I remember trying to use the terrain tools in like 2013 and compared to UE4 they were absolutely weird. Looked weird and just primitive with the tools. No auto layer options that places specified instanced meshes on certain layers, no nothing. Now I am checking out the terrain tools in 2023 again and I am shocked how bad those still are. Cmon Unity, not everyone wants to spend hundreds of hours making the most performant world partition system. Unreal takes a fraction of what I am trying to achieve visually but hey, there are always market place solutions right? Stop trying to experiment with random features nobody is interested in and finally make and extend the core tools. Identify what may be difficult to do for smaller developers and give us robust solutions for those instead of announcing new tech and abandoning it after.
I wished someone in the dev team would finally wake up and push unity to be more artist friendly. Identify why your competition is the choice for almost every industry artist and take it from there. Not only is having artists using your engine to create beautiful worlds and scenes a great ad for your engine and new users but it also helps the community as well. Please, I know you guys probably have the resources so identify what problems smaller teams may have and provide robust solutions
I’ve mentioned this before, but yeah. The fact that overhangs and caves are still “yeah, so just model those somewhere else and then use our janky hole painting solution” is honestly pretty embarrassing. This is made even more embarrassing when you consider how “implement a modern terrain system” was one of the highest voted requests on Unity Answers when it was shut down and was first posted in 2013.
I think the “hole” system in the terrain tools is usable, if you think of it, it can be an awkward process to do it like an sculpt program for example xD, with the hole thing you can create your cave like a geometry in your 3d software and place it next to the hole (like almost any game) i’m sure i’m very ignorant of this subject, can you show me which game engine has a better process for that, please? i would like to compare.
Sure, it’s “usable” in so far as I’ve been able to build custom tools on top of it to do what we want. Cut out a hole, replace it with a custom mesh, clip that mesh against other things, etc. etc.
That said, the purpose of using an off-the-shelf engine is that it’s meant to do the common stuff for you, so you can focus on the unique stuff. So I can completely understand why people were a bit bummed when the Terrain update a while back was some iterative improvements on the same system.
maybe tecchnology is very difficult to create… btw, do you know a "off-the-shelf "game engine with a better workflow for this very common stuff? like creating a cave in a better way, i’m very curious and interested on that feature, or that “auto layer options that places specified instanced meshes on certain layers” that can be useful
To people with the capability to make a game engine, this isn’t a hard problem to solve.
O3DE’s workflow is immediately nicer.
In Unity we have an API which allows us to flag each terrain cell for being a hole or not. So if we want to have a GameObject which we can place to specify where there is a hole, we need to write at least two bits for ourselves - the hole cutter, and then some little bit of smartness to deal with when we have multiple hole cutters and/or multiple terrains.
Those bits aren’t hard for an experienced programmer to put together, but to a level designer or an artist it’s a showstopper. And it has to be done before we can attach the hole cutter object to the front of our cave or the basement of our building or whatever and position it somewhere.
In O3DE, that’s ready off-the-shelf. Immediately, an artist or designer can decide “I want this bit of the level to go underground” and just do it, non-destructively, without programmer support.
I just think it’s incredibly disappointing. Its 2023, give the people tools to do what they want. I dont think myself as a solo developer is very interested in studying hundreds of hours on how to build a better Terrain system is very productive as I cannot even promise results. A team as skilled and populated as Unity is surely capeable but I guess we re working on something new experimental that may work or wont. Seriously check out how disciplined unreal is with their solutions. They didnt show nanite and Lumen until they made sure it pretty much worked and when they delivered, it works. They wont abandon it or get overwhelmed with the tech. Maybe its a bad comparison but it’s notorious how the unity team just abandons interesting things after a while and wont listen to community demands. Clearly shows a lack of vision and direction…
something like this should ve been implemented years ago. Scattering objects / foliage by layer. Having the option to use tri planar based on angles for a base and then use brushes to paint custom details. This approach would making good looking terrains 200x faster and better looking. Instead the out of the box solutions want us to paint large worlds by hand and place every grass mesh with a brush instead of using smart solutions by layer. Its not even an excuse of complexity. If some people on the marketplace manage to do it, so should a team as funded as unity.
