Terrain Pipeline
Finalized seaside terrain biome ready for runtime after fulfilling aesthetic and performance requirements.
Editable terrain wireframe. This phase allows quick iteration between multiple designers and artists.
Processed terrain wireframe and chunk selection. The vertices have been equally distributed and chunked for consistent, efficient rendering performance.
Material texture array inputs, shown in atlas form. These control, albedo, normal, and combo maps allow many materials to be represented efficiently per terrain.
Finalized quarry terrain biome ready for runtime after fulfilling aesthetic and performance requirements.
Finalized volcano terrain biome ready for runtime after fulfilling aesthetic and performance requirements.
Scenario:
My client was building an open-world game in Unity intended for mobile devices. The terrain was a high-stakes game component with a fast-approaching milestone deliverable.
Requirements:
Design
Must incorporate Unity terrain
Flexibility to make gameplay changes at any point during development
Support various biomes
Support time of day
Art
Flexibility to finalize terrain sculpting and painting quickly
Look needed to have a crisp, vector-style aesthetic
Each biome needed intuitive layer support
Engineering
Terrain assets required processing for efficient runtime performance
Solution:
I simplified the problem by separating open-world portions into unique editable terrains, similar to tectonic plates. Doing so allowed for any changes to impact less of the world, made iteration between departments easier, and constricted asset requirements needed per region.
I could then leverage terrain palettes to define how biomes were rendered. A palette included layers that defined surfaces' PBR inputs (albedo, normal, roughness, metalness, occlusion, and emission) and tiling data. Biomes could now be painted onto terrains consistently across the open world. Any updates to the palette would automatically propagate through each biome.
At this point, I established a visual prototype in collaboration with the lead environment artist. While they mocked up the terrain sculpts and palettes, I worked on the terrain shader. Key features of the shader include supporting a maximum of 16 layers, crisp layer masking at reduced control map resolutions, and triplanar mapping of all layers.
I promoted consensus between art and design on the look and workflow. At that point, I scripted a TerrainConverter script, which distilled the process of converting a terrain between edit and finalized modes to the push of a button. This script included several performance and memory optimizations, including mesh chunking and redundant texture reduction. Upon profiling terrain performance on devices, engineering was on board for a comprehensive solution.