Backwoods Gaming's Addons for Gaia

new to me then

 

Heyas gang. The terrain stamp packs are in this week's sale from Unity. Being at such a low price point, they don't go on sale that often. If there are any packs you still want, now would be the time to grab them while they are all a $1 off the normal $5 price! You can see all the available packs by clicking the Asset Store link in my signature.

Also, I had one customer ask about Gaia 2.0 compatibility. In talking to Adam, the stamps should not be effected in any way. What I will have to do is recreate the sessions. So each pack should be updated and ready by the time Gaia 2.0 releases (or shortly thereafter). In addition to recreating sessions for 2.0, I'm also planning to get enough stamps to bump the stamp count of each pack so they are all at 15. So some packs will get new stamps. I think there are one or two packs that already have 15.

Health-wise, I still haven't been able to dig a lot into Unity. But I have been able to at least make some plans, get some captures ready to convert into stamps, and I still have the one pack that I worked with @TheSeawolf building that I still need to get the required screenshots and video for in order to submit to the asset store. I know I've been saying it for a while now, but I really hope the fatigue will cooperate and allow me to get that done soon (tm)...

As always, thanks for your support!

 

Hello Shawn, I've been back lurking around the forums for about a week. Good to see you up and at them again.

Luckily for you I've already purchased all your assets.

Will you be using Pegasus alone, or in combination with Helios to create the videos?

 

Cool! Thanks for your support! How's that game coming along?

I'll be using the pair. Unfortunately my computers aren't the greatest. So Helios' ability to capture frame by frame and then giving a smooth playback is crucial. Otherwise my videos would be laggy as hell... lol. The pairing of the two assets is absolutely AWESOME! I highly recommend to everyone!

 

Hehe - I remember when Shawn did his first video - it was soooo laggy that my eyes started to bleed Helios does what is called offline rendering - and this means it can render at full fidelity regardless of resolution or post effects or machine power - and the results are truly stunning.

Here is an early Pegasus video without Helios - the stutter you see there is actually caused by grass culling:

And here is a video with Helios - the size and quality difference is phenomenal:

 

I must admit there is a stark contrast. I see Helios is on sale I intend to pick it up.

I'm looking forward to getting back into my game, I haven't touched it since November. I'll PM you @Shawn67 to catch up. @AdamGoodrich , I must say that GeNa is the bomb old boy, I must visit that forum for some more tips.

Your videos are a must and my wife is sick of your soothing voice, apparently I take directions better from you than I do of her!

 

ROFL - Yeah - i am not that great at taking instructions from my wife either.. seems to be a universal thing

 

Sounds great! And I'll second the comment of GeNa being the bomb. While Gaia does a great job of doing an initial spawning pass, throwing in GeNa for more detailed spawning and your environment is going to totally rock!!! I still need to dig into GeNa a bit more, but have loved every minute of working with it so far!

Heheh.. Well at least your optometrist loved me for them.. I agree though. All of the videos I have released on my YouTube channel so far are painful. I have yet to actually release a video using the two tools. Shortly after I began testing them was when my fatigue issues started getting worse. I'm hoping when I do the updates to all the packs with the new Gaia 2.0 sessions, I'll be able to add a video to each of the packs showing a short Pegasus created flythrough route of a couple of the terrains created from the stamps in that pack.

Great videos demonstrating the before and after Helios, Adam! You and John did an awesome job collaborating when developing the two tools. Must haves for any developer toolbox imo...

 

Hi,

Like the look of your assets, I purchased and installed your asset https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/60017 but it seems to give some errors:
Assets/BackwoodsGaming/Scripts/Framework/GaiaPacks/BWGGaiaExtUtils.cs(64,46): error CS0117: `Utils' does not contain a definition for `GetGaiaAssetPath'
Assets/BackwoodsGaming/Scripts/Framework/GaiaPacks/BWGGaiaExtUtils.cs(64,33): error CS1502: The best overloaded method match for `System.IO.File.Exists(string)' has some invalid arguments
Assets/BackwoodsGaming/Scripts/Framework/GaiaPacks/BWGGaiaExtUtils.cs(64,33): error CS1503: Argument `#1' cannot convert `object' expression to type `string'

Could I ask if you have seen this before? Or am I missing something/doing something wrong? I'm on Unity 5.4 and have latest Gaia installed.
Thanks.

 

That is the first I've seen that error message. Do you have any other errors on your console or is this the only one? I'll take a look at the scripts but I ran on 5.4 and then 5.5. I'm currently running on 5.6.1 and all of my packs use that same BWGGaiaExtUtil.cs script.

When you say you are using the latest version of Gaia, I am assuming you are talking about the latest actual asset store version and not a test version. Is that correct?

 

Actually, try this.. Even though we are using Gaia up at the beginning of the script, I wonder if there is another library in your project that has a Utils and the script is getting confused.

On line 64 change the first part of the line to:

Code (CSharp):

1. if ( System.IO.File.Exists(Gaia.Utils.GetGaiaAssetPath(

Basically all you are doing is adding Gaia. in front of Utils to force it to look at the version within the Gaia namespace in case you have Utils in another namespace as well.

Let me know if that works for you. If so, I'll add the change in for the upcoming updates when I upgrade the packs for Gaia 2.0 support.

 

Hi, I purchased your highlands pack a while back but am a bit lost with how to use it correctly with gaia, is there a quick quide so I can get an overview of what I need to do to use it ?
I had gaia installed, then installed your pack but gaia did not seem to detect the pack? I gave up but now want to try again as I like the screenshots (just right for one of my game's scenes!)..
I tried to follow some of the guides but maybe I am just a bit silly to to understand it yet.
Thanks

 

Basically the only thing you should have to do is import the pack. As long as Gaia is installed, the pack should show up in the GX menu of your Gaia Manager. From there you can open Backwoods Gaming, the stamp pack you purchased, and then enable the stamps or run the sessions if you want the same terrains I made when testing the pack.

Here is a link to the quick start guide that pretty much tells you how to do it and has some images of the process.

One thing to note, if you still aren't seeing Backwoods Gaming in the installed tab of the GX menu in Gaia Manager, double check your console and make sure you don't have any errors anywhere. If you have errors (red console messages), the error could be hitting before Gaia loads extensions into the GX menu. If that is the case, you may need to resolve those errors prior to getting extensions to show up.

 

Any plans / ideas for new terrain packs, health permitting of course ? If you need any suggestions I like the idea of some sort of glade ( mostly flat land ) maybe with a stream running through it. And, perhaps a lake based stamp. Just want to say your stamp packs are amazing but so far I haven't figured out how you make it look so easy Just realised I hadn't come here after finding your packs.

 

Thanks @Xrystal! I do have ideas for some more. I've had one pack almost ready for some time now. I just have to fine tune it and get all my asset store images done for it. Energy has been a little bit better past couple of weeks and I've actually been able to work in Unity for the past month or so. I need to try to focus on getting that done and submitted in next couple of weeks. Most of my energy during the time I've been back in Unity has been spent helping beta test a couple of assets that will hopefully hit the asset store in the next couple of months. A lot of great tools out there being worked on by a lot of awesome developers!

As for stamp packs, eel free to throw out any suggestions. This current pack I kept calling polar/arctic but it is probably more a great north type pack. Areas for the stamps were pulled from Alaska in the US. I do really want to get these rolling out again. Also I want to get back to the idea of the POI packs that I started planning. Originally they were envisioned to be solely Gaia POIs, but with Adam releasing GeNa my thoughts have gone to those packs including the POI resource files for Gaia, what Cobus of 3DForge refers to as blueprints would be custom prefabs built around the package that the POI pack is built for (prefabs would show up as empty space unless you own the artist's pack that has the action meshes/materials, and I need to look at GeNa again and see what type of files it builds for spawning multiple objects that could be included. I think these could be valuable for people with limited budgets/resources to get more stuff into their games using art assets they already have to get additional buildings, pre-built outposts and camps, etc.

Again, definitely throw out suggestions and I'll see what I'm about to pull together. Both for stamps and POI/blueprints. Right now my goal is to have, at the very least, the great north stamps released by mid-late September and have a production flow going again. Hopefully for both stamps and POI/blueprints.

 

Hey gang! Just a heads up that all of my stamp packs are part of the current Cyber Monday Mega Sale running now through December 8th! If you have been meaning to get some new stamps for Gaia but keep putting it off, now is a great time to get the packs at a discount!

Browse Backwoods Gaming in the Asset Store NOW!

 

Speaking of the sale, I've started building lists of some of my favorite assets. I've currently been working on my Environment Building list which contains assets which I either always use or alternate between. While building the list this evening, I noticed a lot of them are part of the current mega sale as well. Check them out while you still have some sale money left. If your tastes are anything like mine, you won't be disappointed!

 

Hey gang. Since the sale started I have had a couple of folks ask about whether Backwoods Gaming's stamps would be Gaia 2 compatible. I ran across this post from the last mega sale. I forgot that I had posted about that already. This is still the game plan. The only difference is I will probably release a 1.5 version of each stamp pack adding new stamps prior to Gaia 2 being ready. But all stamp packs will be brought up to date in whatever way they need to be made compatible with Gaia 2 when it comes out.

 

What? You haven't had the inside word from Adam yet?

 

Not really sure what you mean.. :/

 

Well for me I had got @Shawn67 first few packs, had kept meaning to get the rest ..
I can now say I am the proud owner of all of Shawn's Stamp packs. I am very happy
I finally have a full set ( for now, XD )

All the best. Happy seasons greetings, glad you are part of the long term Unity community!

 

Sounds like I need to get back to building more. Surely, eight packs aren't enough!

Thanks, Mark (and everyone else who loves the packs)

Happy holidays everyone!

 

Hey gang. I am working on some updates to the BackwoodsGaming.com website. So the website may be bouncing a bit the next couple of days. I will soon be getting rid of the shopping cart and turning the product pages into affiliate links back to the asset store. I have had so few sales on the actual website, I just can't justify keeping and maintaining the cart and downloads. Luckily, sales have been so few that I have enough vouchers that I can send them to everyone who bought the packs on the website. Those of you who bought from the website can expect an email from me in the next couple of weeks with vouchers for each of the packs you bought there. Please log in as soon as possible to verify your email address is still up to date.

As far as the website is concerned, moving forward I will be building it into a complete marketplace of assets that I use and recommend. I will be posting product reviews, tutorials, and "How Did He Do That?" workflow blog posts for those who like having a written reference along with videos (as soon as I can wrap my head around doing videos, now that I have a little bit better development rig. I also plan to start doing preview videos for stamp packs in the works, as well as the long-awaited POI packs which I'm planning to release as a combo of blueprint prefabs + Gaia POIs + GeNa POIs. So if you only own the art pack you can use them but if you leverage with having Gaia, GeNa, or both, you will get more value with them. Yes, @closetgeekshow, I haven't forgot about them.

So, the gameplan right now is to get the website updated, vouchers to website customers for the Unity Asset Store for the packs they bought, finish and FINALLY release the polar stamps pack, update all the packs to a standard minimum of 15 stamps, and then alternate between POI and stamp packs starting with the first POI Pack. So that's the game plan.

I have thoughts for some other things as well, but I don't want to announce them until I am sure I can keep consistent with everything else as this past year the fatigue and brain fog issues have got a lot worse. But I really hate not being able to be productive. So I'm trying to figure out ways to soldier through.

