The latest Unity Terrain Sample Pack is here

Equipped with new brushes, instanced details, and materials, discover the Unity Terrain Sample Pack with the Terrain Tools package for Unity 2021.

Unity Terrain has received a series of ‘stealth’ upgrades over the past year – and it’s about time we shed some light on them. Pairing instanced details with Shader Graph support and the full release of the Terrain Tools package now makes it possible to create more vivid outdoor environments in Unity.

Compatible with both Unity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Universal Render Pipeline (URP), the Terrain Sample Asset Pack shows just how far these new tools can take your project. Whether you’re looking to leverage reusable content in your own work, or teach yourself how to get the most out of Unity Terrain, you’ll want to learn about these latest artistic and technical updates.

• Instanced details: This sample is the first one we’ve shipped that highlights the power of Unity’s instanced terrain details. The instanced detail system – made available in Unity 2021.2 – adds modern, high-performance GPU instancing capabilities that let you create dense and highly realistic foliage for your levels. The pack includes sample vegetation details for URP and HDRP.

• Shader Graph vegetation materials: The shaders for the instanced details are implemented in Shader Graph. Use them to produce effects like grass moving in the wind, or develop your own custom distance fade effects. Similarly available for both URP and HDRP, you can reuse key pieces implemented as subgraphs for your own projects.

• New brush stamps: Along with the Stamp Terrain tool in Terrain Tools, the Terrain Sample Pack includes a collection of handcrafted terrain stamps based on a variety of natural features, ranging from alpine mountains to desert mesas and volcanos. Harness these high-quality prebuilt pieces to quickly assemble rich landscapes.

• Sample terrain materials: There’s even a variety of physically based rendering (PBR) landscape materials, already set up for height-based blending in the sample pack. Reuse these royalty-free elements for your own endeavors.

The sample pack provides starter assets of what you can achieve with Terrain Tools and Unity 2021. Treat it as your starting point, a learning experience, or further inspiration for your next outdoor environment. Some screenshots and the example video in this blog are using a combination of assets from the new sample pack, custom made SpeedTrees, the Book of the Dead, and Unity's Snaps Art pack.

Download the latest version of the Terrain Sample Asset Pack from the Asset Store and import directly into your 2021.2 project today. Be sure to check out the included instruction file for additional information on the sample pack. 

Finally, we’d love to hear from you! If you have any questions or feedback, we welcome you to join our Worldbuilding forum or find us on Discord. You can also visit the Unity Learn website for more resources and tutorials.