I have a cliff in my game, currently it sits on flat grass, but I want to add more depth to the visuals. I've added ambient occlusion to the pipeline and it has helped a lot. However, what I really want is some ground variation right around the base of the mountain.

I tried creating a plane, attached a texture to it, and placed it under the mountain. This worked, but since the dirt texture is transparent to allow some of the green grass to come through, the plane covers up the ambient occlusion.

I'd rather not use unity terrain, as that seems over kill and not how I want to create terrain in my game. The art style doesn't really flow with unity terrain.

I also thought maybe tiles? Or to hand paint the texture around the mountain, but I'm unsure how that would work since the ground is one large plane.

Any advice?

I have a cliff in my game. Currently it sits on flat grass, but I want to add more depth to the visuals. I've added ambient occlusion to the pipeline and it has helped a lot. However, what I really want is some ground variation right around the base of the mountain.

I tried creating a plane, attaching a texture to it, and placing it under the mountain. This worked, but since the dirt texture is transparent to allow some of the green grass to come through, the plane covers up the ambient occlusion.

I'd rather not use Unity terrain, as that seems overkill and not how I want to create terrain in my game. The art style doesn't really flow with Unity terrain.

I also thought maybe tiles? Or to hand paint the texture around the mountain, but I'm unsure how that would work since the ground is one large plane.

Any advice?