GAIA - AAA terrain generator, procedural texturing, planting and scene creation

Vignetting it was. Thanks guys.

 

#tip I don't know Knald, but all I ever do is create Normal, Height, Specular, AO, and Emission maps as needed, keeping them all separate. I only use AO with Distingo at the moment, and only use alpha channels for transparency. I know some apps like RTP combine maps using alpha channels to improve performance, but I prefer the K.I.S.S. principle, especially if I need to tweak any of them afterwards.

As for your 8bit maps, have you checked out the "Advanced" Texture Type in the texture import settings?



It gives you a lot more texture options, and might give you a way to import them without changing them. If that fails, you may need to convert them to 16bit.

 

1- i was created a terrian with random terrain generator
2-coverage texture spawner
3-run game in android device
4- texture not be displayed well

 

I have had no issues running stuff generated by Gaia on an android device - but i also did things like reduce texture sizes, decrease the terrain size and terrain settings etc to make it more mobile friendly.

How does the texture look on your desktop ?

 

when i run it on desktop textures are shows perfect but on android device too bad.

 

Here is a screen of a Gaia generated environment taken on an android phone:

 

You will need to work with your terrain and texture settings then to make sure they work. I dropped all my texture sizes down to 256. Most of my terrain settings were at 256 as well. The scene above was a first quick hack at making it work - and pretty sure that I could get that frame rate up a lot higher as well.

 

Here is a screen of a Gaia generated environment taken on my android phone:


textures and terrain setting on best option.

 

the problem is android having a wild range of devices and some are known for having problem with many unity features, giving your device name would be a good start. like if its a 5 years old device the problem could be that you use standard shader on terrain instead of a legacy shader

some possible solutions:
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/595991/android-terrain-textures-problem.html
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/square-pixels-on-terrain-instead-of-smooth.107677/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/terrain-texture-on-android-device-pixelize.163834/

 

I could use some help. I am looking for a general way to create a terrain at run time, through C#. What would be the easiest way to do that, given the defaults that i have specified.? I am also having a problem with the lighting messing up the appearance of my textures/materials. For instance, the model that I am working with has "see-through" eyes in the scenes built by your engine. However, a scene with my basic lighting shows it's eyes fine

 

Gaia isn't an engine, it is just building the terrain. I would guess there is either something different with the Unity lighting between the two scenes, which is accessible via Window -> Lighting. Or the camera setup.

If when you created your terrain with Gaia you used all three of the buttons under Standard, my guess would be you have two cameras and character controllers in your scene. It sounds like you dropped your own character in. The normal fps camera is about where a face might be on a 3d character model. So your camera might be in the head of the model. You would need to move it outside of the head and you would also want to make sure you use a 3d character controller so the model is animated. Again, that is all Unity stuff and really has nothing to do with Gaia. Just assuming this is what happens since Gaia lets you spawn a first person controller as part of the basic setup.

Hope that helps.

 

Kia ora

@FargleBargle

Knald is jus a wee program like Crazy Bump but half the price.

Thank you again friend, I had not found any doc's relating to this info. Is there a tutorial you found or just fragments of info here and there which for me is Unity's issue their tutorials feel like, just fragments and not a consistent flow of steps. Seems a lot of necessary Unity's info in general is either missing or so deep in the archives it's so lost it's hard to find in re-guard to setting up and running a project correctly. eg: their terrain tutorial show how to make a terrain and how to import one but no details on how to make the correct textures, apply them and set them correctly. Its probley in a different tutorial 50 chapters away in another section. sorry maybe the wrong place, it's just so frustrating trying to get consistent cohesive information

@Adam Is it very hard to have Gaia's scripts check to see if any of the 3D Forge packs are installed and use them in place of the free assets, I have yet to find a search and replace option to replace the spawned objects with the full registered blueprints or full registered items. I don't know it there a wee tutorial any where for this work flow.

