Terrain Tile Editor

Community Showcases
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Terrain Tile Editor

For one of our upcoming games we needed to create terrain with clearly defined material borders, something that is not possible with Unity terrains.
We decided to use tile maps. This allows us to create terrains in a similar NPR style to games like Age of Empires Online or Warcraft 3.


Left: Unity terrains using splat maps. Right: Terrain using tile maps

Triangle Studios’ Terrain Tile Editor package provides an easy way to use tile sets in combination with Unity terrains. Simply paint tiles onto the Unity Terrain, and maintain all the flexibility you normally would when designing a map.

Terrain Tile Editor will enable you to layer up to 8 individual tile maps. Tile sets are created using the Warcraft 3 standard. This means that lots of materials have already been created by the community and can be imported in your project right away!

Features

  • Paint tiles straight onto Unity Terrains.
  • Maintain all flexibility in terms of landscaping, lighting and foiliage.
  • Support for up to 8 individual layers per scene.
  • Uses WarCraft 3 style tile maps containing 4x4 tiles, or an extra 4x4 grid of random ‘full’ tiles.
  • Use any power-of-two resolution texture
  • Paint a single tile, or use flood fill for large areas
  • Does not add extra meshes to your scene
  • Full Undo/Redo support

Requirements

  • Unity 3.5
  • Shader Model 3
  • Software has been tested on PC and Mac

Limitations

  • Uses the terrain mesh, and therefore needs to do more work in the fragment shader than would otherwise be necessary.
  • Probably not suitable for mobile devices due to above mentioned fragment shader.
  • ‘Border’ tiles currently only support 1 variation
  • ‘Full’ tiles are chosen randomly, there is not yet a way to place a specific variation
  • Does not support trilinear interpolation on tile textures
  • With bilinear interpolation, discontinuities are visible when zooming in very far on tile borders

Change log

version 1.1

  • Fixed a bug when exporting to OSX.
  • It is no longer necessary to first add the textures to the terrain.
  • Added buttons to move individual layers up and down the stack.
  • Reduced price!

version 1.0.1

  • Fixed a bug that prevented projects from being built

version 1.0

  • Initial release

You can view the documentation and tutorial online: 890591–38362–$Documentation.pdf (508 KB)

Check out some examples of what you can make with our tool:

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Really like the results you got with the editor. The first picture really didn’t do the flexibility of the system justice, I think the video will even help demonstrate it even further. By looking at the example scenes, I think you have something that can produce some nice results! Looking forward to seeing more out of this project.

-Dane

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Good news! We’ve been approved and the Terrain Tile Editor is now available for purchase in the Asset Store :slight_smile:

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Thanks for your feedback DaneC020! The video is coming right up, and we’ll make sure to display some more of the diversity that can be created with our tool :slight_smile:

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Instruction video is online! All feedback is welcome :slight_smile:

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150 € !!! :frowning:

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Fortunately, you pay in USD! So it’s only €114 :smile:

On top of that, your purchase will help us create cool new features as well!

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I would recommend a lower price, you can get the same money from higher volume of sales and will have more customers to give feedback.

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but in Assset Store , i live in Europe :

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Why do some people always bring up this as an argument? It’s stupid. By your logic price is irrelevant because the volume of sales will always make up for lost revenue per sale. Why do we have applications that cost thousands of dollars then?

As far as I can tell they offer functionality previously inaccessible in Unity and are free to set whatever price they want.

Also, a lot of the other terrain extensions in the Asset store cost $150 so I would guess that’s why they chose that as the starting point.

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Hi Twiik,

do you know about Rage Spline 's Keely story ?

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/94918-RageSpline-2D-Vector-Graphics-for-Unity-v1.1-RELEASED

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Probably because a lot of people will refuse to pay $150 for a tile editor when you can get a different one for $95

Only 3 others out of nearly 20 to be more specific.

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We actually created our tile editor because there was nothing similar available in the asset store. The other tile editor you mention works completely differently to ours. For example: With the other editor you create tiles as borders between two terrain types. This means that all terrain types must border on the same type of terrain. You have to pick an ‘intermediate’ terrain type that will have to be placed between all other types.

With our tile editor you create the tiles bordering on alpha so they are independent. You can ‘layer’ terrain types on top of each other, and up to four different types of terrain could meet in a single point.

And that’s just one of the many differences. You only have to look at the screen shots to realize they are completely different products.

In my opinion the price we ask, compared to the amount of work that was put in there and the functionality you get from it, is very fair. But we do appreciate the feedback!

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This is pretty cool Ecco and I looks perfect for a project of mine. Good work.

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In all honesty I love the product and will probably buy it when the time comes. Even though I can tell the difference between your package and the one I mentioned (or others) other people may not. I believe you could lower the price just a tad, but I will probably still buy it as I will eventually need a product like this for a future game.

I do have one suggestion though. It would be a good idea to put more information in the asset store about the unique features. I know the 8 layers is already quite unique, but if I just found this on the asset store and based my opinion on that information, I would be almost convinced but not quite. In my opinion there just isn’t enough information to completely convince me to buy. Just a thought. Take it as you will.

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What story and how does it relate? I’m confused.

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Great inovative plugin , cheap / moderate price , many many users…ect…

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Gotcha.

Well part of me doesn’t wan’t to put my stick on the subject of pricing at all, but I think it’s kind of obvious that customers will always have incentive to ask for a lower price. Why wouldn’t they?

The developer of course has the right to set any price he chooses. There are many variables that come in to play:

  • Amount of support and other fixed costs per customer
  • Target group type (pros or hobbyists)
  • Target group size (niche or mass appeal)
  • Word of mouth effectiveness
  • Estimated lifecycle of the product
  • Competition

And many more. I’m sure people who went to biz schools would make this list 100 points long. Just because some price works for A, it might be bad for B.

@Ecco, sorry for hijacking the thread into pricing discussion. Your product looks great btw!

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Ok let’s be fair, the price is not astronomically high or something, it’s a bit above 100, with seems to me the magic number before I start to think do I really really need this? That is the only reason why I recommended a lower price.
This has no reflection on the quality of the product, with seems top notch! I will keep an eye on it and look forward to how it develops!

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Some pretty good suggestions about exposing the unique features of our software better. When we are working on the tool, we are working on a commercial project at the same time. This means that we’ve been able to create a solid and efficient workflow for the artists, but we have not yet had the chanse to spend a lot of time positioning our software as a product, definitely something we can improve :slight_smile: