1:26 – When choosing a heightmap, look for one where the color scale is based off of height. Like black being the lowest point and white being the highest. A picture where there are shadows changing the color will affect it when unity implements it. For example, think of a tower, if the entire thing is lit up but there is a little shadow on the top of the tower. Unity will think that shadow is the lowest(if it’s black or darkest) point while it is actually among the highest.
16:23 – If the white to black lighting scale is too drastic, when you implement it into your map in unity, it will have a very drastic heigh changes. To fix this, go into photoshop with the image(heightmap) and into image tab on the top. Then adjustments, and lastly, curves. Inside of curves you can lower the color output, the color range. For example, now instead of a black and white image, it may be white and a white-ish gray, or light gray instead of black. This will lower the heigh difference when adding the heightmap into unity. -To add. Unity does not keep up to date with the file. What I mean is, if you put in a heightmap then replace it with another heightmap in the file. The one you inputed into unity will still be unchanged even though the original file no longer exists.
24:59 – When importing heightmaps make sure your settings match up. When you save a file from photoshop, you can as either pc or IBM pc, and mac. If you choose mac, then when you are going to import it into the game scene, make sure to select mac. Same goes for pc or IBM pc.
27:51 – If you go on photoshop you can mess around with different filters and affects to change the image or heightmap. For example, add some mountains, cliffs, hills, or bridges. And if you need to, go to curve to lower the color range to decrease the height.
37:09 – If you use something like world machine to create a heightmap instead of messing around on photoshop. It will automatically create a splat map for the terrain. In world machine there are more specific and complicated tools you can use. Such as adding water, erosion, different times of erosion, like underwater or above water, specializing cliffs and mountains, etc.
44:38 – When importing a splat map, since it comes from another application than unity. Make sure you import it under the advanced setting to make sure it is RGB 32 uncompressed. And have readwrite enabled so that you can read it and put in the proper splat map.
48:02 – If you want to create something like a cave for example on top of a heightmap. What you need to do is form where the cave will go on the heightmap before you import it, like a dip or hollow in the ground next to a mountain or hill. Then import rocks and form the cave manually. If you want to add trees, grass, or anything on top of the cave you can build additional terrain and add it. You can add as many terrain and objects as you want. Once done you can add light sources and… really anything you want, I don’t know.
1:01:00 – If you want to add a larger cave or tunnel you can use a tool in unity that allows you to lower and raise the ground. Add larger stones and terrain over the lowered area after you create where you will place it by using the tools.
1:01:55 – If you are wanting to add colliders onto the rocks. Most of the time when you import a package with rocks they will have built in simplified colliders. Otherwise you could use a mesh collider if you increase or lower the size of the object. Or maybe you could create it using a block, sphere, or capsule collider.
1: 07:27 – When you are trying to attach two terrains or heightmaps together you can do it programmatic ally with a software like Stichscape. Which will do it for you though it does cost a little. Otherwise you can do things like flipping the terrain, molding it, or adding in objects to match it up.
(At least ten points within the blogpost, currently finish 6/10 at school, cheers!)