 

What I would do is find the buildings within the POI Game Object within the game objects section of the resources file and replace the prefab that is there for the house for the prefab you would rather use. The thing I would be careful with though, is make sure the prefab you use doesn't have ground objects around them and is just the building with whatever is attached to the building as each prefab in the list for the POI will fall to the ground, but individual objects within a building prefab will be spawned as if they are attached to the building and may be floating in air or underground.. If that makes sense.

Let me know if it doesn't and if not, I can try to explain better.

One thing that I'm hoping to add to my Point of Interest Packs for Gaia is a POI Manager type object that could work with map assets to throw an area of interest/point of interest marker on the map. Might be a little much if your POIs are individual houses, but might be useful for editing purposes after you have spawned and verify house placement and then it could be deleted if you didn't want it to show up on map any longer.

 

I maybe barking up the wrong tree,.. I'm thinking theres two versions of items a cheaper say low poly that is used in Gaia and a better version say higher poly that we buy in the pack, if I'm wrong and I'm sorry if I'm mistaken here then all I need to do is link the interior matching of the POI house from the interiors pack right?

 

I think they are the same poly.. The difference is the blueprints you get by owning the exteriors kit are modular.. So you can swap out doors for ones that you can open, windows with different color or clear or windows that can swing open whereas the houses that come as free samples are a solid model that you can't swap out parts on.

As far as linking interiors, you can do that now if you make a collider and put it on the door and have the interior in a separate scene. The houses from exteriors kit, you could actually place the interior inside the house and save it as a new prefab and spawn that house prefab and have a house you can actually open door and go inside within the same scene.

 

Just years of trial and error, and banging my head against the wall, plus a bit of previous computer graphics experience before I took up Unity. Sorry, but there's no secret tutorial stash I can point you toward.

 

Trying something new - the unity forums are really hard to search and find information in. So I am trying slack out. If you would like to join you can sign up here : https://procworlds.slack.com/signup

Some of the benefits of slack over unity forums is the ability to categorise the conversation. Anyways lets see how we go.

Looks like you will need to drop me an email to join - send a private message to me via the unity forums with your email address.

 

Gaia is not really optimised for runtime generation. Come by the slack channel in the post above and I will add a channel with some information on where to start.

 

Hey gang.. Starting this weekend, I am going to be combing through the thread looking through posts for information to help Adam put together the FAQ page for http://www.procedural-worlds.com, which is the main home page for his company. I am also going to try to put together a list of tutorials that I've seen floating around about using Gaia with other products. I had originally planned to contact those authors and offer to host their tutorial on my http://backwoodsgaming.com once I get the learning system installed. But if we can work out the logistics and after I talk it over with Adam, it might be something he wants to host there as well.

Ok.. So why am I posting this here now? Well, I know there are a lot of long time followers here who have helped with answering questions since 1.5 was released (and some even prior to that if they still apply). If any of you have suggestions of some of the questions you feel should be in this FAQ, feel free to give me a list. If I don't have some of them in my list already at that time, I'll be happy to add them.

Also, if you know of tutorials involving using Gaia alongside other products please share the links. At the very least, if they don't want us hosting the tutorials, I would at least like to get a centralized list of them together for Gaia folks.

On the stamps pack front, I am currently working on volume 5 which is a coastal areas pack. I've also started work on volume 6 which is a glens & highlands pack. I originally hoped to release both of them on the 16th. If this weekend goes well, I will be submitting volume 5 either Sunday or Monday. Volume 6 is still planned for release on the 16th, if not earlier. At that time, I'm going to step back and try to kick out an update for Volume 1. My original plans for the Village Area pack was to have stamps that would be stamped where you want to place a village. It didn't quite work out that way. The stamps have a village area in the center, but I'd prefer to just have the terrain area which will fit the village for you to stamp where you want it. Don't get me wrong, I still love that pack. But I want to introduce a new style of stamps which I think will be a little bit better for doing smaller detailed features into existing terrains. To help with that, the village pack will get a free update of "under" village detail stamps. So if you don't have that stamp pack, be sure to grab it so you'll be ready to download the update!

