best terrain generator?

Hello

Im just start work with unity and look around how make "things", what is in asset store and i cant find any goot terrain generator without "license per seat requires" so is there any tool to fast creating maps? i dont want to pay 360 dolars per year to use one asset to build map and try make a game. i also search for free ready maps for unity and didnt find one. is any solution to use this assets with free unity version? btw for what is this
requirement?

 

An asset that is licensed per-seat simply means that you need to have one copy of the asset for each individual on your team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-seat_license

Every editor extension on the Unity Asset store has this license attached to it.

 

It is free to use the brushes to create your terrain, texture it and place objects on the terrain. But yes, you will have to pay for an asset to help you do it faster. You can also purchased already finished terrains on the asset store.

 

World Builder is free on the asset store

Terrain Toolkit is a free download that is a great tool

Gaia is very popular and makes things go really fast, but has a learning curve. It costs about $45 but is on sale frequently.

There are a couple others that are more expensive but do some amazing things.

World Creator is a bit more than Gaia at $59 but also gets rave reviews and is easy to use.

I have Gaia and World Creator but use them differently. Gaia uses stamps, so is a bit better if you know what you want to make. World Creator and Terrain Toolkit make more ´random´ stuff. I used World Builder and it worked fine, but is like a light version of World Creator. Gaia does a lot of stuff beyond just making terrains, so it is probably what I use the most.

 

sorry, im stupid. just think that i need unity pro licence to use this asset, thanks guys and sorry

 

Not true. You can use the asst.

 

World Creator is definitely my first choice as it is ultra fast compared to any other terrain asset such as GAIA and World Builder AND World Creators' terrain generation capabilities are unbeaten.

There is a feature they call Input Terrain (strange naming at all ) where you can actually use the Unity terrain tools to draw your own terrain and drag'n drop that one into World Creator which then applies all its pure magic and GPU powered features to transform it to whatever you want.

So actually you have a lot more freedom to design the terrain shape YOU want but using stamps.

Also think of the real time Erosion system of World Creator - beside that it also has the ability to place whatever object you want utilizing some really powerful techniques (same for texturing).

For me, the number one of terrain creation assets is World Creator (but the professional version because of the GPU powered terrain generation stuff).

I also must say that I got the standalone version of it and they already mentioned that the Unity version will be upgraded with the new capabilities of the standalone version - and that would be pretty cool

Anyways, I own all terrain assets - and probably will get any new one that pops up in the asset store

 

As the author of Gaia, I am a little biased, so I will add my 2c worth

Gaia is designed to be friendly to new users and to get you up and running with your game straight away.

It does this by providing a bunch of high quality assets including grass, trees, rocks, buildings and farms for free, and then by doing all the things you would typically need to do by hand with a few button clicks.

For example after you have created your terrain, Gaia will then add your player, water, wind, lighting and post fx all with a few clicks, and at the end of this process you can hit play and start exploring your world.

Gaia also as a rather cool random terrain generation feature that lets you choose the type of environment you want to create and then generates it for you.

On top of this, Gaia has a bunch of integrations with other assets which make adding and configuring them as simple as a few button clicks.

Gaia 2.0 is well under way, and it adds multi tile support, multi core support, gpu compute support, and I am even looking into erosion. It will be free for existing users, and the super fast gpu based features will come in a pro version. In testing so far, operations that took 5 seconds to calculate are now taking between 10 and 20 milliseconds.

For someone new to Unity, Gaia is imho the best all round good starting point. I quite like world creator as well - it is a very nice tool!

 

You guys have great suggestions, but this guy just wants a free solution.

 

Woops - missed that They do exist.. i got some of my early inspiration from them.

 

If you know how to program I really recommend that you try learning this stuff ! Terrain generation is basically the entry point of procedural generation, many video and text tutorials will walk you through the process of creating a procedurally generated terrain using Unity.

Otherwise you can take a look at yet another (my) infinite terrain generator, its $5 if you want a cheaper alternative. The UI could use more than a touch and the terrains are definitely not as good looking as the other solutions, but its "infinite" on the fly terrain generation, if this is what you might be looking for.

 

Maybe I read it wrong, but it sounds like he wants something that works with Unity Free, which is basically everything.

My personal opinion is that all of them offer a lot, but you really need to spend time and become an expert at whichever one you choose if you want to make really great landscapes. I see a lot of people say they jump around and try them all, but they never explore deep enough to really understand how to use each tool to it´s fullest. With the two that I use, I am constantly finding little tricks and shortcuts that make the tool drastically better that I never would have found if I only gave it a few hours of use. If you spend 3 hours each on 5 different tools, you aren´t going to be able to produce the same quality of work as if you spent 15 hours on one of the tools.

It would be interesting, and I am not sure this forum is the place, but to have really detailed discussions ( without the developer) to compare and contrast competitive products that do nearly the same thing. Terrain Generation, Day/Night, Weather, AI, Patching etc.

 

I don't believe he or she asked about a free asset. Though they instead inquired about free terrains in a google search and wishes to find something that works with the free version of Unity. ~Could be wrong *shrugs*

To expand on what some others have said.

• World Creator is in a tier of its own but so is the price.
• Gaia is much cheaper.

Comparing Gaia to World Creator is difficult. They're two completely different ways of handling terrain creation. However, the Gaia developer I've complimented rather consistently so I'll let you search and see if him and his product is a right fit for you.

As for free assets,

Try this or maybe this.

Good luck and welcome to the forums.

 

I prefer Gaia. World Creator has bugs and while it is fast and easy to use, it gets "stuck" sometimes and just doesn't work. Gaia is not as fast, but the results are fabulous.

My favorite tool is World Machine and importing the height map into Gaia.

Using height maps on World Creator is very clumsy. You have to have a "dummy" terrain when copying over. That and the lack of polish make this not worth the money. Try the cheaper version before the pro because the only thing I like the pro for is rivers. Not worth the cost.

Once Gaia gets tiling, I think it will be the go to terrain tool. I really like Terrain Composer too but like the last one, it is still much more difficult to use.

 

LOL - When I got GAIA then I got Exceptions after Import without doing anything else but importing it ... I do not say GAIA is a bad asset as I own it as well but the other two (Terrain Composer and World Creator) do so many thing so much better

And NO, the heightmap stuff inside World Creator is not clumsy - I got the best results our of it and it works great. Also, Terrain Composer works great as well - the UI got better than in version 1 and the developer is a really nice guy as well. I prefer World Creator since this one is a truly terrain generator with so many possibilities that you cannot count them.

Honestly, I use every asset and I like them all - I just do not understand why "some people" in the Unity forums handle it like a war - blaming products for whatever ... sad to see that (hell, a Klingon is saying that )

 

Author of Gaia here. It's clear that you are a fan of the other terrain systems, and it's actually awesome that there are multiple systems out there as each has its own unique strengths. I like the erosion and beautiful UX design of World Creator.

I do take exception to your comment though. Gaia does not generate exceptions on import. You will see some errors with the SpeedTree's I include for free. This is a Unity issue and there is nothing I can do about that, it is easily resolved by regenerating their materials. The alternative would be not include them, and this then reduces the great out of the box experience you get with Gaia.

Gaia works just fine from unity 5.1 through 5.6. In later versions you need to say yes to the unity upgrade process as some of the Unity API's have been changed. I will remove these upgrade requirements in the upcoming 2.0 release.

For anyone who is interested, Gaia is currently on sale in the lead up to version 2.0. Version 2.0 will be a FREE upgrade, and has the following very cool features:

* Large world multi tile support
* Fast multi threaded generation support
* Run time generation support
* Newer and prettier post FX configuration



Additionally, for those that want blindingly fast generation, there will be a GPU compute based system available as a separately purchasable plugin.

 

... and it seems like Teila is a 'fan' of Gaia - if she is allowed to support you then I think I am allowed to support the devs of World Creator as well, lighten up things that might be wrong.

Maybe discussions like that are the reason why the devs of World Creator decided to obviously leave the Unity forums and create their own. Just wondering why they are not that 'active' in here

Also, I have never seen that the developers of World Creator ever wrote something bad about another competitor (which you did not as well) nor 'liked' an answer which was against another competitor (which you did)

 

Not sure how you interpreted my comment some sort of frowning on your favoring World Creator. Everyone has a right to their own opinions.

