One of the most important aspects of the level is the foliage, you need quite a lot of it to fill out the scene to make it feel more natural. With this in mind I wanted to have at least 3 different tree types as well as a couple of bushes, rocks and grasses. To create a third tree type, I used the same base trunk and branches as the first type, but I created a new leaf plane to place on the branches. These 2 tree types are used for filling out the scene, so it doesn't matter too much that they have the same trunk and branches as the different leaf shape and colour should be enough to give the scene some subtle variety.
Next is the rocks which are needed to add to the believability that the setting is natural and earthy. To sculpt them I created a fairly low poly sphere, halved it and extruded the faces outwards. In the extrude options under the INPUTS bar, you can adjust the 'random' factor which distorts the directional values in which the faces have been extruded. This results in a 'spikey' object, which can then be manipulated further by using the sculpt geometry tool. I played around with the shapes of the rocks until I had created 3 varieties to use in my scene, and then created a seamless texture to apply to them.
The rocks are added to the Unity scene in the same way as trees and other foliage. You create a new 'tree' for each type of rock and select the model you want to use. You can then paint this model onto the scene using variable brushes to change the placement and scale of the rock models. I made sure to included a mixture of small and large rocks in my scene, as well as some that are in groups and others which stand alone.
To fill the scene out further, I created some grass planes to paint on the scene in the same way as the rocks. These are simple image files that use alpha channels, but when you have many of them painted on the scene they appear like patches of taller grass. In Unity you have the option to give an object the 'billboard' property which means that it will always face the camera - so from no matter which point the player 'looks' at this object it will always appear front-on. It is important to check this option for the grass planes so that their flatness is undetectable. I painted 3 varieties of grass planes to use in my scene.
You also have the option of wind settings to apply to terrain objects. This animates the object to make it appear as though it is affected by wind, it bends the object at a variable rate. This feature helps to make the nature of the scene feel more alive, and gives a dynamic property to the environment.
As well as grass, I also created some brambles planes to place around the outside of the level walls so that the area beyond the level looks more dense and overgrown, but also to act like more of a wall around the playable area to make the player feel more enclosed. These planes have the same properties as the grass, they are billboarded and affected by wind.
