Design Rationale

While designing this 3D Island, I decided to use a vacation tropical theme  as the basis for the idea for the island. 

Firstly, I used Unity Terrain to construct the island itself, texture the landmass and place grass/flowers/trees using Terrain's own placement system.

I used Unity's Shader Graph to convert a plane into a 3-dimensional Ocean Water plane that would rise up and down to simulate waves and the tide.

Using Maya, I modelled several assets, such as the house and the hilltop hero tree asset. 

Afterwards, I added some moving flags to the island to demonstrate Maya and Unity's cloth physics.

I also added post processing and volumes to improve the ambience of the island and give it a more "warm" feeling to simulate an afternoon/evening in the tropics. 

For the second part of making this island, I used Unity's Particle Systems to create falling "water", mist and ripple VFXs to form the waterfall centerpiece of the island. I also added some ripple VFXs for player wading through the Ocean Shader Graph to simulate the movement through water.