Devlog 3: Becoming A Pro Builder

The self-study activity for this week included exploring Unity's Terrain and ProBuilder packages, to create dynamic landscapes and environments which would form the stage where a game takes place. Terrains are "meshes that use a height map to display elevation to make mountains and valleys" (KIT207); they can be easily added to a Unity scene as a 3D game object.

After a little play with the sculpting tools, I downloaded the required Terrain Tools package, and had a further fiddle with some additional brushes, which included bridge, terrace, clone, erosion, and noise. I especially enjoyed the basic set height brush, the erosion brush, for softening terrain edges, and the clone brush, for copy-pasting blocks of terrain.

Sculpted terrain that a character would have to navigate and traverse, with painted grass prefabs.

I found sculpting to be quite fun; it's a lot like digital art, using a fun variety of brush effects to create an artwork. :)

Next, it was time to try out ProBuilder. This package was very much like Blender in its ability to form models from various simple mesh shapes. Some familiar tools included colouring, extruding, subdividing, beveling, and transforming vertices / edges / faces.

A simple model of a church at the edge of the sculpted terrain, as made with ProBuilder.

My simple model was made by simply cutting new faces, and then extruding them. Painting colours onto the model was exceptionally easy - only a simple select and apply colour was required. Happy modelling!

The finished terrain-building, with sculpted areas, a simple ProBuilder mesh, and painted grass prefabs.