Are there no other way to paint Unity terrain than with textures?

Questions & Answers
1

Before starting to create textures containing just plain colors, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing on a feature that would allow me to use a material per terrain layer.

I want to achieve a look similar to this game: https://i.imgur.com/pgqstLj.jpg

Simple, plain colors for the ground.

What are my options?

  • using textures containing plain colors?
  • using meshes instead of the Unity terrain?
  • using probuilder maybe? Just heard of this tool, it seems like it’s pretty good at designing simple landscapes like this one.

Thanks.

2

You don’t have to use textures with shaders, and terrain doesn’t have to be complex - you can create your own from simple grayscale images using Unity’s tool.

Using a terrain generator is a convenient way of creating large scale meshes. You certainly could use pro tools. It’s really a matter of convenience and how large the terrain is.

View Sebastian Lague’s YouTube series on Procedural Landmass Generation. Episode 16 is where he gets into writing a color shader based on terrain height. It might give you some ideas:

He’s also got a a video or two, or a series on populating terrain - placing objects - procedurally - I don’t remember the title, but if you are not familiar with his videos his work is definitely worth learning from.