Sculpt and Paint 3D Terrain

Make a small grassy hill with a painted dirt path. Terrain Mode edits the Scene’s ground plane and heightmap; Map Mode edits voxel blocks.

Prerequisites

Open a 3D Scene with a Camera and a test mover. Prepare grass and dirt Sprites for the ground textures. Save a checkpoint before creating or changing terrain detail.

Create a Hill

1. Choose Terrain Mode in the 3D Scene Editor.
2. Choose Create Terrain when the Scene has no sculpted field, or enable Terrain > Sculpted (use the Sculpt tool).
3. Confirm Ground Plane is enabled. For a small test, set Ground Width (Meters) and Ground Depth (Meters) to 24.
4. Retain Medium (17) for Terrain Detail while testing the workflow.
5. Choose Sculpt and Raise. Use a small brush and drag over the center of the ground to build a hill. Lower reduces the field under the brush.
6. Inspect the hill from another viewpoint, then run the test mover over it.

Expected result: the ground has visible height variation, the runtime Camera shows it, and the mover follows the intended surface. Check steep sides and contact separately from appearance.

The brush has radius and strength controls. Smaller strength makes repeated strokes easier to judge. Change one control at a time; a wide, strong brush can alter most of a small Scene in one drag.

Choose Detail Before Finishing the Shape

Terrain Detail offers Coarse (9), Medium (17), and Fine (33). Those numbers are the heightmap’s grid resolution. Increasing detail permits smaller shape changes across the same ground dimensions.

Changing Terrain Detail creates a flat field at the new resolution. Turning sculpting off removes the heightmap; turning it on creates a new flat field. Save a checkpoint before either operation and use Undo immediately if you need the prior shape.

Terrain Paint and foliage can use the flat ground too. They don’t require a sculpted field.

Blend Grass and Dirt

1. Open Terrain Paint and choose Add Layer.
2. Select the grass texture for Layer 1. It is the base coat for a fresh paint map.
3. Add Layer 2 and select the dirt texture. Check its texture scale and tint.
4. Choose the Terrain Paint tool and select Layer 2 in its toolbar.
5. Paint a short path across the hill. Adjust brush radius, strength, and hardness to change its width and edge softness.
6. Save, reopen, and inspect the same path in Game View and a fresh run.

Terrain Paint supports up to four layers. Low brush strength builds coverage over several passes; hardness controls the fully painted center and feathered edge. Use the tool’s Paint or Erase mode for the intended change.

The paint-map resolution has Coarse (128), Medium (256), and Fine (512) choices. Changing it clears the paint. Removing a layer returns its paint to the base coat and shifts the later layer channels. Set the layer list and resolution before finishing a detailed path.

Assign Appearance and Surface Behavior

Ground Color, Ground Texture (Sprite), and Texture Scale (m/Repeat) define the ground’s ordinary appearance. An assigned Ground Material replaces that base color-and-texture treatment with its authored material settings. Check the active Material when an ordinary ground texture change has no visible effect.

Ground Surface Type is a gameplay tag such as grass, gravel, or stone. It can feed surface and footstep Logic. A Terrain Paint layer can have its own surface type; blank uses the ground’s type. Giving a layer the tag gravel doesn’t choose or change its texture.

Test the tag with the same gameplay operation that consumes it. Compare walking on the base coat and painted path, rather than checking only the color in the editor.

Add Vegetation and Water

Use foliage and scattering after the shape is stable. Add a water body for a pond or canal, and test the boundary between dry ground and water.

Voxel layers can add authored block structures beside the terrain. Keep their layers and tools separate from Terrain Paint’s texture layers.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Check
Sculpt is unavailable	Create the terrain field and confirm the ground is enabled.
A hill disappeared after choosing detail	Detail changes reset the heightmap; restore the checkpoint or Undo before further edits.
Painting does nothing visible	Check the selected paint layer, texture, brush mode, and Ground Material.
Paint vanished after changing resolution	The new resolution starts a fresh weight map.
Footsteps use the wrong surface	Compare the painted layer’s type with Ground Surface Type and the consumer’s live values.
The mover clips into the hill	Check the runtime mover, collision support, dimensions, and steepness in a fresh run.