Terrain settings
The final tool on the four-icon toolbar is for settings. In the Inspector, click the gear icon to reveal the Terrain settings.
Base Terrain
| Property: | Function: | |
|---|---|---|
| Grouping ID | The grouping ID for the Auto connect feature. | |
| Auto connect | Check this box to automatically connect the current Terrain tile to to neighboring tiles sharing the same Grouping ID. | |
| Draw | Check this box to enable rendering of the Terrain. | |
| Draw Instanced | Check this box to enable instanced rendering. | |
| Pixel Error | The accuracy of the mapping between Terrain maps (such as height maps and textures) and generated Terrain. Higher values indicate lower accuracy, but with lower rendering overhead. | |
| Base Map Dist. | The maximum distance at which Unity displays Terrain textures at full resolution. Beyond this distance, the system uses a lower resolution composite image for efficiency. | |
| Cast Shadows | Check this box to have the Terrain cast shadows. | |
| Material | Set the Material to use when rendering the Terrain. This affects the interpretation of color channels for a Terrain Layer. | |
| Built In Standard | For each splat layer, there is one Texture for albedo and smoothness, one Texture for the normal map, and one scalar value to adjust the metalness. For more information about PBR and the Standard Shader, see Standard Shader. Note: On Direct3D 9 in Shader Model 3.0, normal maps are not available if you have enabled directional lightmaps, Baked Global Illumination, real-time shadows, and shadowmasks. This is due to the limited number of samplers in Shaders. |
|
| Built In Legacy Diffuse | This is the legacy built-in Terrain material from Unity 4.x and previous versions. It uses the Lambert (diffuse term only) lighting model, and has optional normal map support. | |
| Built In Legacy Specular | This built-in material uses the Blinn-Phong (diffuse and specular term) lighting model, and has optional normal map support. You can specify the overall specular color and shininess for the Terrain. | |
| Custom | Select this if you want to apply a custom Material to your Terrain, to create effects that are not supported by the built-in materials. This is useful, for example, when using a custom Scriptable Render Pipeline or an emissive Terrain material. | |
| Reflection Probes | Use this to set how Unity uses Reflection Probes on Terrain. This setting only has an effect when Material is set to Built In Standard, or if you use a custom Material (with Material set to Custom) that supports rendering with reflection. | |
| Off | Disables Reflection Probes, and uses a skybox for reflection. | |
| Blend Probes | Enables Reflection Probes. Blending occurs only between probes. Uses default reflection if there are no Reflection Probes nearby, but no blending between default reflection and probe. | |
| Blend Probes And Skybox | Enables Reflection probes. Blending occurs between probes, or between probes and default reflection. | |
| Simple | Enables Reflection probes, but no blending occurs between probes when there are two overlapping volumes. | |
Tree and Detail Objects
| Property: | Function: |
|---|---|
| Draw | Check this box to draw trees, grass, and details. |
| Bake Light Probes For Trees | If you check this box, Unity creates internal Light Probes at the position of each tree, and applies them to tree renderers for lighting. These probes are internal, and don’t affect other renderers in the Scene. If you don’t check this box, trees are still affected by Light Probe Groups. This option is only effective for trees with Light Probe enabled on their prototype Prefab. |
| Remove Light Probe Ringing | If you check this box, Unity removes visible overshooting, which often appears as ringing on GameObjects that are affected by intense lighting. This setting reduces contrast, and is dependent on Bake Light Probes for Trees. For more information, see Light Probe Groups: Ringing. |
| Preserve Tree Prototype Layers | Check this box if you want your tree instances to take on the layer values of their prototype Prefabs, instead of the Terrain GameObject’s layer values. |
| Detail Distance | The distance from the camera beyond which details are culled. |
| Detail Density | The number of detail/grass objects in a given unit of area. Set this value lower to reduce rendering overhead. |
| Tree Distance | The distance from the camera beyond which trees are culled. |
| Billboard Start | The distance from the camera at which Billboard images replace 3D Tree objects. |
| Fade Length | The distance over which Trees transition between 3D objects and Billboards. |
| Max Mesh Trees | The maximum number of visible Trees that are represented as solid 3D meshes. Beyond this limit, Billboards replace Trees. |
Physics
| Property: | Function: |
|---|---|
| Thickness | This value indicates how much the Terrain collision volume extends along the negative Y-axis. Objects collide with the Terrain from the surface to a depth, which is equal to this thickness. This helps prevent high-speed moving GameObjects from penetrating into the Terrain, without using expensive continuous collision detection. |
Wind Settings for Grass
| Property: | Function: |
|---|---|
| Speed | The speed of the wind as it blows across the grass. |
| Size | The size of ripples on grassy areas as the wind blows over them. |
| Bending | The degree to which the wind bends over grass objects. |
| Grass Tint | The overall color tint applied to grass objects. |
Mesh Resolutions
| Property: | Function: |
|---|---|
| Terrain Width | The size of the Terrain GameObject in its X-axis, in world units. |
| Terrain Length | The size of the Terrain GameObject in its Z-axis, in world units. |
| Terrain Height | The difference in Y-coordinate between the lowest possible heightmap value and the highest one, in world units. |
| Detail Resolution Per Patch | The number of cells in a single patch (mesh). This value is squared to form a grid of cells, and must be a divisor of the detail resolution. |
| Detail Resolution | The number of cells available for placing details onto the Terrain tile. This value is squared to make a grid of cells. |
Texture Resolutions
| Property: | Function: | |
|---|---|---|
| Base Texture Resolution | The resolution of the composite texture to use on the Terrain when you view it from a distance greater than the Basemap Distance. | |
| Control Texture Resolution | The resolution of the splatmap that controls the blending of the different Terrain textures. | |
| Heightmap Resolution | The pixel resolution of the Terrain’s heightmap. This value must be a power of two plus one, for example, 513, which is 512 + 1. | |
| Lightmap Static | Lets you control whether the Terrain geometry is marked as Static for lightmapping purposes. If you check this box, the system includes the Terrain mesh in lightmap calculations. | |
| Lightmaps | ||
| Scale In Lightmap | Lets you specify the relative size of an object’s UVs within a lightmap. If you set this to zero, the object is not lightmapped, but still contributes lighting to other objects in the Scene. | |
| Lightmap Parameters | Lets you adjust advanced parameters that affect the process of generating a lightmap for an object using global illumination. See Lightmap Parameters for more information about these settings. | |
Heightmap Import/Export buttons
The Import Raw and Export Raw buttons allow you to set or save the Terrain’s heightmap to an image file in the RAW grayscale format. You can create RAW format files in third-party terrain editing tools (such as Bryce), and you can open, edit, and save them in Photoshop. This allows for sophisticated generation and editing of terrains outside Unity.
Terrain Collider
| Property: | Function: |
|---|---|
| Material | A reference to the Physic Material that determines how this Terrain’s Collider interacts with other Colliders in the Scene. |
| Terrain Data | The TerrainData Asset that stores heightmaps, Terrain textures, detail Meshes, and Trees. |
| Enable Tree Colliders | Check this box to enable Tree Colliders. |
2019–01–29 Page amended with editorial review
New settings and layout added in 2018.3