The Slicing Settings tab shows Slicing Grid settings, as well as settings that control how specific information is copied from the source terrain to the slices.
The Slicing Grid shows you the cut lines on the source terrain that will be used to produce the slices. It allows you to visualize the size of the slices that will be created and the region that will be cut out when not slicing the entire source terrain (single terrain only). These cut lines are only displayed with a terrain in the scene, so make sure to use the Add Prefab To Scene option from Input Settings if the terrain is not already in the scene.
We recommend placing the Scene Camera into orthrographic mode when using the slicing grid, which will give you the best accuracy.
You can change the Slicing Grid Color and Grid Y Offset, although the latter is only useful if not using Orthographic Mode
The Normalized Grid X and Z positions refer to the bottom left point of the slicing region, which is where the slicing operation will begin. These values are only adjustable when not slicing the entire source terrain (i.e., when Rows of Slicing and/or Columns of Slices are less than their max possible values), and as such they are not adjustable when slicing a terrain group. The minimum values for these values is always 0, while the max is determined by the size of the slicing region. Basically, you cannot set a value that would result in the end of the slicing region falling outside the bounds of the source Terrain.
You can adjust the size of each slice by using the Increase Slice Size and Decrease Slice Size buttons, though note that initially, the slicing size is always set to the max possible value, and as such, you will not see the Incrase Slice Size button.
For each decrease in size, the max number of Rows/Columns of slices you can produces doubles. For each increase in size these values are halved.
Because there is a minimum allowed size for Terrain (as described in the previous Section), there is a limit to how much you can increase and decrease the size of the slices. The buttons for changing the size will disappear when these limits are reached.
When slicing a single terrain, the number of rows/columns of slices you would like to produce is adjustable. This is useful for targeting specific terrain features or areas for extraction.
The Static Flags are the flags that tell Unity how a game object should be treated for different game systems (batching system, lighting system, etc.). These flags are normally chosen from a drop down menu which can be found next to the game object's name in the inspector.
With the slicer, you have the option to copy the static flags from the source terrain, or to manually specify the static flags that the generated game objects will be configured with.
If enabled, each setting will result in either the layer or tag from the source input terrain being copied to the generated Game Object Slices.
These represent the Tag and Layer properties that can be found below the game object's name in the inspector. The Tag is typically used for identifying certain game objects at runtime, while the Layer is most commonly used by the Camera to selectively draw or hide certain objects. If you do not copy these values from the source terrain, the values will be set to the default values on the Game Object Slices.
--Upgrade Note--
These settings were previously called Copy Base Layer and Copy Base Tag.
The Slicer always only copies tree instances and detail meshes from the input terrain to a slice if that tree instance or detail mesh instance falls within the bounds of the slice. This option does not change that.
Instead, what it controls is whether all tree prototypes and/or detail mesh prototypes from each input terrain are copied to each generated slice. If you disable this option, only the prototypes that have instances within the slice's boundaries will be copied to the slice.
While this can be beneficial if you have a large number of tree and/or detail mesh prototypes on each input terrain, it will result in slices missing some prototypes that it may need in the future (if you perform future world changes, for instance). It will also change the indexing of the prototypes, which may be an issue if you have scripts that rely on those indexes.
You should really only disable this option if your terrain is finalized (i.e., you know no future edits will be needed), and you do not have scripts that make use of the prototype indexes.