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

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by AdamGoodrich, May 21, 2015.

  1. wolfen231

    wolfen231

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    Go away for a couple days and videos and screenshots galore. Nice work to all!
     
  2. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    #tip And here comes another - how to use Gaia to enhance an existing Unity scene.

     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2016
  3. S4G4N

    S4G4N

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    This has been asked many times so this is a very valuable tutorial :);)
     
  4. jonfinlay

    jonfinlay

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    Hey, here are some screenshots of the Louisiana wetlands I'm making. Looks better in game, but unfortunately the Super-Sampling SSAA asset I use does not work with Gaia's screenshot taker, and the in-built screenshot taker in SSAA doesn't pick up reflections well (not sure if anyone else has noticed that?). I also included Amplify Bloom which I bought today on sale, Amplify Color was the single most useful image effect I've bought, and first impressions of Amplify Bloom are just as good but just using the default settings here. The scene uses Forward Rendering. I am a little confused over a recently discussion on this thread regarding Differed Rendering. My impression was that Differed Rendering is only necessary when using multiple lights, and not needed for outside environments because of the performance impact. Not sure if anyone can clarify that? Water used is Aquas, sample grasses by turbescalpeur, and the Alligator Snapping Turtle by Junnichi Suko.

    Grab 20160412110733 w1900h1200 x-32y5z32r145.jpg Grab 20160412111142 w1900h1200 x32y2z-32r304.jpg Grab 20160412112913 w1900h1200 x-32y2z-32r356.jpg Grab 20160412112959 w1900h1200 x-32y8z-32r353.jpg
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2016
  5. chingwa

    chingwa

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    It's easy to equate Deferred Rendering with lighting, as better light performance is one of the benefits from using Deferred, however it really isn't about the lighting..."deferred lighting" is a misnomer. Deferred Rendering refers to the behind-the-scenes method of compositing scene buffers in order to get the final scene output. Deferred Rendering has many other benefits to those who need them, such as the ability to access (and manipulate) specific render passes before compositing occurs. It's a more modern rendering system then the Forward rendering, or even the legacy deferred rendering (which wasn't truly deferred in the modern sense, and specifically related only to lighting).

    All that being said, you should use what works for you in your project. Forward rendering is still a viable system, especially if you don't need the benefits of deferred rendering.

    Linear is completely separate discussion from Deferred Rendering... the two don't really have much to do with each other. I would say most games should be using linear with hdr cameras and tonemapping (they all go together, probably shouldn't use any of them without the others) unless they have a reason to not do so. In general you'll get much better color and flexibility this way.
     
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  6. jonfinlay

    jonfinlay

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    Thanks for that info, in fact I made a mistake when I wrote I'm using Linear, should have said Forward rendering. But thanks anyway. Think I won't need those benefits of Differed Rendering (don't think any of the assets I have take advantage of it) so I'll keep to Forward for the time being.
     
  7. Kronnect

    Kronnect

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    Nice screenshots!! Love what you're sharing here guys.
     
  8. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    For those of you waiting for the asset store release, Islands - Terrain Stamps for Gaia Vol 4 is now available on the asset store.

    Grab-Vol4Islands001-x-529y64z366r176.jpg

    I am still working to finish the Coastlines pack which includes bays, inlets, promontories, and some other stamps with cool coastal features. Hoping to still submit it earlier than planned. But if not, it should definitely be submitted on time this weekend. The Glen and Highland pack will probably be delayed a week. I have all the groundwork for them laid out, but have fought some fatigue issues this past week that have pushed me behind. Hopefully can get back on track quickly
     
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  9. Daniel-Talis

    Daniel-Talis

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    It's interesting when people attempt to recreate accurate real world environments. From an esthetic point of view, one of the problems with using the speedtrees that come with Gaia is that the boughs of the trees appear to have been pruned and when the same tree is used multiple times, it looks like a gang of pruners have worked methodically through a plantation.
    In a real world setting, such trees would be different heights, ages and in different conditions. Broken branches would proliferate and hang from trees from the last big storm that went through, and there would be dead trees, standing and lying around.
    Apart from this attention to detail, I think the above image(s) are well done. :)
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2016
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  10. jonfinlay

    jonfinlay

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    Yeah I definitely agree with that. I have a collection of sticks and logs which I haven't put on the scene yet, and also a fallen speedtree lying in a ditch in the water. At the moment I used Gaia to set up the terrain as a template, which later I'll redo manually to get a more a rugged, rough and disorganised look. In fact when I was checking photos of Louisiana there are some without any trees, just sticks coming up from the ground and bushes, so I may just cut out the speedtrees altogether and use the saved FPS for extra bushes.
     
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  11. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Yep - One of the reasons Gaia is so large is that I provide (via the very generous donations from the asset authors) some sample assets so that people can get something nice with Gaia without having to purchase any other assets and can get a sense of what Gaia can do for you.

    However as you comment - there is so much more to generating a really natural environment. If you purchase on of the SpeedTree packs, and a SpeedTree modeller package, you can generate a much wider range of trees, in a much wider range of ages and conditions, which Gaia can then manage for you.

    I am currently learning compute shaders for the next version of Gaia, and as part of that also exploring other ways of injecting more detail into scenes. Completely agree though - nature is disordered order, and I really want to take what I am generating to another level again :)
     
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  12. Kiwi-Hawk

    Kiwi-Hawk

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    @Shawn67 A wee thought for your tutorials sets mate,..

