How to smooth terrain to lower polygon count?

Question

I'm using Unity. I've created a simple Beach using Terrain editor. The problem is that Stats show me already a lot of Triangles only for Terrain renderer: 40K .

So my question is: how can I create a Unity Terrain suitable for Mobile game ? How can I smooth terrain edge ?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you select your terrain and go to the last tab which is settings you will see a slider called 'pixel error'. That determines the accuracy of the mapping between the terrain maps and generated terrain. The higher the value, the lower the accuracy and rendering. The default should be about 5 which is why your number of tris is so high.

Increasing this slider should lower the tris and the rendering.

There are also resolution values you can alter, but they may lower the quality without affecting the tris like you want.

Answer 2

You can change your terrain to a lower HeightMap Resolution like 33, 65, 129. The lower the heightMap resolution, there are less points to interpolate in the mesh.

You could change the Pixel Error as one of the answers states but increasing the Terrain Pixel Error can lead to other side effects since it affects LOD. For example, when increasing the Pixel Error too much, you will see your terrain reshape as your camera approaches it.

This explains more on the pixel error. https://forum.unity.com/threads/understanding-implementation-of-terrain-pixel-error-setting.424622/

In short, been able to get the best results for using a LOW pixel Error value and a low heightMap resolution for a low polyish look for terrains.