HNRS 304.503 Lab 5 – Terrestrial
It’s time to make a world you can walk through! Find two people, at least one of whom you haven’t worked with before and shake hands. One of the three you must have a computer that runs Unity.
To get started, let’s explore some of the terrain tools that Unity offers us.
Hello, Tools
- Make a new project, importing the Character Controllers and Terrain Assets packages when prompted.
- Add Terrain through the Terrain menu.
- Drag a First Person Controller onto the terrain.
- Play. Use WASD and the mouse to move around.
- Add a base texture by clicking on the terrain, clicking on the paintbrush icon in the Inspector, clicking on Edit Textures, and adding one of the textures from the Terrain Assets package.
- Play again. Much better, no?
- Use the first three terrain sculpting tools to carve out some hills and other landforms. Raise / lower makes mountains and valleys, Paint Height makes plateaus, and Smooth works out roughness.
- Play again. Way better, no?
- Click on the tree tool. Click Edit Trees to and add the Palm tree from the Terrain Assets. Paint trees onto your terrain.
- Play again. Majestic, no?
- Click on the grass tool. Click Edit Details and add a grass texture. Paint grass onto your terrain.
- Play again. Mouth-watering, no?
Your Next Game
Your next game is to use the terrain tools to tell a story in three dimensions. The prominent features you are to bring into this game are:
- a navigable 3-D terrain
- some (3+) meshes that you create
- a dialog or stream of consciousness revealing some compelling storyline
I strongly encourage each member to be responsible for exactly one of these components, making one person a level designer, another a modeler, and a third a storyteller.
Be easy on yourselves.