Unity Technologies has recently shared a new post that shows recent improvements to the game engine’s landscaping tools brought by a new terrain team.
The upcoming 2018.3 version will bring new tools and improved performance by taking better advantage of the GPU. The new version will also add per-pixel normals for terrains instead of the old per-vertex system for higher fidelity with the same triangle count. You will also get scriptable GPU tools that will help you create your own terrain tools.
The team has also improved multi-terrain editing giving the ability to paint seamlessly between terrains and manage the connection between adjacent terrains automatically.
What is more, there are now two new terrain assets. TerrainLayer is said to define materials independently of the terrain object (can be tracked across multiple areas), while a new Brush asset is said to define the brush shapes used to paint and sculpt using the terrain tools.
8-bit brush stamp showing ‘terracing’ artifacts (top) and 16-bit brush stamp (bottom).
You can learn more about the new terrain features on the Unity’s blog.