 

Hey gang! Just a quick heads up. Today is the last day of the huge Unity Mega Sale. The sale ends tonight (12/8) at 11:59pm PST. If you wanted to pick up stamp packs, Gaia, or any of the other awesome assets that are on sale and haven't yet purchased them, today is the day you want to do it. Tomorrow everything will be back to their normal prices.

Backwoods Gaming Stamps Packs
Shawn's List of Recommended Environment Assets
All Mega Sale Items

 

Super great ideas Your review section sounds like a great game plan to help others here that are new too.

 

Yes it worked, thanks.

 

I'd actually discovered the same problem after importing uMMORPG into a project, @CrandellWS. I'm preparing to do an update which includes this fix and some other back end scripting changes to the Gaia extension scripts prior to transitioning the packs over to Procedural Worlds.

 

Hey gang. Just a quick update for everyone. The issue described in the post directly above this one has been patched and all packs have been updated with the fix on the asset store. This should resolve any issues when you have a project that has a Utils class but not within a namespace within your project.

There is also another issue due to changes Unity made to serialization in Unity 2018.x which breaks session file created for the packs. Our team does have a fix which will be in the next Gaia update. If you are having issues and need it prior to Gaia being updated, open a ticket using the Support link in my signature and I'll send you the updated script and info on how to replace it within your Gaia scripts folders. The other option which works is to run the session in a Unity 5.6 - 2017.x project and then import the resulting scene into your 2018.x project.

On a last note, I guess we forgot to announce it here but as of September 1st I officially became part of Procedural Worlds signing on as the Community Manager for the Procedural Worlds suite of assets. This also means that all of my future asset work will be done under the Procedural Worlds banner. I still retain the Backwoods Gaming entity and plan to, at some point, continue working on a couple of game ideas that I started and didn't finish. But as far as any new packs, they will be strictly released at Procedural Worlds from this point moving forward. My focus is going to be primarily stamps and working with the community. But we have a LOT of other plans as we move forward and Adam is able to expand the team.

Thanks for all of your support over the past couple of years and I hope you continue your patronage with me as I start this new chapter at Procedural Worlds!

 

Which stamp and with what settings was used for this one?
I want to replicate the same terrain size/shape.

Thanks!

View attachment 190051

 

Sorry for the delay in responding. I'm just now seeing this. Unfortunately I'm not sure which stamp that was. If you run the sessions from the Gaia Manager GX menu, you can quickly recreate the terrains that I used for the screenshots. They should all stamp out at the same heights I used as well. That way you can look at each one of them and see how they could fit into your game.

 

Hi, I am interested in some of these assets, for example the coastal area. Can you tell me more (or show pictures) about what we get from these packs, are they full terrains made by Gaia that we can use in our games or only the coast that we can merge to a terrain? Can I also export the heightmaps later on to import them in another terrain creation tool and add some filters (erosion and things like that)?

 

The packs ONLY contain stamps which can be used with Gaia to create terrains. Once you create the terrains, you are able to export the heightmaps or do anything else you normally do with standard Unity terrains.

Any of the other assets used for the screenshots are listed in the individual pack descriptions. For the most part I try to use only assets which were included with Gaia but at the time they were originally produced, Gaia didn't have it's own cool water or skies like it does now so I had to rely on other assets to provide that.

But basically with the stamp packs you just get the terrain stamps and again, once stamped you can do anything with the resulting terrain that you would do with any Unity terrain.

Hope that helps!

 

Well yeah I have a lot of terrain textures and vegetation the only thing i struggle with is create terrains and I need islands and forests/mountain areas/villages on that island, so hope the stamps can help me with that.