I am also working on planning the first of the Point of Interest Packs for Gaia. It will be a woodlands pack containing a medium village, small village, trading post, and a couple of other points of interest which can be spawned by Gaia's new POI system. The pack will require you to own the 3DForge Exteriors Kit and will require some blueprints from the 3DForge website. We will also be building a couple of new blueprints which will be given to Cobus to put up on the 3DForge website, which will also be required for the POIs to spawn correctly. I would really be interested in what types of POIs you would like to see created. I've asked this in my discussion thread about my stamp and POI packs. If you have ideas or if there are things you would like to see made into POIs using Cobus' kits, please head over there and respond to the thread. I have a lot of ideas of extras to build into the POIs and am still working out the details, but if you follow that thread as well you should be kept pretty up to date with what is going on.

Last but not least, if any of you are asset publishers who publish art environment packs who would be interested in being featured in my POI Packs, send me a PM and we can discuss collaboration. Right now all of the packs I own are based around fantasy/medieval and at this point, Cobus is the only one who has responded to me about collaborating on the packs. I would love to get some publishers to work with who have other types of architecture as well so we aren't just catering to the fantasy/medieval crowd. These packs are promoted via social media and we are also growing a mailing list and I know Adam has talked about a similar type of mailing list for Gaia as well. So hopefully between us pushing to our mailing lists and social media followers and you doing the same with yours, we can help expand each others reach. I also have some ideas of doing something similar with creatures and NPCs as well as scripted assets. So really, anyone who is looking for opportunities to collaborate, throw me a PM.

Back to the here and now, throw me those FAQ ideas and tutorial links! Oh, and if there is a tutorial you would like to see.. Throw me those too.. Just put something like "Whatever kind of tutorial you are looking for - NEED". I'll help Adam find someone to do it, or if you see someone post a tutorial you would be willing to write or record, let us know.

Thanks for "listening" to my rambling!
Shawn

 

Having fun.

 

Pretty much total terrain newb here, so please be patient. I've been using the random terrain generation of Gaia, it's a cool feature that gets me up and running quite quickly. Thing is, once generated I want to edit my height map in photoshop to create quite a large flat area in a very specific way (I don't think trying to stamp it out is the best idea). I'm not really concerned about this not looking natural as the player isn't really going to be exposed to this.

So far, I generate my terrain, I can export my height map, and then edit it. But then I'm lost. How can I tell Gaia to use my edited height map? Thanks for any tips.

 

i think you can just apply the HM to your terrain, pass the stamping and go directly to texture and object spawner.

 

Like Damien said, importing in directly through the terrain might be the easiest route. The other way would be to use Gaia's scanner to make it into a stamp, flatten the terrain, and then restamp it with the new stamp. Obviously a lot more steps that way.

 

Thanks for that

 

Can I at least flatten/stamp/ and spawn at runtime. I am trying to find a way that I can utilize this at runtime. I can see myself destroying one terrain, and creating another. I know how to do that, but I would like to create new places at runtime.
I understand it could hit performance, so even small islands would do?

 

Suimono just added Gaia GX Compatibility - it's in their latest release notes and mentioned here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/suimono-2-0-interactive-water-system.289311/page-11#post-2589608

Loving that more folks are getting on the Gaia train (and thanks to Adam for making the integration so easy)

Edit: Tried it. One-click addition and got this. Sweet. It also updates the player to have the appropriate underwater fog and underwater camera effects

 

Yes you can. Details on runtime generation / modification - which I don't officially support - are in the slack group.

I am using Slack as a general support mechanism as it allows nicely categorised communications.

Send me a PM via the forum and include your email address so that I can invite you.

