user guide
Contents
1. the hills It can be straight round or plateaus Freq Meter amount of peaks generated Peak Ratio ratio of non zero peaks Lower if you want more plains Peak Width influences the width of the hill tops Use User Peaks if checked the user defined peaks are taken into account Figure 13 Terrain created using the Voronoi generator with round peaks 3 1 5 Walk Generator This is a bit different generator Instead of trying to produce the height values directly it simulates a person walking up or down a hill He starts walking straight ahead and every so often based on Freq Meter makes a big turn up or down This way the generator produces terrain which is more suitable for characters walking on it It is controlled by the following parameters e Freq Meter number of points per meter where a bigger turn is performed e Change Meter magnitude of the turns e Cohesion controls the overall steepness of the terrain Lower if you want the terrain to be more tight Figure 14 Terrain created using the walk generator 3 2 Smoothing The terrain after it is automatically generated or manually created can have many spikes or sharp edges However for games it is usually better if it is smoother so that characters can walk on it If you select the Smooth tool you can smooth the surface curve of the terrain Again the area to be smoothed is specified by the target area Note that the angle of the t2. Contents 1 Introduction LI Imstallation 22644646844 4 8 444 64464 4464 64464 42 44 lode WOT Uae EN 1 3 Creating New Terrain 74 4089444844 4254482644487 Booed 2 Terrain Editor Dole AMIA Nodes bs 4 amp amp She eo A Sh A A Oho E EA Des La DEDU E ance ee ok etna BR a Bee amp aah Sy eee Sy ose Sp se i Zo Terrain Pulling 4444082468465 448684464646 8434644464 44445 2A DACO TEXLUMES y we he aie he tee ote tae Wee er be te We lee a te ee Clee a Se te tke a se Se eo Dior Gases a a ddr fa ce aria Ah Gh Ge AoA EA A RS A A 3 Terrain Generator 31 Surface Curve Generator sa ee 6 s a a a e a a a E E 3 1 1 Peaks A a Se ee S L27 Perin Generator 2 raanda aaa a a e ii ls 3 1 3 Midpoint Generator ooo a a SA Voronoi Generator sa ues ee dew woe e oe eR AH AS AS 3 1 5 Walk Generators 64 644646 464 48 6646446 444 464 642 5 So MOCOS S as 64 8 ok Bh CASS OEE EL RES eR AEE EE AEE gee E By lt r GY io Bed Si Ws A nds es ee Oo SAA A a Mik Se ok EO we A E AR SP E A 4 Conclusion 1 Introduction This is the user manual for e2d v1 0 0 It is a 2D terrain editor and generator for Unity 3 4 It will guide you through basic steps of terrain creation and editing and explain the features of the tool The manual is intended for users of the tool If you re looking for the source code reference you should read the Doxygen documentation If you want to know how the terrain is implemented and how the generator works inside
3. arget area influences the direction under which the height values are smoothed The only parameter controlling the smoothing is Iterations which influences the amount of smoothing to be done See Figure 15 to compare a terrain before and after smoothing Figure 15 Terrain before left and after right smoothing 3 3 Texturing In many cases it is necessary to paint the terrain textures manually to reflect the needs of the level design But it s always good to have something to start from That s the aim of the Texture tool which applies texturing to the terrain based on the height and on the slope of the terrain The generator uses the target area definition to know where and how to apply the texturing A height limit is assigned to each texture defined in the Textures tool of the base E2d Terrain component It is defined using a vertical slider as seen at Figure 16 Then when the node is above this limit the particular texture is as signed to it However if the slope of the terrain around the node is higher than Cliff Slope then the Cliff Tex ture is used instead See Figure 17 for an example Parameters Cliff Texture Cliff Slope Texture Heights ground Generate Texturing Figure 16 Defining height limits for LESTUTES Figure 17 Terrain with automatic texturing applied 10 3 4 Grass While it is possible to paint grass manually using the terrain editor it is easier to use the generator when the
