Hi guys?
I am now working on a game level of a indie game with Unity3D.
But I cannot create a beautiful scene and never have done this.So I want to know about your ideas.
May I have some question:
-How can you get a good lighting in your level?
-What do you do with your LOD?You have some skills?Make it beautiful and the same time smooth.
-The terrain ,how can I match the terrain surface and the grass texture?
Thanks very much.
And you can see my screenshot of my recently scene.How do you like it?My friend told me it was uglu.TAT


[attachment=11628:6WWVO760$V2GSOL7{SF)P3.jpg]
[attachment=11629:8@HVA4F$R92JY00`{R)TOA.jpg]
[attachment=11630:UVA`E4``J3TX8OJ49GOWKSH.jpg]
[attachment=11631:WSEF`@}}2(~Z%F2~PEOCWSO.jpg]

you can download them for a better look.
I just think the lighting . the grass and the tree are terrible.
How can I deal with it to make it looks beautiful?


Can you understand me?
I am so sorry I am not good at English.

Moving you to our "APIs and Tools" forum.

And you can see my screenshot of my recently scene.How do you like it?My friend told me it was uglu.TAT[/quote]
It's not bad, really! That said, I have a couple of comments on what could be missing from each of the screenshots (I don't know about Unity3D though so I can't give any technical advice):

1st one: the mountain needs shadows badly, it looks too flat at the moment. The rocky surface on the mountain is quite blurry, have you got your mipmaps right? The water is a bit too polygonal, you might want to smooth the normals a little bit for better reflection (and add refraction if possible, actually the water seems to be transparent but there is no bending).

2nd one: this actually looks nice, there are just two things that stick out. The tree is out of place without shadows - trust me, shadows would make a huge difference here. And the second thing is the water/terrain interface, it is far too sharp, but correct refraction will actually fix this.

3rd one: I really like this one, the reflection map could use a higher resolution though. The grass is a bit bland at this close distance because it isn't self-shadowing (e.g. grass blades casting shadows on other grass blades) but that's not easy to achieve.

4th one: the water has a good murky color here (perhaps a bit too green) and the grass is good but the trees in the background are ugly because they are pixelated. Is there any way you can use a better quality texture for those billboards? It'll look much better instantly.

Overall, the lighting looks good, the real killer is the lack of convincing shadows and low-resolution textures in some places. If you repair that, it should be nicer to look at.

Can you understand me?
I am so sorry I am not good at English.[/quote]
Yes, your English is good

-The terrain ,how can I match the terrain surface and the grass texture?[/quote]
You can do this by blending the two textures progressively, for instance at one point the texture might be 100% grass, then a bit further down it's 80% grass and 20% rock, a bit further 30% grass and 70% rock, and then finally 100% rock, it'll look smooth and sort of natural. You can also add some random noise to make it look more convincing (this'll give you patches of grass on top of rocks, for instance)

What Bacterius said. Plus, I have a few other comments.

First, you would benefit from building yourself a large reference library of images of the real world to study. An excellent place to start (and to just sort of waste time in general; beware) is Reddit's EarthPorn sub-Reddit. There are some fantastic, high-resolution reference images to be found there. Pay particular attention to the growth patterns of various vegetation. As an example, in your first image you have a very steap, needle-like peak covered in trees. It has been my experience that slopes that steep can not support such thick vegetation. What vegetation would exist would cling precariously to scraps of soil held in place by rock, rather than thick blankets of trees.

Pay attention also to texture of surfaces. The ground texture in your first shot just looks weird and shiny, and not at all like real dirt.

I'm guessing you are using the free version of Unity3D? If you upgrade to the Pro version you can have real-time shadows. As Bacterius has said, you really, really, really need shadows if you want your scene to look like something newer than the hideous malformed creations of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Shadow is the major visual cue for perceiving the shape and form of a scene, and getting it right (as right as possible, within the bounds of your available tech) is crucial. Pro is expensive, though, so you might not want to go that route. But really, man, you just can not underestimate the power of shadows. If you do want to make show-pieces with Unity free, maybe consider baking some lightmaps off-line or something. Faked shadows are better than no shadows at all.

Edit: Just noticed that there is some shadowing going on in #2 on your rock, so maybe you do have Unity3D Pro. In which case... add some more shadows, bro.

What the heck is going on with your reflection in image #3? That is some pixelly pixellated pixels there. Yikes.

Your ground cover vegetation looks like an explosion in a flourescent paint factory. High saturation + lack of self-shadowing in the plant batches means that it is going to be somewhat hard on the eyes. You can fake self-shadowing with ground cover by blending the textures with a gradient that darkens them toward the bottom. Gives the impression, at least, that there are shadowed depths inside the vegetation clump, and breaks up the monotony. Also, your grass strands look a bit stiff and wiry. Perhaps introduce a bit of curvature to mitigate the spiky appearance.

Overall, though, it looks like a nice start.

I'm with Bacterius about the water in your final shot, too. That doesn't look like water. That looks like slime.

A few more things I noticed. The foreground is all bright and saturated.
While the backgorund with the forest and mountains is all, brown and grey.

In the background the trees are much darker than the ground.