Can anyone recommend the best way to model an architectural site.
i.e.
- would you model everyting in 3D Max
- Use the terrain tool in Unity (using heightmaps)
- some other way
Opinions may vary, but here’s mine:
That’s an option and the way I’ve done it in past projects. This method allows you to precisely position building foundations and other elevations, plus you can use a shader that supports bump mapping. You can also control texture uv mapping for terrain contours like caves and cliffs that the native terrain system doesn’t support. And lastly, real terrain data is often readily available (I’m doing this through Google Earth and Sketchup Pro). What you loose, though, are all the other nice features and performance enhancements that come with the Unity native terrain system. There is an old “grass” system and splat based texturing shader that works with Unity versions up to 2.6 but I don’t know if it will still work with 3.x. Otherwise, you’d have to create your own LOD, tree placement, and other features if you wanted to go this route.
This is the more popular approach and offers a number of advantages over using a mesh. There’s a replacement terrain shader that supports bump maps on the forums that eliminates that limitation also. Elevation control of the terrain through heightmaps isn’t quite as accurate, so you may need to “tweak” things manually to make things look right. Using 3rd party software, you can also convert elevation data files like DEM and other formats into heightmaps.
I’m experimenting with L3DT as a means to tweak DEM topo data and automatically generate splat and vegetation maps. I hope to give Terragen and World Machine a try later. One thread you may want to look for is the one for “.Tom’s Terrain Tools”, he’s assembled a number of scripts and information that may prove helpful. Another thread that may be helpful is Raoul’s “EasyRoads 3D”.
Hope this helps.