My opinion is that we should all buy all the major terrain tools. More tools give you more creative options, and also helps the authors to continue to be able to afford to bring cool stuff to the asset store, as it is a huge financial commitment to create and support these tools.

The only reason I responded to your comment is that other people read these forums and the information you put out there about compiler errors could lead people to assume that Gaia does not work, and this is simply not the case.

 

If i allow myself - i released not so long ago the 2017 version of the Terrain Toolkit - FREE of course.

Could it be a good starting point for you ?

> https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/f...resurrection-version-2017-for-unity-5.457155/

 

I'm torn between MapMagic and Gaia, both seem great and have really helpful devs.

What kind of performance can I expect with each? Is one more likely to run better than the other?

Thanks

 

It depends on what you want.

I own both and both are good tools for terrain.

MapMagic generates tiled procedural terrain for streaming right in MM. It is best if you want to make a cool random terrain by setting the types of features you want. It is fast and works very well.

Gaia is good if you want to make more customized terrain and have more control over what your final terrain looks like. Gaia 2 will be even better and include tiling and erosion. Gaia is much easier to use with your own height maps, which is why I use Gaia. Gaia does not have streaming though, but you can use World Streamer which will be an ideal pairing with Gaia 2.

However, you have to make those height maps or use Gaia's stamp collection, which is cool and makes great terrains. Map Magic is fast but you have less control over the final look of the map. If you have a map of your game world already in your head, Gaia would work better. Otherwise, you can build stunning terrains also with MM.

Both will do texturing and vegetation placement. Both have great results. All depends on what you need.

Performance wise...both make Unity terrain. Performance in-game will be identical. What will cause performance hits are the number of trees, density of the grass, size of the terrain, number of tiles, etc. Those will impact your fps no matter what method you use to build the terrain.

Really, the only think you need to consider is what is more important, speed of creating the terrain, or how much control you have over the finished terrain map.

 

A couple of things to add here - the intention of Gaia is to empower you to bring your vision to life.

It works by treating your terrain like cookie dough - and you 'stamp' the features you want into it as you please.

It comes with 160 different stamps from valleys, to mesas, hills and mountains, and these can be raised or lowered, rotated, scaled, and blended any way you want.

Version 2 is well advanced and it comes with a new stamp generator which allows you to generate unlimited stamps. It breaks the stamp part out from the filter part - so you can take any stamp and then add terraces, erosion, and a whole bunch of other effects.

These features will comes as a free upgrade from the existing version of Gaia, however if you want the instant feedback and speed of real time then you would need to purchase the GPU compute modules as separate plugins.

This takes the power of Gaia to a whole new level and I can't wait to get it out there.

 

Thanks for explanation Teila. That makes things a lot clearer for me.

Thanks as well for your input Adam. I love the idea of using the other assets you have in conjunction with Gaia.

I'm going to take the plunge and buy tomorrow.

 

I own many of the terrain assets as well, and for me Gaia is the most productive. I'm most interested in creating my own vision of the terrain and not looking for randomized terrain. Several of the other assets do great generation of terrain, but they are in my opinion more difficult to learn. With Gaia, you can grab a stamp, create what you want, and also use stamps with masks, or inverted to achieve more interesting terrains. Every tool has its strength, so you have to determine what your goal is and then decide what is the best fit.

 

I have to make now terrains too for an RTS game. I tried the MM too, which makes awesome looking terrains, mostly because of the erosion. But for an RTS, where I need even flat terrain for building a base it this solution is not so simple. I also need a working terrain for an RTS, that means, fair in multiplayer mode or good for a mission. For that I have to roll the terrains with MM. I could have an advantage, if I could roll e.g. more desert/continental/cold maps. With GAIA I have to stamp the height map for each terrain. The advantage with GAIA is, that I can change the terrain with the awesome Terrain Former asset and then I can restart the texturing on the terrain, that is not possible with MM. This is important for me because I have to prepare the places for the player.

Both, GAIA and MM terrains must be edited. I cannot belive that a game can have success with a random generated terrain. In my case I have to edit them anyway, and for this purpose GAIA is better, because it works with the changed terrain, so it can texture it again.

