Legacy Documentation: Version 4.5
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Terrain Settings

The final tool on the terrain toolbar is for settings:-

Settings Inspector

Settings are provided for a number of overall usage and rendering options as described below:-

Base Terrain

Property: Function:
Pixel Error The accuracy of the mapping between the terrain maps (heightmap, textures, etc) and the generated terrain; higher values indicate lower accuracy but lower rendering overhead.
Base Map Distance The maximum distance at which terrain textures will be displayed at full resolution. Beyond this distance, a lower resolution composite image will be used for efficiency.
Cast Shadows Does the terrain cast shadows?
Material The material used to render the terrain. This should use a suitable shader, for example Nature/Terrain/Diffuse (this shader is used if no material is assigned) or Nature/Terrain/Bumped Specular.
Physics Material The Physic Material used for the terrain surface to specify its friction and bounce.

Tree and Detail Objects

Property: Function:
Draw Should trees, grass and details be drawn?
Detail Distance The distance (from camera) beyond which details will be culled.
Detail Density The number of detail/grass objects in a given unit of area. The value can be set lower to reduce rendering overhead.
Tree Distance The distance (from camera) beyond which trees will be culled.
Billboard Start The distance (from camera) at which 3D tree objects will be replaced by billboard images.
Fade length Distance over which trees will transition between 3D objects and billboards.
Max Mesh Trees The maximum number of visible trees that will be represented as solid 3D meshes. Beyond this limit, trees will be replaced with billboards.

Wind Settings

Property: Function:
Speed The speed of the wind as it blows grass.
Size The size of the “ripples” on grassy areas as the wind blows over them.
Bending The degree to which grass objects are bent over by the wind.
Grass Tint Overall color tint applied to grass objects.

Resolution

Property: Function:
Terrain Width Size of the terrain object in its X axis (in world units).
Terrain Length Size of the terrain object in its Z axis (in world units).
Terrain Height Difference in Y coordinate between the lowest possible heightmap value and the highest (in world units).
Heightmap Resolution Pixel resolution of the terrain’s heightmap (should be a power of two plus one, eg, 513 = 512 + 1).
Detail Resolution Resolution of the map that determines the separate patches of details/grass. Higher resolution gives smaller and more detailed patches.
Detail Resolution Per Patch Length/width of the square of patches renderered with a single draw call.
Control Texture Resolution Resolution of the “splatmap” that controls the blending of the different terrain textures.
Base Texture Resolution Resolution of the composite texture used on the terrain when viewed from a distance greater than the Basemap Distance (see above).

Heightmap Import/Export Buttons

The Import Raw and Export Raw buttons allow you to set or save the terrain’s heightmap to an image file in the RAW grayscale format. RAW format can be generated by third party terrain editing tools (such as Bryce) and can also be opened, edited and saved by Photoshop. This allows for sophisticated generation and editing of terrains outside Unity.

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Wind Zones
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Tree Creator