Terrain settings

The final tool on the terrainThe landscape in your scene. A Terrain GameObject adds a large flat plane to your scene and you can use the Terrain’s Inspector window to create a detailed landscape. More info
See in Glossary toolbarA row of buttons and basic controls at the top of the Unity Editor that allows you to interact with the Editor in various ways (e.g. scaling, translation). More info
See in Glossary is for settings:

Settings Inspector

Settings are provided for a number of overall usage and renderingThe process of drawing graphics to the screen (or to a render texture). By default, the main camera in Unity renders its view to the screen. More info
See in Glossary options as described below:

Base Terrain

Property:		Function:
Draw		Toggle the rendering of terrain on / off.
Pixel Error		The accuracy of the mapping between the terrain maps (heightmap, textures, etc) and the generated terrain; higher values indicate lower accuracy but lower rendering overhead.
Base Map Distance		The maximum distance at which terrain textures will be displayed at full resolution. Beyond this distance, a lower resolution composite image will be used for efficiency.
Cast Shadows		Does the terrain cast shadows?
MaterialAn asset that defines how a surface should be rendered, by including references to the Textures it uses, tiling information, Color tints and more. The available options for a Material depend on which Shader the Material is using. More info See in Glossary		The material used to render the terrain. This will affect how the color channels of a terrain texture are interpreted. See Enabling Textures for details. Available options are:
	Built In Standard	This is the PBR (Physically-Based Rendering) material introduced in Unity 5.0. For each splat layer, you can use one texture for albedo and smoothness, one texture for normal and one scalar value to tweak the metalness. For more information on PBR and the Standard shader, see Standard ShaderA built-in shader for rendering real-world objects such as stone, wood, glass, plastic and metal. Supports a wide range of shader types and combinations. More info See in Glossary. 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 shadowsA UI component that adds a simple outline effect to graphic components such as Text or Image. It must be on the same GameObject as the graphic component. More info See in Glossary, and shadowmasksA Texture that shares the same UV layout and resolution with its corresponding lightmap. More info See in Glossary. 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 before. It uses Lambert (diffuse term only) lighting model and has optional normal map support.
	Built In Legacy Specular	This built-in material uses BlinnPhong (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	Use a custom material of your choice to render the terrain. This material should use a shaderA small script that contains the mathematical calculations and algorithms for calculating the Color of each pixel rendered, based on the lighting input and the Material configuration. More info See in Glossary that is specialised for terrain rendering (e.g. it should handle texture splatting properly). We suggest you get a look at the source code of our built-in terrain shaders and make modifications on top of them.
Reflection ProbesA rendering component that captures a spherical view of its surroundings in all directions, rather like a camera. The captured image is then stored as a Cubemap that can be used by objects with reflective materials. More info See in Glossary		How reflection probes are used on terrain. Only effective when using built-in standard material or a custom material which supports rendering with reflection. Available options are:
	Off	Reflection probes are disabled, skyboxA special type of Material used to represent skies. Usually six-sided. More info See in Glossary will be used for reflection.
	Blend Probes	Reflection probes are enabled. Blending occurs only between probes. Default reflection will be used if there are no reflection probes nearby, but no blending between default reflection and probe will occur.
	Blend Probes And Skybox	Reflection probes are enabled. Blending occurs between probes or probes and default reflection.
	Simple	Reflection probes are enabled, but no blending will occur between probes when there are two overlapping volumes.
Thickness		How much the terrain collisionA collision occurs when the physics engine detects that the colliders of two GameObjects make contact or overlap, when at least one has a rigidbody component and is in motion. More info See in Glossary volume should extend along the negative Y-axis. Objects are considered colliding with the terrain from the surface to a depth equal to the thickness. This helps prevent high-speed moving objects from penetrating into the terrain without using expensive continuous collision detectionAn automatic process performed by Unity which determines whether a moving GameObject with a rigidbody and collider component has come into contact with any other colliders. More info See in Glossary.

Tree and Detail Objects

Property:	Function:
Draw	Should trees, grass and details be drawn?
Bake Light Probes__ For Trees| If this option is enabled, Unity will create a Light Probe in the top of each tree and apply them to tree renderers for lighting. Otherwise trees are still affected by the ambient probe and Light Probe groups__A component that enables you to add Light Probes to GameObjects in your scene. More info See in Glossary.
Detail Distance	The distance (from camera) beyond which details will be culled.
Detail Density	The number of detail/grass objects in a given unit of area. The value can be set lower to reduce rendering overhead.
Tree Distance	The distance (from camera) beyond which trees will be culled.
Billboard Start	The distance (from camera) at which 3D tree objects will be replaced by billboardA textured 2D object that rotates as it, or the Camera, moves so that it always faces the Camera. See Billboard RendererRenders Billboard Assets, either from a pre-made Asset (exported from SpeedTree) or from a custom-created file that you create using a script at runtime or from a custom editor, for example. More info See in Glossary See in Glossary images.
Fade length	Distance over which trees will transition between 3D objectsA 3D GameObject such as a cube, terrain or ragdoll. More info See in Glossary and billboards.
Max Mesh__ Trees__	The maximum number of visible trees that will be represented as solid 3D meshes. Beyond this limit, trees will be replaced with billboards.

Wind Settings

Property:	Function:
Speed	The speed of the wind as it blows grass.
Size	The size of the “ripples” on grassy areas as the wind blows over them.
Bending	The degree to which grass objects are bent over by the wind.
Grass Tint	Overall color tint applied to grass objects.

Resolution

Property:	Function:
Terrain Width	Size of the terrain object in its X axis (in world units).
Terrain Length	Size of the terrain object in its Z axis (in world units).
Terrain Height	Difference in Y coordinate between the lowest possible heightmap value and the highest (in world units).
Heightmap Resolution	PixelThe smallest unit in a computer image. Pixel size depends on your screen resolution. Pixel lighting is calculated at every screen pixel. More info See in Glossary resolution of the terrain’s heightmap (should be a power of two plus one, eg, 513 = 512 + 1).
Detail Resolution	Resolution of the map that determines the separate patches of details/grass. Higher resolution gives smaller and more detailed patches.
Detail Resolution Per Patch	Length/width of the square of patches renderered with a single draw call.
Control Texture Resolution	Resolution of the “splatmap” that controls the blending of the different terrain textures.
Base Texture Resolution	Resolution of the composite texture used on the terrain when viewed from a distance greater than the Basemap Distance (see above).

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. RAW format can be generated by third party terrain editing tools (such as Bryce) and can also be opened, edited and saved by Photoshop. This allows for sophisticated generation and editing of terrains outside Unity.

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• 2017–09–06 Page amended with limited editorial review

• Cast Shadows flag added in 2017.2 NewIn20172

• Light Modes added in 5.6

• Tree lightmap making updated in 5.6