4. b in the e2d folder into your scene 2 Creating new game object and dragging the e2dTerrainGenerator and e2d Terrain scripts onto it The first method brings into the scene predefined terrain but otherwise both of them have the same effect To create your own terrain select the terrain object and in the inspector click on Nodes This will select the tool for editing nodes If you have used the first method delete the terrain data by clicking on Reset Terrain Now the terrain is clear and we can start adding new nodes 2 Terrain Editor The terrain editor consists of tools located in the inspector of the E2d Terrain compo nent Select the game object with the terrain to see the inspector 2 1 Editing Nodes The surface of the terrain is composed of terrain nodes They are basically 2D points linked together to form a polygonal chain You can edit them by clicking on Nodes in the inspector Now you can add new nodes by left clicking anywhere in the scene ex cept other nodes but be careful not to place any node so that the surface curve Figure 2 Creating terrain nodes with the mouse intercrosses itself If you do an error mes sage will appear see Figure 3 Then either undo your action or move the nodes so that they don t intercross themselves anymore Normally new nodes are added between two closest nodes or appended at the end of the terrain surface But if you want to force the tool to append the node to the end the
5. change the properties of the brush While holding shift the mouse movement changes the brush size While holding ctrl the brush direction changes And holding both shift and ctrl changes the strength opacity of the brush The brush parameters have the following meaning Figure 5 Height brush before being applied e Brush Size size of the brush in world units e Brush Opacity influences the strength of the brush the higher the more movement will be done by the brush e Brush Angle specifies the direction of the movement 2 3 Terrain Filling The area of the terrain is defined by the surface nodes as we have created them earlier and the boundary rectangle By adjusting the rectangle you can define the shape of the filling of the terrain You can do this if you click on Filling and then drag the handles in the scene You can also change the texture of the filling in the in Figure 6 Defining the fill area of the terrain by drag spector In the e2d demo Terrain Tex ging boundary handles tures folder there are some default tex tures you can use They are supplied with Unity and are free to use The terrain should look similar to Figure 6 The blue rectangle shows the boundary rectangle of the terrain The parameters have the following meaning Fill Texture texture used to cover the inside area of the terrain Tile Width scale of the width of the fill texture in world units Tile Height scale of
6. h settings of different methods of the generator It is important that all of the methods are mixed together to produce the final result The way they are mixed is influenced by the Blend Weight parameter of each of the method You can set all of them to zero but nothing will be really generated then The parameters of the methods can be quite cryptic at times but each of them has some presets predefined which you can use instead By selecting a preset the parameters are set so that the generator produces something sensible For example a preset called Rolling Hills produces smaller smooth hills Try it by yourself but don t forget to increase the Blend Weight parameter or otherwise nothing will be generated 3 1 1 Peaks As you can see the last tab is titled Peaks It is not generating anything Instead it is used to define your own peaks you would like to have in your terrain If you select the tab you can then click in the target area and red dots will appear They represent the peaks or hills mountains etc You can drag them around or hold shift and delete them The peaks are used in some of the generator methods mentioned below Figure 10 Target area defining space where the generator works 3 1 2 Perlin Generator The Perlin generator works by producing noise and then creating the heightmap based on the noise The noise can be controlled by the following parameters e Freq Meter the higher the more hills wil
7. l appear in the terrain More hills also mean that they will be more steep e Octaves influences the level of detail Increase if you want to have small bumps in the terrain e Persistence the amount of detail at lower levels Increase if you want the small bumps to be bigger in the height Figure 11 Terrain created using the Perlin generator 3 1 3 Midpoint Generator The midpoint generator produces similar kind of terrain as the Perlin generator but it is generally more spiky and jagged The advantage is that it attempts to satisfy the peaks you have defined However this works only when Freq Meter is high enough The parameters are e Freq Meter the higher the more hills will appear in the terrain More hills also mean that they will be more steep e Roughness the higher the more jagged and spiky the terrain is e User User Peaks if checked the user defined peaks are taken into account Figure 12 Terrain created using the midpoint generator The parameters are explained in detail here http freespace virgin net hugo elias models m_perlin htm 3 1 4 Voronoi Generator This generator randomly defines several peaks points in the target area similar to the user peaks and then creates the heightmap by interpolating different curves through the peaks The advantage is that you can very well use peaks defined by you check Use User Peaks The parameters are e Peak Type shape of