 

Hi,
Terrain_xxx_.asset file size is very huge when i user your plugin to create canyons (Pack Vol 08).
Its size is around 50MB. But when i create terrain using GAIA then its size always less then 200KB.
Am i doing anything wrong? This is bloating my project size. Please help me

 

I'm confused.. Are you somehow using my packs without using Gaia? My packs are made for Gaia. The only thing in the packs are the stamps, which are heightmaps that are ran through Gaia's stamp creator tool. There shouldn't be anything else there.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, you are somehow using the stamps without Gaia and for some reason they end up bigger. My suggestion is don't use them without Gaia. You don't really have anything there that can be used without Gaia. The stamp information within the packs is actually contained within the Data folder's files. The tiny thumbnail of the heightmap is NOT the stamp. If that is what you are using, that may be what is causing the problem as those files were never meant to be used as a "stamp" and I would guess that the resulting terrain would look kind of crappy as well. That is just a guess though as I've never attempted to stamp the preview thumbnails.

Please let me know if I misunderstood.

 

Hi,
Off course i have GAIA . I see this issue if i use 'Play Sessions' to create terrain. When i tried with Individual stamps today the size was less then 200kb. It there any way i can reduce size that are created by play sessions? Also i see play session landscape is huge, is there a way i can reduce it to 512?

 

lol Ok.. That's the piece I wasn't getting. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to edit the size that is saved within the session. It will just stamp the terrain at the same dimensions as what I originally stamped it. Also, unless you turn it off within the session, it will also populate the grasses and trees by running the spawners. I believe those also add to the terrain size if they are spawned as terrain objects as opposed to game objects.

If you require a smaller footprint, the best way to go about it would be to not use the session and stamp manually. Really, the only changes I usually make when I stamp for testing is maybe adjust the height to bring a little better cliff or more variety to the heightmap. I normally build the stamps in a way that I'm happy with the result without having to do rotations and such. That option is always there, but in the testing I usually only change the height when I stamp. If you stamp at 512, maybe stamp with a height of 5? That may give you a very similar result as my original which I think was probably a 2k tile. At least that is what I usually work with.

Let me know if that helps.

 

Hey gang. I was doing some work on my webhost last night and accidentally blew up the backwoodsgaming.com website (along with my photography website). I attempted to restore it only to discover that my backups were overwriting the previous backup and was corrupt. (Again, the same with my photography site.)

I'd been planning to do some work on the site to update and prep for new rollouts of stamp packs after the Gaia 2.0 release anyways. So I guess I just get to put up a fresh site from scratch. It will probably take me a week or two to get things rebuilt but I'll get it done as soon as possible.

In the meantime, if you need support on the current stamp packs feel free to contact me here, on the Backwoods Gaming facebook page, support@backwoodsgaming.com, or in the Backwoods Gaming section on the Procedural Worlds discord server.

Wish me luck!

 

I posted this to the Backwoods Gaming Facebook page a few days ago but forgot to add it here. Until I get time to get the website back up and running, the Facebook page is another contact point for Backwoods Gaming. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Gaia 2.x / Gaia Pro Compatibility
While the stamp packs were written for Gaia 1.x, they may still be used with the newer versions of Gaia by simply running the stamp folders through Gaia's stamp converter tool located in the Utils tab. Once you have done this, the stamps should work with Gaia 2.x and Gaia Pro with no problem.

Unfortunately there is not a conversion for sessions, or at least there wasn't going to be one the last time I spoke with Adam. I haven't had a chance to check out the latest updates to see what has been added. So to my knowledge if you want to run the sessions, you would still need to do that using Gaia 1.x on an older Unity install. To be totally honest, with all of the new features/tools available, I'm not sure why anyone would want to use them as the terrains you can create using the stamps with the new Gaia tools should be far superior than the original sessions made with Gaia 1.x.

As always, if you run into issues you may feel free to contact me via private message on our Facebook page or at our support email address located on the stamp pack's page on the asset store. You may also reply here but unfortunately the Unity forum system doesn't always seem to notify me when there are new posts.

 

These stamps packs will work fine with the new Gaia.

The new Gaia is a complete re-write of the old one, so unfortunately the sessions will no longer be compatible.

