We were then at the stage were we had to take everything into Unity. Due to the fact that I had not used it in about a year I wanted to do a quick refresher on the software and find my way around it again, ensuring that I knew where everything was and how I could navigate around. This was a great recap for me and it was also a great chance to be able to play around with it quickly before taking everything into the program and struggling.
I started off by putting in a piece of terrain and ensuring that I knew how everything in the terrain editor worked so that I could easily manipulate my environment after to make it look how it should.
I first started by playing around with the first tool which just edits the height of the ground but the are different opacities that you can bring in to determine how high the land grows and you can then add to it after creating higher and softer peaks determined on how harsh the brush is.
I then had a quick look at the smoothing tool, which I am always unsure about using as I don't think that it actually produces a good effect, it barely moves the terrain and only slightly smooths it down but non-the-less I will still try and implement it into our environment even it is only improves the aesthetic quality of the land slightly.
I then looked at the next tool which determines the height of the land for you, you hold down the sculpting button and it will gradually get to that height and then stop, giving you a nice flat land to work this. This is a great tool for our project as we need the land to be relatively flat as the platypus has to walk across it with ease.
I then had a quick look at the different shapes that can be used. Although upon looking at these into more detail I do believe that they will not come in handy when it comes to creating our final environment in Unity.
I then familiarised myself with the terrain painting/texturing tool so that when it did come to painting it on, it would be a quick process that is done with ease. The textures that I looked at were all very similar, grass, dirt and grassy rock and they all had one thing in common; they looked too realistic. In this case we will then want to create our own terrain texture to put on as we are going for a cartoon feel for the whole environment and want this to be carried on throughout, even onto the floor and then finally the sky.
I then wanted to be able to test the water in the environment so started off by bringing in an unfinished version of the environment, as it was just the one that I had handy at the time. I wanted to use this opportunity to edit the water as I wanted to get a cartoony look to it that had that same look as we had already got in our environment so that we didn't have to make our own water.
What I did first off all was add in a quick directional light so that I could look at the water in more detail before adding in 4 different water variations that came with Unity to be able to test them and see which one would work the best.
The first water element that I looked at was daylight simple water that comes with the basic water package on Unity. I added it into the correct place and then played the level to be able to get a closer and more accurate look at it. I really liked this result, it created a very blue looking water, which would be in Australia, and it did look like it fit in well with the rest of the environment. I think that it looked cartoony enough and worked well as it had a slight ripple along the water as well.
I then looked at daylight water, which again comes with the basic water package on Unity, but this is a slightly more realistic looking water that works in the same way as the basic water but has better reflections. The only problem with this is that you can see the terrain under the water and you can see where it ends and I also think that it could be a little bit too realistic for this project.
The next one that I looked at was Water4 advanced which comes with the Pro package on Unity. I really like this one as it has the element of waves built in which can be controlled and therefore intensified or calmed down. Again I really like this one as it has more movement to it but again it does look a little bit too realistic for this project and might not work.
The last one that I looked at was Water4 simple, which again comes with the Pro package on Unity. This is a little bit better than the advanced version as it provides a softer wave but still has the movement in it so it adds an element of life. But again there is the problem that you can see the terrain underneath. To fix this you would have to bring the terrain up really far to create that drop off point and make the terrain merge underneath so that you can see it, but then you still have the problem of the waves being quite intense and they will sometimes merge up into the middle of the terrain in the centre of the scene instead of just staying at the edges.
After looking at all of the different types of waves I decided to go with the daylight simple water as it creates that cartoony look that we want and it also does still have the movement to it, even if it is only simple and subtle. Overall this is definitely the right idea to take forward and I believe that this will make the environment look better then if we were to add more realistic water in.
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