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Question by phfatmonkey · Feb 08, 2013 at 12:59 AM · terrainheightmapnormalmap

Is it possible to use multiple heightmaps on terrain?

We have a very large terrain built using satellite imagery for the elevation data. In a relatively small part of the terrain a user needs to interact with the environment in a first-person controller. At that spot we have a high-res mesh that was generated using LIDAR imagery. Currently we have this high-res mesh sitting on top of the Unity Terrain, but I would like to find a better way to seamlessly integrate it. Is there a way to do that?

Is there a way to do one of the following:

  • generating a heightmap from the high-res mesh that would be used on the terrain in conjunction with the satellite data

  • Painting a normal or heightmap onto the terrain just as I would a diffuse texture

  • Somehow stitching the high-res mesh in the terrain

  • Some other way

Thoughts? Thanks...

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avatar image phfatmonkey · Feb 08, 2013 at 12:18 AM 0
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I should mention one more method we tried: I wrote a quick surface shader that blended a tiled diffuse map using UV Channel 1 with a planar mapped alpha on UV Channel 2 that softly blended the edges around the outside. This looked great...until it was lit. The blended areas would still cast shadows making for a very undesirable effect.

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Answer by MountDoomTeam · Feb 08, 2013 at 10:49 AM

Hello can I ask where you got the satellite data? I am looking for the same thing and there are too many formats for radar geometry survey data, I couldn't find any that was easy to convert into a picture. Can you send me yours I'm designing a terrain also?

In exchange I can answer all your questions because I know a fair amount about terrain height maps. For a start you can make the greyscale pictures that you have into seamless tiles using for example gimp tiles seamless/make tile plug-ins in plug-ins/map you can also manually do it in detail by using a cloning brush, cloning areas along the sides etc

You can also take the picture and rotate it around and 4 directions and stick the 4 together it will be tiles

To tile textures you need seamless textures.

you can also fade the edges of your textures and add them together as squares so the edges overlap in the fade areas.

The other way, which is far more interesting, is that you place cross fading 3d brushes over your height maps and add them together or multiply them together if they are in the range 0-1. to make a cross fading 3d brush you can use the texture like the 1st brush in this picture http://www.pixologic.com/docs/images/4/48/Drust05.jpg

except don't make it round necessarily, make the brushes all kinds of bean shapes or mountain shapes just with a gradient from white to dark, and use that to multiply your height maps, or make some brushes from sines and Perlin noise, if you prefer doing it in maths. Then what you can do is multiply the mountains by the brush shapes, and add them together in all kinds of strange combinations, it enables you to mix different types of mountain height maps together, you can also add them on top of each other and multiply them, for example if you have a flat height map with holes in you multiply that with the mountain and it will make mountains with crevasses in them. if you have any good HQ terrain heightmaps that i can use for free, please send me a PM. thanks.

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avatar image phfatmonkey · Feb 11, 2013 at 06:51 PM 0
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Thanks, ZoomDomain. I'm not sure how the satellite imagery was imported in, since that part was done by another group. I can check on that and get back to you.

In the meantime thanks for the tips. Is there a way to make custom brushes to use as stamps for the terrain?

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Answer by phfatmonkey · Feb 11, 2013 at 08:34 PM

Hi, ZoomDomain. I checked with the other group and they said they used Uniweb with Google Maps for Unity. Uniweb is $55 on the Asset Store, but Google Maps is free. I haven't used it but you might be able to get what you want with just the Google Maps package.

Any thoughts on importing custom brushes to use on terrain? I've found a thread that explains it here, but it doesn't work. Maybe it's a Unity 4 issue.

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avatar image MountDoomTeam · Feb 12, 2013 at 07:42 AM 0
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Hey thanks! I was thinking hopefully some radar data from USGS because it's public domain/free and the only question is converting it into images! It's 3 m accurate!

Try this- http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/118368-Unity-Terrain-Custom-Brushes

avatar image phfatmonkey · Feb 12, 2013 at 11:58 PM 0
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Thanks, ZoomDomain. I tried what they suggested before (i.e. placing the custom brushes in the Assets/Gizmos folder) but I couldn't get it to work. Then I downloaded the free pack from the link you sent and I noticed that the numbered suffix has to be sequential. I had for example, brush_21.png and brush_022.png, and it didn't work. I then changed the name to 98 and 99 before i copied the downloaded pack into the folder. Still didn't work, but when I changed the numbering so there were no numbers skipped (the free pack ended with brush_20, so I started with brush_21) it worked! And didn't seem to have any limits on size.

However, the brush stamp needed to be too small and the terrain resolution where I used it wasn't high enough to work. From there I discovered how to use normal maps in conjunction with painted textures.

In the end though, the best looking solution was super-easy. I add a script to the mesh that turned off shadow-casting at run-time. Then I just used the tiled diffuse map with a soft alpha blend on the edges.

Anyway, thanks for your help, and good luck with the GIS data.

P.S. give me some up-votes if you can, my $$anonymous$$arma is too low so I can't vote on anything. Thanks.

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