This week we looked at the Environment asset pack and the creation of terrains.

Terrains are, at their core, nothing more than a grayscale image (shades of black & white) where the colour values are interpreted as representing heights. Black is is interpreted as zero height, white is interpreted as maximum height (as defined in the terrain’s properties) and every shade of grey in-between represents an intermediate value. The terrain editing tools provides brushes in a variety of shapes to raise or lower the terrain as desired.

Terrains in Unity don’t just allow us to define their heights. They also allow the painting of the terrain with a combination of different textures. In the Environment asset pack there are a selection of useful textures for painting a natural looking environment. These are a grass texture, several rocky textures and a sand texture.

Trees and grass are also enclosed in the Environment asset pack. These are also painted onto the texture with a brush, or in the case of trees, autofilled to a requested total number.

Once we had our terrain built, we added a character controller from the Controllers asset pack to enable us to walk around in it. We finished the session experimenting with the water prefabs that come with the Environment pack.

Please note that I won’t be at Dojo next Saturday (4th Feb 2017). Nonetheless, you are welcome to attend and join another group for the day if you wish to do so.