Terrain Editing Suggestions

[TanukiDigital]

I've been using Unigine for the past couple months.  In testing out the Unigine terrain system I am mostly very happy with it's features, at least as far as rendering goes it is hands down better than other engines.  Where it lacks in my opinion is in it's editing functions, and I believe this could largely be remedied with just a couple inclusions in the editing options.

 

LandscapeLayers and Heightmap Settings

I'm using various landscapelayers to adjust the terrain heightmap in key locations.  This is a very useful method for setting both large and small detailed areas as I can position rotate and scale adjustments as needed, non-destructively, which is crucial for creative editing of terrain.  This is similar to "Stamp" type terrain adjustment systems I've used in Unity (such as Microverse).  There are some issues with the current Unigine system which make it difficult to use currently.  Below are a few suggestions that I think would greatly improve ease of editing terrains...

 

1. Heightmap adjustment based on Z-position

In other words, heightmap adjustment would begin not at the underlying level of the terrain, but at the Z-position of the landscapelayer node.  This would allow you to move landscapelayers in the vertical plane, while their height adjustment range stays relative to the landscapelayer rather than the underlying heightmap. Currently All Rotation and scaling is taken into account (which is excellent!) but the Z-position is completely ignored.  Adding this as a checkmark/option would make editing terrain in this way much much MUCH easier.

 

2. Add "Override" Heightmap Blending Mode

Currently the only options are AlphaBlend and Additive, both of which have their uses.  Adding an "Override" blend mode (used in conjunction with the z-position suggestion above) would allow more intuitive adjustments based on the localised height of the landscapelayer.

 

Painting Explicit Height with brush

I would like to be able to paint onto the terrain setting a specific heightmap level.  Currently this is doable but difficult to setup, and the behavior is a little inconsistent depending on the brush.  I was able to set this up using a landscapelayer set to the same size as my underlying terrain, using a black heightmap with a blank alpha channel, and blending mode on the landscapelayer and brush set to AlphaMask.  This works OK but it took me a while to figure out how to set this up and is not really that intuitive.  Also their are artifactsalong brushed edges due to alpha and color info not corresponding.  Perhaps there is a better way to do this already?

 

Editing Based On Spline / Mesh

Being able to adjust the terrain heightmap (as well as texture and landscape details!) based on a non-destructive editable spline (or at the very least based on a mesh) would be a very welcome addition to the terrain system.  This would allow the creative editing of many landscape features such as roads, rivers, etc.  (I'm sure this is not the first request you've gotten for spline editing!)

Edited December 2, 2023 by TanukiDigital

[silent]

Hi Tanuki,

Thanks for the feedback!

Yes, some of the requests were already known (such as spline supports), but so far it's not yet implemented. Also there are some technical limitations that doesn't allow us to move lmaps alongside the Z axis. That's why some of the features are not possible to implement with the current LandscapeTerrain object.

Regarding the painting explicit heights with brush - could you please record a small video that shows the described behavior with edges artifacts? I'm not sure if there is better way to do this, so at least we can maybe fix the artifacts later.

Thanks!

 

[_dahu_]

On 12/1/2023 at 6:54 PM, TanukiDigital said:

Editing Based On Spline / Mesh

Being able to adjust the terrain heightmap (as well as texture and landscape details!) based on a non-destructive editable spline (or at the very least based on a mesh) would be a very welcome addition to the terrain system.  This would allow the creative editing of many landscape features such as roads, rivers, etc.  (I'm sure this is not the first request you've gotten for spline editing!)

Check..

Happy Christmass.