26 replies to this topic

[Keith]

Adam..what version of Windows are you using?  If you are using Win 7 Home read this...

 

http://forum.unity3d...-working.67775/

 

For whatever reason Unity seems to act a little wonky with Win 7 Home.  I had problems and the process in the post above seems to have ironed things out.  Hope this helps.

 

If by chance you are using Win 7 Home google Unity+Win 7 Home and it will detail some problems people have experienced and their fixes.

[Adam T1]

I will definitely give this a read when I am at my computer. I have windows 7 pro but it could be possible that someone had the same issue I am having with Home.

 

EDIT: Unfortunately, messing with DEP settings didn't do anything. I can still use Unity fine but do not know why I have the ring problem...occasionally after spending at least 20-30 minutes one of the mouse buttons stops working at which point I save, close, and reopen Unity. Functionally it is fine, as I have not had any unexpected crashes, but this ring issue would make the total project take at least 15-20 hours longer than it should...

 

If I want to try reinstalling Unity are there any critical files that I should make sure I save first so that my project stays intact?

 

EDIT: I downloaded the terrain assets pack with extra trees a while back, could that have anything to do with this? That was when I first started using Unity, so I doubt I would've noticed anything in terms of before/after.

[Mike Jones]

Your problem with the terrain painting ring very much looks like you have the height setting very high in your terrain in relation to its horizontal scale. You would have to do a lot of clicking at opacity of 1 to see such a large elevation change such as the one you are showing in the pictures unless this was the case.

 

You want to make sure that your height setting is set to something approximating the maximum height difference of your terrain between it's lowest and highest points. A golf course would be considered to be extremely hilly if the height difference was over 50 metres but allowing for more widely sloped hills beyond the course edge, a setting of 100m would probably be more suitable. I can't recall any course that we have made to require a height setting over 100m and we have over 40 real life courses modelled.

 

If you want to have mountains right on the edge of course course it might be advisable to use a different lower resolution terrain for this much like we have done on our flat practice range surrounded by steep hills.

 flatrange_cameo.jpg   52.19KB   1 downloads

 

 

Adjusting the terrain height value once you have started grading the terrain will either squash or expand your existing elevations. 

 

As far as backing things up is concerned, all your project data is stored in your project folder so unless you manually delete this, you will not lose any information when installing a different version of unity.

[Adam T1]

Interesting, so what you're saying is that the amount the brush raises or lowers the terrain at a certain opacity is dependent on what the max terrain height is? I should note that in the images I took I needed to click + hold and move a little bit to get that much elevation change with opacity 1, I exaggerated it a bit so that the rings were very obvious. 

[Mike Jones]

There is only a finite number of greyscale shades in the heightmap, so the wider you make your height variance in the terrain setting the less detail you will be able to fine tune.

[Adam T1]

Mike Jones with the answer! With a proper terrain height there's no reason to need to use opacity 1 or even 2 unless you're working on the fine details. With the default 600 height, opacity 2 is actually a pretty fast land clearer! With a max height of 100, opacity 10 seems pretty usable, although it is basically off the charts with 600 height.

 

It looks to me like brush 1 opacity 1 naturally produces rings in heavy application. It's that with 600 height, any application of this combination will cause an obvious change, even a mere click.

 

Now the question is if there's a way to keep the contours the same as before in maybe an 80-100m height maximum. I saw what shimonko wrote earlier and will fool around with that and let you guys know how it goes.

 

Thank you so much guys, all of you have been such a help. Hopefully the end of sculpting is in sight and it'll finally be time to start laying some plants and other textures onto the terrain (and hopefully ready for the next round of CF beta )

 

EDIT: One more question...can the tops of trees exceed the max terrain height?

[shimonko]

I tried your settings clicking wobbling the mouse on the spot with opacity 1 and I got the terracing too! It looks to be more of a classic rounding issue made visible by your settings, similar to getting a different weight weighing 100 items at once versus adding the weight of each.

Trees can go above the terrain height.