8. n hold ctrl while placing the node You can drag each of the nodes to change their position And if you want to remove any node hold shift and click on the node The Reset Terrain button clears all terrain data Of course you can undo this action so don t worry Clicking Rebuild Data will force the component to rebuild run time data in case something went wrong The Close Curve parameter is used to create terrain without any ground like a floating island of land See Figure 4 for example of this If Plastic Edges is checked the terrain surface normals are modified so that Figure 3 Terrain nodes are intercrossing them Figure 4 Closed terrain forming an island of land selves The terrain cannot be rendered floating in the air 1t looks more plastic when there s a light hovering above the terrain An example using lights with 2D terrain is in the lerpz unity scene 2 2 Height Brush Now click on Brush to select the height brush tool The height brush is used to move many nodes at once They are moved in the direction you define not just upwards The affected terrain nodes are marked in the scene by blue glow and the direction of movement is displayed by a red arrow see Figure 5 As you increase the size of the brush more and more nodes will be marked blue and will be affected by the brush To use the brush left click in the scene or sweep the mouse around a bit There are also some handy shortcuts you can use to
9. ng tool e World Width width of one tile before it is repeated world units e World Height height of one tile before it is repeated world units It also influences the size of the terrain surface mesh e Fade Threshold determines where the texture starts to blend into the fill texture e Fixed Angle if checked the texture is not aligned to the terrain surface When you re done select the texture you want to paint set the Brush Size and hover your mouse over the terrain As in case of the height brush you should see blue highlights above nodes around your mouse When you click the mouse the texture will be painted on the highlighted nodes as in Figure 8 Again there are some shortcuts for adjusting the brush properties When you hold shift then by moving your mouse you can change the brush size While holding ctrl you change the currently selected texture Figure 8 During the process of painting the sand texture on the terrain 2 5 Grass When the terrain surface itself is ready it helps a great deal to add some vegetation on top of it To do so select the Grass tool The inspector looks similar to the one of the Textures tool Again there are textures used for grass painting so the first thing to do is to click the Add button and add some grass textures By clicking on Del you can delete the selected grass texture While painting the terrain surface you select specific texture to apply it to the terrain B
10. read the thesis 1 1 Installation The first thing to do is to download Unity itself After it is installed open your project or create a new one Then double click the e2d_demo unitypackage file containing the tool and several examples If you only want the tool itself open e2d unitypackage instead Click Import The package with all script files will be imported into your project in the e2d folder and you can start using it 1 2 Getting Started If you haven t done so yet you should read the Learning the Interface section of the Unity manual It will show you how to control the editor and work in the environment Now take a look at the Project window In the e2d demo folder you can find few sample scenes with 2D terrain generated by the tool You can open basic unity start the action and see something similar to Figure 1 The other sample scenes are lerpz unity and car unity Figure 1 Demo scene with sample terrain in action The tools and the terrain itself are all in the e2d Terrain game object If you want to play with the tools select the object and then you can see all the tools in the inspector But don t spend too much time there We ll head on to explain you the tools one after each other 1 3 Creating New Terrain The demo scene is nice but it s time to create your own terrain First create a new empty scene Then there are two ways of bringing the terrain tools into the scene 1 Dragging the e2dTerrain prefa