 

I am not an expert enough in the nuances of Android development to be able to offer support on this. As Damien suggested you are going to have to google it and experiment.

 

After using gaia, which didn't actually place my grasses on existing terrain, my scene became extremely laggy (averaging 16 fps). I deleted GAIA from the project and everything related to it but this is still happening.

 

that because its unrelated to gaia, the lag com from that your computer cannot handle to display too much objects in the editor, so just clear your terrain or open a new scene.

 

Here is a tutorial on what i call POI or point of interest spawning. It is one of the most powerful features of Gaia if you are designing levels.

Imagine making a library of different POI - e.g. city blocks, villages, cemeteries etc, and then procedurally applying them to your game!

 

Awesome @Crembo !!

 

Then chances are it has nothing to do with Gaia

There are lots of little gotchya's - from memory a biggie is leaving multiple cameras each with active audio listeners in the scene. Unity water is another.

What does your console say when you run the scene ?

 

Another tutorial - how to add 3rd party art assets to Gaia, and make them available as extensions!

 

Working on a simple Gaia RTP Tutorial Vid for Adam and for everybody who is interested.





Got a little bit stuck because my Nvidia Shadow Play was not working anymore and Fraps created just to big files... But well Video will be finished soon.

Example will be 100% Gaia only. Textures, Stamps, Details and Trees are from Gaia Package. Added SCION and SSAA for Post-Processing.

Cheers
Ronny

 

Looking awesome. I try to make the majority of my Gaia images 'stock unity' so that everyone knows what they are getting without having to buy more assets ...

But adding interesting products, art and shaders takes it to a whole new level again. Rtp, distingo, aquas, suiomono, tenkoku, time of day, volume fog to name a few ... All brilliant additions for those that want to ramp it up to another level.

 

There were some nuances to getting Gaia working with an existing terrain. I believe Adam addressed a lot of them in the 1.5 update, but one big thing you have to have an understanding of is the sea level setting. I would guess that if none of your grasses spawned, it probably has to do with your sea level and your fitness settings. Not sure on the lag issue but I think I noticed a couple of folks responded about it already. I'll try to play around with Gaia on a non-Gaia created terrain in the next day or so to see if I can replicate the issue.

 

Awesome Ronny! Make sure you post it here when you finish and I'll add it to the list I'm compiling for Adam so it can be updated on the Procedural Worlds website.

 

Upgraded to Suimono 2.1.1 today to add to my Gaia work in progress, and everything went well till I added the Camera Effects. The sky goes all blotchy and grainy. Narrowed it down to the SSAO effect - disabling that made it go away (but the scene isnt quite as pretty) Anyone else experiencing that, or know of a workaround?

cheers

 

@Andy3D The solution depends on what rendering path your project/camera is set to. If you are using Forward you can edit the SuimonoModule.js file, by changing line 691 to be the following...

Code (CSharp):

1. setCameraComponent.depthTextureMode = DepthTextureMode.DepthNormals;

And then the normal Ambient Occlusion effect should work.

However if you're using Deferred, or Legacy Deferred this won't work... you'll need to either use Ambient Obscurance instead, or try a deferredAmbientOcclusion effect (preferably with a falloff range) such as this one here: https://github.com/keijiro/DeferredAO

 

Well I'm given a chance to show what my asset can bring to Gaia generated scenes (thank you @AdamGoodrich), so I'm taking this opportunity

I recently have developed an asset which implements HBAO as an image effect. It offers a really good quality to performance ratio and plays nice with vegetation and foliage (and more generally alpha cutout materials) in both forward and deferred shading unlike other SSAO solutions, it does not grow or shrink in movement, allows for larger radius and has no objectionable flickering or haloing.

Some screenshots are better than words.

Without HBAO:


With HBAO:


Without HBAO:


With HBAO:


Without HBAO:


With HBAO (massive color bleeding):


To find my package on the Asset Store just type "HBAO" in the search bar

 

We've been using Gaia for our upcoming Adventure/survival game Rise of the King. This is all Gaia here. Such a wonderful tool to use! =) Keep up the great work Adam.

