Terrain StairStepping How do I get rid of this

#1 Well we have made an extensive terrain and altho I've seen this problem in some areas the smoothing tool seems to take care of it. I suggest play around with the settings for the smoothing tool especially the size of the tool, pressure, and the brush softness curve.

Have you tried the 'smooth heightmap' option under the terrain tab when using terrain editor? It's a bit of a blunt instrument but it does what it says on the box.

What heightmap dimensions are you using and also how many meters are you using per pixel when you import a heightmap? You will get much smoother terrain if you use 2, 4 or even eight instead of 1, and the higher numbers seem to give better framerates, but of course less detail.

It could be some kind of interference effect between the resolution of your heightmap and the meters per pixel setting you are using, try experimenting with some different sizes and settings. You could also try changing the basetex size in the terrain Inspector, a lower number gives a smoother terrain but again less detail.

Alternatively you might be able to workaround the problem by doctoring your heightmap in photoshop, maybe change the brightness and/or contrast settings or add some blur to some areas.

#2 we are using a 1024 height-map. Out square size is 16. I think that the reader it self may be taking it down to 8bit before making the calculations. It would be nice if the height-map reader was able to read straight GEOtiff 32bit float data. I think this would get id of the problem. In my previous experience using other terrain and rendering software that the stair step effect usually comes from the map being 8bit.


Didn't even know abut the global smooth will try that next time. already smoothed it all out by hand on this one.