I also got the Erosion Brush to improve the GAIA terrain (hills). This asset is worth for both, GAIA and MM. I can edit the terrain in MM at the end, after this MM should never again touch the created terrain. Then I can make the places for the player, but the textures must be repaired manually and the erosion then can be repaired by the Erosion Brush.

I guess, you get good looking terrains of all the tools, the more important question is, what do you want to do with them, that means for me, how can you change them later for your needs. Just think about it, what if you want to drop a mesh road on it, through the hills? Maybe with GAIA you could stamp the terrain for it...

Hint: At the end you need MegaSplat to incredible improve the terrain textures.

 

If you are looking to make a game like Timber and Stone, Stoneheart, Rimworld, where you need randomly generated map on the fly with no editing, Map Magic is the obvious choice, players will always have a different map each time on a new game or in a neighbouring province/region. Imagine Rimworld, where you have to prepare hundreds of maps, you will go crazy. While with Gaia you need to make the map, its more about a specific map with specific goals and specific looks like in Subnautica for an example. In Map Magic you have a curve connected to the height, if you even out the curve it will even out the terrain, there is also terrace generator, if you increase the area value in the generator it will create bigger flat terrain. I would choose Map Magic because I envision specific goals like the said games above while other people have different goals and use Gaia.

 

Kind of late to this...but...

I am not a fan of anything. I use what works best for me and I think most folks know that I am honest with my reviews, even brutally honest sometimes. Everything I said about World Creator was true of MY experience. If they are afraid of what people say about their assets, then it is a good thing they started their own forums. lol

Even Adam can tell you...I do not wag "team flags" about any asset. Fans have emotional attachment to their items of adulation. I do not have an emotional attachment to any Unity tool or outside tool. That would be just silly, imho.

You are more than welcome to give your opinion and I absolutely respect whatever you have to say about your use of tools.

We are so fortunate to have all these great tools to make up for what Unity refuses to give us, for some reason.

 

Terrarria, Minecraft, Worms all did pretty well. In fact, really this functionality is exactly what I am after. A terrain engine with which I can save/load the state of a chunk once it has been generated and/or modified by the player. (Just like mincraft/terreria etc...eg..random world gets generated> player modifies it> player can save+ reload and the terrain gets loaded as it was before).

Which would be the best terrain tool or combination of tools for this?

 

I have taken note on everything you have said and so, in response to @hoodoo I would like to ask you all(more specifically @Klingon @Teila @Tsilliev @Tsilliev), what is the best tool to achieve the following goal:

1. Creation of terrains based on heightmaps for VR
2. Creation of masive (10km) terrains without killing machines
   1. not sure if all of the tools contains different optimization methods
   2. Or, is it my responsability to optimize every terrain by my methods?
3. Tool that contains 3D resources (trees, bushes, grass, etc)

Is there any tool that gather all of the specified above? I am willing to buy one tool only due to budget limitations.

 

I have used every terrain creator out there, including ones on the asset store and stand alone products.

My favorite height map generator right now is World Creator Stand Alone. My second favorite is World Machine. WC is fast and has a lot of cool features to generate terrain and to get in and make adjustments by hand. It will give you a nice height map to use in Unity and it will also texture for you, although I skip that part. There is nothing on the asset store that can compete with either of these tools. They are not cheap though, but if you are making a huge terrain, then you need to invest in something that will do that job. And make sure you can export as tiles, something some of the asset store tools will not do for you.

My favorite tool for texturing is Terrapainter. It is brand new on the asset store and now very inexpensive. I have been using it since it first arrived in beta. I LOVE it. I have used other tools, including the most popular ones, but Terrapainter is fast and simple and does some very good things. It is made purely for texturing, so does a fabulous job.

As for trees and grass and objects, there is no other choice than Vegetation Studio. You can procedurally place your vegetation and objects, play with settings to make them look good, make biomes, place easy masks so your houses are in long grass, change textures with seasons, etc. It is so well optimized that it allows you to place tons of trees on your terrain as well as grass and bushes. It creates new billboards which look so good that you won't mind having them in your game. A new pro version is in the works that will be even better, probably an upgrade I think but could be well worth it.

