Quick Start

Open Sample1 scene under the Packages/Mesh Terrain Builder/Samples folder:


Click the SampleTerrain1 game object from Hierarchy and locate the Mesh Terrain Builder component in the Inspector:


This is a Unity terrain with Mesh Terrain Builder component attached. To start converting and optimizing terrains, you need to add the Mesh Terrain Builder component to the terrain game object.

Hitting the Generate Terrain Mesh button will start conversion with these settings.
After the conversion is complete, a new game object will be created at the same position with the terrain and the original terrain game object will be disabled. The generated game object will have the same name with the name of the terrain data asset.

Resolution

Controls the number of surfaces to be generated along X and Z axes. This is the basic vertex density control for the generated mesh. We limited the maximum number of segments to the maximum of height map resolution and the hole map resolution.


The resulting terrain mesh will have at most XSegments x ZSegments surfaces before simplification.

This terrain is generated with 128x128 segments, so it has 129 x 129 = 16,641 vertices.

Chunks

The terrain mesh is split into multiple chunks defined by the counts along the X and Z axes.


The maximum number of chunks that can be generated depends on other settings such as Resolution and Mesh Simplification.

Clean-cut Chunks

If enabled, the terrain mesh will be split into straight cuts disregarding the simplified surfaces at the chunk edges.

Both terrains below are generated with mesh simplification. Regular split on the left, Clean-cut split on the right:

Mesh Simplification

Settings to generate optimized meshes.


Simplify Mesh by Slope should be enabled unless for specific reasons. If enabled, vertex density will be adjusted by the slope of the segment. Therefore, surfaces with dramatic slope changes will have more triangles.

Segments that have a slope higher than the Slope Threshold will not be combined with the adjacent segments. Therefore, decreasing this value will generate higher poly meshes.

Max Number of Segments to Combine value is the maximum number of segments that can be combined with the adjacent segments along X and Z axes. This is useful to avoid large flat surfaces when the slope threshold is high.

Terrain mesh at full resolution with mesh simplification (left) with settings:
• Slope Threshold: 0.25.
• Max Number of Segments to Combine: 32.
Terrain mesh at full resolution without mesh simplification (right):

Materials

Two types of materials can be generated with the terrain mesh.


Splat Map material renders the terrain mesh similar to the Unity terrain except that it renders the mesh in a single pass, and it supports 32 terrain layers.



When Base Map material is selected, a color map and a normal map are generated for the terrain. You can set the resolution of the color map and the normal map up to 8192 pixels.

Split Materials option is effective when the number of chunks is greater than 1. If enabled, textures will be split with the chunks, so that each chunk has its own splat/base/normal/hole map texture and material. This provides better texture memory full-print and better streaming for large terrains.

Chunk UV Padding is the uv padding for the chunk splat/base/normal/hole maps. Set this higher than zero if there are visible seams between chunks. You could also try with clean-cut chunks option with an even chunk count.

When Splat Map material is selected, you can override texture array size of each texture type. This is useful when you want to use a smaller texture array size for a specific layer.

Export Objects

Setting to enable exporting trees, grass and detail meshes from the Unity terrain data.


Trees are exported under Trees game object, which is the child of the generated terrain game object. If there are chunks, each chunk will have Trees game object as the parent. Exported trees are the original prefab instances, and their transforms are read from the terrain data.

Details are exported under Details game object, which is the child of the generated terrain game object. If there are chunks, each chunk will have Details game object as the parent. Exported details are mesh prototypes for detail mesh, or quad meshes for grass.

Exported grass has a Billboard grass rendering feature but doesn't have color variation, distance fading and wind features yet.

Mesh Settings

Options for processing holes and making tileable meshes.


If Cut out Holes From the Mesh is enabled, the generated mesh will have the same holes painted on the terrain. This is necessary for accurate colliders if you have tunnels or rooms passing through the terrain. Note that when you enable this option, set the resolution to max and enable mesh simplification, so that holes on the mesh will exactly match with the original terrain holes.


Generate Tileable Mesh is useful for creating tileable meshes. If you already have a tileable terrain, enable this so that the generated mesh will be perfectly tileable.

• Note that this feature only makes tileable meshes. It doesn't generate seamless splat map textures. If you want also seamless texture generation for both Unity and mesh terrains, check our Terrain Tiler asset.

Edge Blend value is the percentage of smoothing distance from edges to the center of the terrain.


Recalculate Normals is the option that disregards the terrain normals, and recalculates mesh normals.

Tiling

If you have the Terrain Tiler asset, enable the Stitch Mesh With Neighbors option. Generate tileable terrains from the Terrain Tiler component first, then generate meshes from the Mesh Terrain Builder component.

All the terrains connected to each other will be converted to mesh terrains and seamlessly stitched together.


* Note that only the terrains that are active in the scene will be processed.

If you don't have the Terrain Tiler asset, just add the Terrain Tiler component to the terrain game object, then generate the mesh terrain from the Mesh Terrain Builder component. The terrains will be converted to mesh terrains and stitched together without smoothing.