It goes without saying that if you are planning to build a landscape, Unity terrain is the way to go. Being extremely easy to use and modify, this native asset is also optimized, allowing artists to push their creative boundaries even further than they usually can with imported terrains.

Our outdoor level will start with a base terrain that will replace a primitive we've used for the ground, on the greyblock, in our last chapter. To create one, go to GameObject | 3D Object | Terrain. This will spawn a terrain asset in your Hierarchy view and place it in the Scene.

Terrain is just like any other GameObject with two key components attached to it.

The Terrain Collider component creates a collider for the terrain. Though you can't see the usual bounding box around it, it's actually there. Its shape is defined by the Terrain Data parameter that has the terrain object itself assigned to it as a reference (New Terrain). This terrain object can be found in the Project window and is...