Nav Mesh for Terrain...

markfrancombe

OK Im making a nav mesh for a part of my game where NPCs will be, I dont expect them to stray from this area, so Im laboriously making a mesh to fit a road and some terrain that is either side, plus a petrol station forecourt.

I went this way rather than using the Nav Mesh segments cos of the Terrain... but its taking a while and is not too accurate. I have it loaded into Unith and am switching back and forth from Maya while I check if it fits.

Question 1: How acurate to the terain do I have to be? I assume the NPCs stil actually "walk" on the terrain collidor, not the NavMesh, so is.. "kinda roughing out the area and height" enough?

Question 2: What memory restraints is there on Nav Mesh, should it be super low poly.. and... just in case I DO need my NPCs to go wandering of all over he world, COULD I for example, export my terrain to a mesh and re-import that for use as a Nav Mesh? Or is that WAY too heavy--. My world is pretty huge 2 km by 2 km

Thanks

Mark

ChrisIceBox

Have you tried baking your terrain using Unity's built-in Navigation window?  NavMesh segments are more of a convenience, but you don't need to use them.

Have a watch of this part of the 2.5D tutorial, as it covers the use of pre-existing meshes to generate a NavMesh, rather than relying on Segments, for Unity Navigation pathfinding.

markfrancombe

"Have you tried baking your terrain using Unity's built-in Navigation window?"

No I havent, and if I could use the Terrain, that would be awesome, but I just wanted to know if it was wise to do so, The terrain is huge and complex and I wondered if the Nev mesh needed to be simpler, in terms of memory requirements.
IN my game there are areas populated but NPCs but they dont need to wander outside of their areas, so am I wasting resources but baking the whole terrain as a NavMesh, or doesn't that have anything to say on performance at all.
Unfortunately, my game is running super slow as it is, and I must keep optimisation in focus all the time. (Although I must say, it might not be as bad as I experience, as I have a SUPER CRAP computer)

ChrisIceBox

If that's the case, I'd recommend exporting your terrain into a 3D model application, and creating a simplified, low-poly variant of it to use as a custom mesh-collider.

markfrancombe

OK thanks for the info... will give that a go...

Mark