 

Hey gang.. The long overdue updates to the stamp packs are underway and the main documentation pages of the website have been restored / updated. I'm finally back to being able to work at least 3 days a week on Unity stuff but I pretty much need to learn everything from scratch again.

News | Website | Video | Docs | Quick Start | Unity Forum | Support | Discord
Dependencies: Gaia or Gaia Pro is required! [Get Gaia] or [Get Gaia Pro]

Stamp Packs Update!!! Version 2.0.0 of all stamp packs coming soon!
The pack updates I am doing involve remaking the stamps from scratch. The new stamps have been tested in Gaia 2, Gaia 2021, and Gaia Pro 2021. I'm going back to the original areas I used to create the stamps and I am taking around a 10kmx10km area and creating 4k resolution stamps. With this in mind I am keeping to the original 10 stamp per pack limit in the v2 versions of the packs. You may still keep and use stamps above the first 10 by making a backup of the stamps and convert those yourself. I decided to go this route to save some time and justify providing this as a free update. I know some will say I'm crazy and should charge, but I have been wanting to do this update for some time now and haven't been able to.

With the changes to the session system, I still need to wrap my head around the coding and how to implement playing sessions from a Gaia eXtension script. At this point I am not planning to include the session files within the packs because I want to try to get them all updated with the new stamp files as quickly as possible. Once I have that done and can at least record some tutorial videos on manually using the sessions, I may do an update to toss the session files in.

What are terrain stamp packs?
These are themed packs containing 10 stamps for Gaia. Packs are currently still priced at $5 per pack and I have a few more new packs which I hope to again start releasing at least once per month starting in April 2022. I decided to do smaller, cheaper packs, that way folks will be able to pick and choose which packs they need instead of paying a huge price and getting tons of stamps they will never use. The smaller packs are also easier to manage in a Gaia eXtension.

What is the Gaia eXtension and what does it do?
The GX (Gaia eXtension) plugs the pack into Gaia and lets Gaia know it is there. Within the extension you have options to enable all of the stamps in the pack or disable all stamps within the pack. By default, all of the stamps in the pack are disabled when you import the pack into Unity. Enabling them moves them into the Gaia User Data stamps structure so Gaia can recognize them as stamps. The reason for setting up the enable/disable system was simply to prevent you from overwhelming Gaia with tons of stamps. If you know you are going to be stamping mountains, you can enable packs including mountains. If you know you are going to be stamping islands, you can enable those packs while disabling others.

What is included in the stamps packs?
As stated earlier, each stamps pack comes with 10 stamps. Currently, the only things included are those stamps, the stamp extension described above, and short readme files pointing to various pages of the website for documentation. You will still need to purchase Gaia, of course. But once you have Gaia and the stamp packs, you are ready to start creating awesome terrains!

New Discord Server for support in addition to old email support! [Backwoods Gaming Discord Server]
Don't fret, support will still be available by email but we are also preparing to launch a Backwoods Gaming Discord server for those who would prefer using discord over email. Please keep in mind that we wont be online 24/7 but hopefully there may be those in our community who are online who may have had experience with whatever issue you may be having and can also provide assistance. If not, we will be attempting to watch daily in addition to continuing to monitor the support email address and our social media presences.

Gaia Stamps Pack Update Status per Pack
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 01 – Village Areas | Unity Asset Store | [Update in Progress]
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 02 – Gaia Mountain and Volcanoes | Unity Asset Store | [Soon]
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 03 – Desert Areas | Unity Asset Store | [Soon]
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 04 – Islands | Unity Asset Store | [Soon]
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 05 – Coastal Areas | Unity Asset Store | [Soon]
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 06 – Highlands | Unity Asset Store | [Soon]
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 07 – Wetlands | Unity Asset Store | [Soon]
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 08 – Rivers, Canyons & Gorges | Unity Asset Store | [Soon]
Gaia Stamps Pack Vol 09 – Northwoods Areas | [Coming Soon]