Unity Terrains, Open World and Detail

Questions & Answers
1

Basically, I want to create an open world game. I want the detail of the game to be great. I have seen many open world maps on Youtube from Unity, and they just look TERRIBLE, I mean, it hurts to look at how generic everything looks. I want detail, but I want the game to work well. I understand that a huge world needs to be divided in many different terrains which is fine.

I want the general feel of the game to be something like this
http://forum.unity3d.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=76214&d=1385429059

I understand it will take a lot of work, and of course, I don’t expect it to be THAT intense, however you get the point.
So, I’ve searched around and can only find tutorials on how to make the terrains which I don’t really want.
Onto my questions.
Should I use a terrain generator or Unity’s terrain generator or a mesh (haven’t figured out if terrain generators make meshes)?
Also, I want the trees to be better placed, do I place them one by one, because using the Unity paintbrush isn’t an option (mind you, I want places to look unique)?

So basically, I want the world to be a large scene, not something that resembles a pregenerated terrain, but I want it to work fast. It’s important that I tell you that, the view distance won’t be too large (I only want to have a far away mountain range visible at all times. I know it will take along time, but I want it to look great. So what is your advice? I am new to this (haven’t made a terrain yet actually, only read a lot about it) so please don’t assume I will know everything you talk about, point me towards the right direction if you can.

And finally, I heard of some collider limit (65,000 - although this already is too intense). Is this limit per terrain section or per world? I assume you could run a script that will only spawn a box of terrains around you (so the transition of scenes is smooth) and nothing more, and when you leave your current terrain, the one’s from one far side disappear (wouldn’t this make the 65,000 limit obsolete?)

Thanks in advance!

P.S. One more question, I don’t want the grass to use the billboard feature. But I don’t want to place the grass one by one. So is it possible to use a world generator to make the terrain and then, use unity to place grass while placing trees manually and adding collision?

2

Hi, First of that’s one huge question :slight_smile:

Should I use a external terrain generator or Unity’s terrain generator

Unity’s Terrain Generator is already heavily optimized for faster gameplay and is really advanced . So if i were you i would stick on to Unity’s terrain generator .You could create a mesh in external 3d app but it would be hectic to optimize it nad color it.

I want the trees to be better placed, do I place them one by one, because using the Unity paintbrush isn’t an option

heard of some collider limit (65,000 - although this already is too intense). Is this limit per terrain section or per world?

you can either use a differnt styled brush or even make a custom brush.OR
you could write your own code that places trees randomly and alters it’s height within an radius and you can make it to place on other 3D objects as well.(This is the solution i use to my game But really takes a lot of programming)

Can i create terrains dynamically or can i instance it at rutimes as tiny chunks ?
Yes Absolutely

  • is it gonna be easy* ** NO **.you need to create custom grid and caluculate each position and you need it to be pre cached

heard of some collider limit (65,000 - although this already is too intense). Is this limit per terrain section or per world?

Its a limit to the world and not terrain

So is it possible to use a world generator to make the terrain and then, use unity to place grass while placing trees manually and adding collision?

Yes that possible i guess cause i havent used world generator But if it creates terrain as seprate gameobject that does not have Terrain script attached then you cant place tres on it