So..is there any tool that gathers all of the above? Gaia maybe and I recommend that for people who do not want to spend the money, do not mind that the resolutions might be lower, and do not need tiling. However, the tools above will take your terrains to the next level.

Good luck to you!

P.S. Do not even try to make a terrain that large without VS. Seriously. It will crash and burn for you.

P.S. VR...talk to the developers of the products I have mentioned and see what they say. Height maps for VR should be okay because it is just a height map. But check with WC and VS guys. I am pretty sure Terrapainter will be fine.

 

@Teila Thank you so much!!!! Your answer is exactly what I was looking for. I will continue forward with the workflow you presented taking in consideration the budget. Big thanks!!

 

Sorry to keep beating a dead horse...

My game uses heightmaps generated from topographical maps(Normandy, France). Which would be the better solution between Gaia and Map Magic? Both are on sale until the 11th of this month. I've also checked out the World Machine demo, but would prefer one of these other options as WM only has updates for a year, but if it would be better for my project I might take the plunge.

I've played with the demo version of Map Magic with a 4km x 4km heightmap and it does pretty good. I need my terrain(30km x 30km) broken into tiles, which I don't believe that Gaia does. But my terrain is based on the real world, so I'm not sure which one would be better. I have Vegetation Studio as well if that makes any difference.

Thanks for any opinions.

 

I'm interested in using only the built in Unity tools. I think those coming soon will be perfect for my needs. The cool part of working with just Unity tools and small additions you build yourself is that you get full control without the overkill.

I figured I'd add some balance to the thread.

 

I'll have to look and see what Unity has in store for terrains. Will the future Unity terrains be tile-able?

 

Best wait for Unity's post at some point. Roadmap shows 2018.3 and it'd be irresponsible of me to make any statements.

 

Good thread about terrain generators.
I have looked at all of the ones that have been mentioned here.
But I would like to do my terrain with low poly style, anyone know how good the terrain generators are in creating low poly style terrain?

 

One free alternative is TOZ Noise a port of libnoise with added features, an editor tool to create things visually and full source code that you can improve yourself. I believe some of the products mentioned above already use or copied from it at some point. A few tutorials here.

Or if you want a full planetary scale solution, my TOZ Planet Renderer also generates lod planets using a much improved TOZ Noise including simplex and other noise types, basically you get 2 tools with it again with full source code.

 

Landscape Builder can import GeoTIFF realworld heightmap data into larger landscapes with multiple terrains (e.g. 64 terrains are no problem). It also supports World Creator's TIFF format. It is compatible with Vegetation Studio if you want a fast way of rendering vegetation using the GPU.

 

Thanks for the heads up about Landscape Builder. For some reason I hadn't seen it before, but I've only been using Unity since June. If it can import RAW files, it might be what I get.

 

Looking forward to seeing Unity's tools but we have been waiting for a long time. I hope they surprise me.

 

Yes, it supports importing RAW files

 

The tutorial videos look really good. This asset is on the list for my next paycheck.

 

Is that just normal World Creator standalone or the PRO version?

 

I have the Pro version. The difference is that the Pro is unlimited and/or based on revenue of company. I have not yet made an terrain that required the unlimited size but the limit is 4096 for the Standard. Might be other differences but you can see that on their website.

 

The PRO version did look like the best deal. Thanks for the info.

 

This is a fantastic thread that is still relevant today.
I'm looking to generate and hand craft terrains and hand craft the placement of objects on the terrain, like trees and even walls and tables. Basically the whole environment. I'm not really that concerned about procedural terrain generation beyond something basic as I'll be hand-crafting most things anyway. So editability, both adding new things and changing existing things is important. Also the ability to go back and change things is important, so as few things are set in stone as possible. For example, I might want to regenerate the terrain and not change any of the objects on it, or maybe re-seat the object's height. Basically so there's not a one-way linear path that one must take while using the tool that if you deviate from it, you have to re-create the whole thing from the start, or large parts of it.
The style and scale is similar to the worlds of the old Infinity Engine RPGs* like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, and more modern interpretations like or Pillars of Eternity. So there will be outdoor and pseudo-Indoor scenes where due to the mostly top down -ish / isometric angle, only a small amount of the map is ever in the viewport.