11. terrain too large The generator sets the density of grass to the terrain based on the height and on the slope of the terrain The generator uses the target area definition to know where and how to paint the grass Only nodes whose height is between Min Height and Max Height are assigned any grass Also the slope of the terrain around the node must not exceed Cliff Slope we don t want any grass on cliffs The density of grass to be set is specified by the Density parameter 4 Conclusion Now you should be able to use both the editor to manually create and adjust the terrain and the generator to automatically produce the shape and texturing of the terrain The terrain and the generator components can also be used from scripts You can access them as any other components and their methods However you should know that if you manually change the terrain data such as TerrainCurve you must rebuild the runtime data by calling RebuildAllMaterials and RebuildAllMeshes When you re using the generator you don t have to do that To see what the methods do read the Doxygen documentation 11
12. the height of the fill texture in world units Tile Offset X x offset of the fill texture in world units Tile Offset Y y offset of the fill texture in world units Boundary Rect boundary rectangle which is displayed in the scene as a blue rectangle with handles in the corners 2 4 Surface Textures Click on Textures to select the tool for editing and painting surface textures The terrain surface is covered by a thin stripe of grass sand etc Using this tool you can specify the texture used for each particular node of the terrain But first you have to define some tex tures To do so click Add to add new tex ture to the list You can delete it after wards by clicking on Del When you se lect a texture from the list you can paint 1t in the scene but also edit 1ts parame ters The most important is the texture itself Change it by dragging a texture as set from the Project view to the Texture field In the e2d demo Terrain Tex tures folder you can find several default textures you can use The tool should look similar to Figure 7 After you re done you can change other parameters from the fol lowing list e Texture the texture asset handle Textures Left click to paint the selected texture Hold shift to adjust the brush size Hold ctrl to change the current texture Brush Size Texture World Width World Height Fade Threshold m 0 3 Fixed Angle LJ Figure 7 Settings of the texturi
13. to manually edit the terrain we can talk about the generator The generator automatically produces the terrain or part of it so that you have some basis to start your work from It is not intended to be used completely independently and some manual work might be necessary 3 1 Surface Curve Generator To select the curve generator tool click on Create in the inspector of the E2d Terrain Generator component Two things will happen you ll see a blue rectangle in the scene and a lot of parameters to set in the inspector The blue rectangle is called target area and defines the space where the generator works It can either grab existing nodes from the area and adjust them or as in case of the curve generator put the generated terrain there Note that the target area can be rotated and scaled and it also affects the result of the generator Basically you can generate the terrain upside down if you want It can be handy for caves The target area can be adjusted by dragging handles in the scene see Figure 10 or by adjusting its parameters in the inspector There are two global parameters e Rebuild All if checked the whole terrain is rebuilt from scratch Otherwise only the part in the target area is deleted and recreated e Step Size space between two nodes along the X axis of the generated terrain This basically defines the density of the nodes and can lead to better looking terrain but worse performance Below that are tabs wit
14. ut when you re painting grass the textures are mixed together automatically Instead by left clicking on the terrain surface you increase the density of grass If you hold ctrl the density is decreased As in case of texture painting or the height brush the area to be influenced by the brush is highlighted in blue color in the scene Also there are some shortcuts adjusting the brush properties When you hold shift then by moving your mouse you can change the brush size While holding shift and ctrl you change the brush opacity The opacity influences how much the grass density will be changed The final look of the grass is influenced by several parameters There are some global parameters valid for all grass textures e Random Scatter random displacement of individual grass clumps e Wave Speed influences how fast the grass waves in wind Each of the grass textures has its own list of parameters influencing its look e Texture the texture asset handle e Wave Strength influences how much the grass waves in wind e Width Random randomness of the width of grass clumps e Height Random randomness of the height of grass clumps e World Size standard size of grass clumps world units The grass when set properly should look similar to Figure 9 Note that the grass waves only when the game action is running Figure 9 Sample terrain with some grass painted on it 3 Terrain Generator Now that we know how
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