction and bounce.
Terrain Data: The terrain data.
Create Tree Colliders: When selected Tree Colliders will be created.
Reading List
Hour 4 & 5, Sams Teach Yourself Unity Game Development in 24 Hours by Ben
Tristem
and Mike Geig.
Terrain Engine, https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/script-Terrain.htm