I wonder, how many games are there released and sold fair amount of copies, which do have holes in the ground, with caves and and overhangs. Something that can not be solved with props otherwise.
Question is, if amount of released games with such features, reflect the worth effort to implement as such.
I don’t think a single Bethesda game has terrain holes. Not that I would call their Frankenstein’s Monster of an engine cutting edge…
But then you have games like both the recent two Zelda games and ones like Elden Ring where they were clearly using very sophisticated terrain tools, including terrain holes among other things. And in those examples - particularly BoTW/TotK - the terrain adds a lot to the experience.
So I think having some more advanced terrain tools is definitely something Unity should provide.
It’s not a matter of “can not be solved with props otherwise” but that this represents a workflow issue that has existed for over a decade. This is something that CryEngine has supported since at least 2009.
I remember them announcing some improvements years ago, but it seems like nothing major came from them.
How is it nicer to create a volume instead of painting immediately on the terrain?
Note that I do not defend Unity’s solution, it’s just the O3DE’s solution is the same thing: create a hole on the terrain, create the cave system in a software made for creating meshes and import it back. I don’t see where the difference is.
The terrain holes is a useful feature but not necessarily for creating caves. Painting holes in inaccessible spaces helps speed up light baking while placing holes under cities (structures) should improve performance.
As far as I remember, terrain hole doesn’t affect the collider which means it doesn’t change the process of creating caves.
Making a cave or bridging terrain can be navigated around using a blend shader etc. what Imho should absolutely be worked on is a better terrain streaming system out of the box and better procedural terrain painting tools. Placing grass and rocks procedurally based on a layer mask natively. I watched the URP terrain youtube tutorial and was shocked to see them painting the entire terrain by hand. This is like 2010s tech. Unity literally did like no effort to improve those essential tools. This is really embarrassing for a company of that size… but hey maybe another render pipeline next year.
i hate to bring out unreal but they had a really solid open world terrain pipeline in 2014 already and recently they added new tools ontop that are incredibly powerful. What does this show? It shows other than team unity unfortunately they are much better in identifying pitfalls teams may have and try to provide better tools for them. They have a new system utlizing splines and SDF creating nice terrains quickly. Unity seems to be stuck in 2010. Again, not trying to hate on unity. The engine does alot of things right but its frustrating to see how disconnected the team apparently is
Just feels like every team or department at unity is disconnected and dont work towards a common goal so every department spends their time toying around with features they realise they cant maintain any further and yeet it out sooner or later or just abandon it.
This is entirely wrong.
then tell me what’s wrong.
It’s exactly how the terrain holes are used in games.
i find unity’s approach better
Then, dod you know a better game engine with a better workkflow? (o3de’s workflow is the same if not worse)
Edit: [quote=“useraccount1, post:14, topic: 928847, username:useraccount1”]
As far as I remember, terrain hole doesn’t affect the collider
[/quote]
wrong, It does…
What i’m trying to say is, maybe we are not there yet, same as why avatar take so much to start being produced? because technology is difficult to evolve, maybe we are not there yet… I’m not a unity’s fan boy i know it has disappointed, but if you want to make a point, then show something better that we can compare and properly rant xD
Hello! just passing by in implicit “unity don’t make game problem” thread.
It’s like the unite about the unity physics package, in which unity discover, helping the V rising project, they have to keep separate dynamic objects from static for performance, and try to pass that as “every project is unique”, worse is that it was an easy fix, BUT they spend weeks diagnosing that on a real commercial project, introducing risk to that project. It’s not malice …
I stopped commenting on these issues entirely because they cannot get it.
I made such a system on blitz3d, using basic language, being a beginner at programming …
They showed you:
- O3DE
- CryEngine
- Unreal engine 4 and 5
- asset from the asset store
What else do you want as proof? most of them are more than 10 years old! And these features were asked since at least unity 5, where people asked to the CEO on stage about terrain, then after the non committal answer stormed off the conference, incidentally that’s when godot started to get traction …