The options I've considered are in the following order:
1. Use Unity's built-in tools. They may be sufficient for this or I may have to wait for a Soon(TM) version
2. Buy Gaia.. is gaia 2 out yet?
3. Buy Worldbuilder standard or pro.

While I did mention PoE as an example, the production quality will not be as high as that game.

What are people's thoughts on my list of suggestions? Thanks.

*I know they were pre-rendered, I'm talking about the overall style of game.

 

I love to hand craft areas of my game too. Best handcrafting I have ever seen is World Creator 2 Standalone. You can go in and hand dig areas of the terrain and add those to your main terrain as well and then add erosion on top of that. So if you want a flatter valley, you can create that in an area without touching your mountains around the valley. Very fun to use. But..the program is expensive. There is a Unity version which is less expensive but not as powerful. Otherwise, most of the terrain tools will let you hand craft although if you use a procedural one, you will have less control unless you use Unity tools to hand craft. You could add Terrain former to something like Gaia which improves the tools. Unity is supposed to be making improvements to the terrain and tools during the 2018 cycle so watch for that.

For top down, hand crafting will be ideal. Beware of stamping though because often that will not have the same resolution quality as the rest of your map. Unity is adding stamping too and not sure how they handle resolution. The problem is that the stamps need to be the same quality as your base height map. Gaia 2 may fix this problem but I am not following it these days as I have the tool I need. But if it does, it might be a good option when it comes out.

Hand placing is easy..just move the object in place. Do remember that when you do this, you may lose some of the optimization that comes with painting trees and items with the terrain brush. You definitely can hand place with the brush, just a little frustrating when you only want to place one tree. Does work though.

Your game sounds wonderful and hand crafted terrains can be so beautiful. Hope you will post pictures when you are done.

 

You might want to look at Landscape Builder. I've only tried Unity's terrain, Map Magic(MM), and Landscape Builder(LB).

I'm like you in that I don't want procedurally generated terrain. My terrain is based on a real world area. I've actually found that I can make most of my changes for terrain in Photoshop and then import a .png heightmap into Unity via LB.

While MM is powerful, it is Visual based and that is going to take me a while to get used to. Although I was able to get a 30 by 30 km terrain in it rather easily. But fine tuning everything is another matter. It's going to take some time to Master

I decided to try LB and it is more like Unity's built in tools, but way more powerful. I only have a 4 by 4 terrain, but it was very easy to import a height map and get it set up. You CAN replace the terrain in a scene and all of the objects will remain. I do this a lot because I modify the height map in Photoshop and then reimport it. You can make Object Paths, with any object, and I use trees and bushes for making hedgerows this way. You can also use Stencils to place objects as well. I have one small area of forest set up that way while the rest of my trees are either hand placed or in Object Paths. The texturing tools and grass generator and trees can be based on several factors, such as height and inclination among others. I use the grass generator and use stencils to block off areas where I don't want grass.

As far as Unity's new terrain in 2018 2.3 or whatever, we'll have to wait and see.

 

Oo, I rather like this. Always a pain trying to paint a path. I need another terrain tool like I need a hole in my head, but sounds great. Tried some of the placement tools but they do not do what I want.

 

Hi,

Recently we evaluated houdini indie for terrain generation. It's brilliant, like any other tool, however I made the decision not to use it as we actually do want to control things manually. I'm finding for Unity 2018.3, it's fine to use Unity's tools. The key here is you'll probably want to have all the other stuff automatically update like vegetation and object placement. Give them scripts that find the height and so you only worry about X/Z placement.

That's our approach. We want to add to that with an automatic erosion or detailing height layer but Unity isn't being very forthcoming on the details right now.

For me, world building tools are a particular brand of snake oil sold hard by people who probably mean the best but ultimately their job is to convince you that you can't live without their brilliant terrain tools. That's actually nonsense of course. If you look at book of the dead, you can't even see the terrain. It's all about sculpting the broad shapes.

2018.3 is shaping up well for terrain. The next beta (6 at time of writing) will introduce stamping as well which may interest you.