Deformable Terrains, dynamically simulated in Vortex Studio, can be rendered in Unity during simulation. When a Deformable Terrain is loaded, a deformable terrain prefab is loaded from an asset bundle file located in the same directory as the Vortex file that contains the Deformable Terrain.

Manually creating prefabs and Asset Bundles

To manually create assets for the Deformable Terrain, a Unity project with the Vortex Integration Package is needed (such as VortexUnityTools or your own project), some deformable terrain and terrain prefabs must be added and the assets must be packaged in asset bundles.

For an overview of the assets workflow, refer to Workflow for Preparing and Using Assets for a Vortex Simulation with Unity Graphics.

Deformable Terrain Prefabs

At simulation time, when a Deformable Terrain instance is added, the Vortex Integration will look for a deformable terrain prefab with a specific name. The prefab name must contain the Deformable Terrain hierarchy from the Vortex Editor explorer without the parent element that is contained in a Vortex file. The hierarchy levels are separated with period characters. Folders are omitted from the hierarchy. The name and hierarchy are case sensitive.

For example, for the following hierarchy, the prefab name would be Deformable Terrain.

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Creating a Deformable Terrain Prefab

The deformable terrain prefab must have a Vortex Deformable Terrain component and a Vortex Deformable Terrain Renderer component.

1. Create an empty GameObject
   

   

2. Rename it with the proper name (see the deformable terrain Prefabs section introduction)
   

3. Select the created GameObject and add the VortexDeformableTerrain and VortexDeformableTerrainRenderer components in the inspector
   

4. Create a new material based on the DefaultDeformableTerrainShader shader and assign it to the VortexDeformableTerrainRenderer material field
   

5. Drag and drop the GameObject somewhere in the Assets folder in the project pane to create the prefab
   You can create folders in in the assets folder to store the prefabs 
   

In the following section, we present in great detail the required components and materials that compose a deformable terrain prefab.

The VortexDeformableTerrain Component

The VortexDeformableTerrain component is in charge of managing the deformable terrain data and to updating the renderer.

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These public fields can be configured through the inspector:

The VortexDeformableTerrainRenderer Component

This component is used to render the deformable terrain as a dynamic mesh. The mesh is generated once and updated based on the incoming deformable terrain data.

These public fields can be configured through the inspector:

The Deformable Terrain Material

The material must be based on the DefaultDeformableTerrainShader. To get a seamless transition between the overlapped terrain and the Deformable Terrain un-disturbed soil, the material must use the same parameters as the terrain meshes it intersects. The disturbed soil look can be controlled independently. The material will support intersections with up to two different terrain meshes.

These public fields can be configured through the inspector: