Creating a landscape with Terrain

So far, we have used cubes to generate our level prototype, but we also learned that cubes sometimes cannot represent all possible objects we could need. Imagine something irregular, such as a full terrain with hills, canyons, and rivers. This would be a nightmare to create using cubes, given the irregular shapes you find in the terrain.

Another option would be to use 3D modeling software, but the problem with that is that the generated model will be so big and so detailed that it won’t perform well, even on high-end PCs. In this scenario, we need to learn how to use Unity’s Terrain system, which we will do in this first section of the chapter.

In this section, we will cover the following concepts related to terrains:

• Discussing Height Maps
• Creating and configuring Height Maps
• Authoring Height Maps
• Adding Height Map details

Let’s start by talking about Height Maps, whose textures help...