 

Really beautiful!!! Can you tell us a little bit about how you created these ?

 

Thanks mate! I was using the Linear Deferred option, as its part of the default path for setting up a Gaia scene (actually, might want to make this clear somewhere public if you havent already? Just a thought)

I changed to Forward and then changed the depthnormals and it works a charm now, thanks! There is a slight anomoly with some trees showing a squared shaded effect around their leaves, but its better than the watercolour effect I had before!

thanks a lot, suimono looks awesome


QUOTE="chingwa, post: 2590357, member: 13083"]@Andy3D The solution depends on what rendering path your project/camera is set to. If you are using Forward you can edit the SuimonoModule.js file, by changing line 691 to be the following...

Code (CSharp):

1. setCameraComponent.depthTextureMode = DepthTextureMode.DepthNormals;

And then the normal Ambient Occlusion effect should work.

However if you're using Deferred, or Legacy Deferred this won't work... you'll need to either use Ambient Obscurance instead, or try a deferredAmbientOcclusion effect (preferably with a falloff range) such as this one here: https://github.com/keijiro/DeferredAO[/QUOTE]

 

Hey mate! Basically I've mostly used default Gaia settings with some custom tweaking of the outputs. Re-sized the grass layers and deleted some of the layers for more random grass placement and for trees/Bushes I mainly used multiple passes your Clustered tree spawner (which is my favorite part of Gaia) =)

Just a lot of tiny tweaking around with Gaia defaults and lighting/weather from Tenkoku.

 

I'm curious what your other settings are. I always use Linear Deferred. I've been playing with AQUAS lately, so I hadn't played with the 2.1.1 prerelease in the final leg up to release, but I had used it right after the 2.1.1 prerelease was put up in the customer access area. When I was using it, I was using SSAO Pro with no issues. Out of curiosity, I just downloaded 2.1.1 and added it to my scene. I deleted AQUAS and deleted my Player object. I spawned a fresh Player object using Gaia. I added my three Time of Day camera components to the camera and then added SSAO Pro. I then went into my Gaia Manager and installed Suimono via the extension. Everything looked perfect. I ran up on top of a hill on my island and looked out to sea.



I then ran down the hill and went underwater. Just in case there was something with the switch to and from the switching back and forth between the cameras that was fudging something up.. After coming back out, I turned and took another screenshot out to sea.



So... I think something else in your scene was conflicting with SSAO. What other effects did you have installed on the camera. What order did you have things on the camera? What version of Unity are you working with and what is your build target? There has to be something else in the scene causing SSAO to have issues in deferred mode.

By the way, the islands in this scene were stamped from one of the new stamps of my Islands - Terrain Stamps for Gaia Vol 4. It is available on my web store now. Asset store will hopefully be later part of this week. Was submitted to AS on the 1st. Links to web store and publisher page on AS are in my signature.

 

Tenkoku + Siumono + Speedtree Desktop and Ground Packs - All added to the scene with a fews clicks via their Gaia Integrations - lovely!!

Linear Deferred + SSAO + HBAO.

 

Here is a video tutorial showing how to add a river to your terrain, and then use Gaia Extensions (GX) to add 3rd party art and tool assets SpeedTree Desktop Tree Pack, SpeedTree Desktop Ground Pack, Suimono and Tenkoku to make the environment visually more interesting, and finally a brief set up of the beta of Unity Cinematic FX.

 

I think @Andy3D was using Unity's default SSAO, which does indeed cause issues in some cases. Unity have not upgraded these effects in years and it's starting to show. As you noted, you're much better off getting a more advanced effect off the asset store! Glad to know SSAO Pro is working well!

 

It's beautiful! Also thanks for showing the new Cinematic effects, I'm going to have to take a second look at those soon!