    You did ask lol

    I see a lot of gems dropped in the thread here that are great, the BUT to them is jus that they say what they used for example SSAA or such and such a shader but they don't say how to set them up, my thought is there a lot that come her looking to learn some totally new to Unity and development in general than would maybe benefit from a sort of best practices approach tutorial flow that put the knowledge into context eg: how to set a project, project setting etc how to set up your textures correctly for Unity, @FargleBargle gave me some neat wee gems a couple of pages back with regaurd to making textures that I had no idea of and I be making textures for years for the Elder Scrolls and Fallout, man are they so so differently done. Best terrain setting for the trade off between quality and fps. A kind of cohesive walk through to generally getting started, traps that we might find,.. I just for example become awhere of the fact the Unity and Gaia read texture from left to right 0 upwards but I think Distingo reads back the opposite way (My thinking for this is the texture in slot 0 is the dirt I have for lower levels but it's showing on the mountains when I try to adjust the near, far view) Something that starters learning could use as a cohesive in context walk through to get started rather than the frustration of searching out the disjointed fragments in the wall of Unity tutorials text.

    Feel totally free to ignore this too <grin>
     
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  13. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    #tip Yep - many of the questions asked are Unity questions rather than Gaia questions. I have learnt a lot from the information shared here as well and there are also a whole stack of unity tutorials here : https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials

    If you are interested in Gaia tutorials go here - am building up quite a lot of them : https://www.youtube.com/user/btektube

    My plan is to build on the Gaia / General Unity Terrain / Scene generation tutorials over a period of time - but am balancing my time between many things, so I do them as I get a chance.
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2016
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  14. Revelation_Jeff

    Revelation_Jeff

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    Here's a peak at Gaia and our base weather states from our little Adventure-survival game. Calm to snow storm as you travel around. Having fun with all these great tools!

     
  15. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    As Adam said, right now the focus is Gaia. If there are specifics about setting up to work with Gaia, such as the tutorial I'm doing about leveraging Sectr with Gaia to do a huge terrain, or setting up spawners which will spawn objects which do certain things with assets, definitely. The ones that are just basic Unity tutorials, I may look into that later. I think it might be a great idea to have it all in one place, but at the moment since most of that is available elsewhere I want to focus on Gaia specific tutorials.

    Hope that makes sense... :)
     
  16. Phesant33

    Phesant33

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    Hi guys,
    Just having some trouble adding new tree resources and needs some help from the experts.
    I have been following AdamGoodrich's tutorial video on adding new resources. I add the trees to my terrain, then click on the resource file and select "get resource from terrain", but nothing. I can see the trees/bushes/grass/objects but nothing comes up. I even drag and drop the FBX into the square that says "drag and drop" it shows the "+" icon but nothing happens when I release. I just get the same standard resources. Is this because I am using non speed tree models? (dosn't work for either the tree or object spawners). I can't see any new resources created (as I don;t think they have been).

    Thanks guys
     
  17. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    If you add your trees to the terrain - can you use the standard unity terrain tools to place them ?
     
  18. turboscalpeur

    turboscalpeur

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    I did a small video (1080p) in Gaia the other day with some samples of my Grasses from the HQ Photographic Textures Grass Pack Vol.1 & 2 and coupled with some others Assets (Description on the youtube page):

    Honestly, you can get great results by being careful on how to Spawn, how you settle all your scripts/components etc..in Gaia facing to FPS.
    I have used a PC-Windows 7 Professional-GeForce GTX970 4Go VRAM-Intel Core i7 4790K-16Go RAM-1920x1080 60Hz.
    I may add, than a well done Scene is just so easy & fast to Screen! and this without having a FreeCamera Script^^
     
  19. RonnyDance

    RonnyDance

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    Holy Mother of God!
    What an art! I am so happy to own your Grass Assets.
    I want your Detail Ressources now! :p
     
  20. turboscalpeur

    turboscalpeur

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    Thanks :)
    Better than Detail Resources when my 2 coming new updates will be done, i'll make the GX Extensions for Gaia^^
    Pm me though if you want the last updates and some Resources as well at turboscalpeur@gmail.com
    I may response you tonight!
     
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  21. S4G4N

    S4G4N

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    Makes me think of Oblivion & Skyrim.
    So beautiful man
     
  22. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    Hey gang.. I've had a request from a user about creating a similar tutorial for World Streamer as what I'm doing for Sectr. Between not owning World Streamer and having some of the memory/thought process issues I have with my health, I'm not going to be able to do a World Streamer one. There seemed to be a lot of you either using or planning to get World Streamer to use in your workflow. Would any of you be interested in putting together a tutorial of leveraging World Streamer with Gaia? I'm not sure if World Streamer can split the huge tile and stuff like I do in Sectr or not. So it might be something where World Streamer streaming would be better after multi-tile support is in?

    Not sure. But if anyone is willing to put a tutorial together, that would be awesome.. :)
     
  23. mittense

    mittense

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    So, there's nothing particularly special about my setup, but I am having an absolutely hell of a time trying to get detail coverage working with the Speedtree Ground Coverage packages.

    The only abnormal thing I can think of is that I'm working within the WebGL platform profile, but the instances are still showing as being spawned, I just can't see them for the life of me. :(

    (I have literally tried every single thing I can think of to make these things show up. There's nothing particularly weird about my setup).
     
  24. mittense

    mittense

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    I should mention, I did try burying the ground cover speedtree assets in a game object and using the game object placer and that... works, but it's not really my ideal solution.
     
  25. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    #tip I've had similar problems with their trees occasionally. I don't know if it's a SpeedTree thing or a Unity 5 thing, but it seems like the serialization fails sometimes. I've got the assets in my Resource file. I've got them in my Terrain, but they just don't work. Every time this has happened though, they didn't work using Unity's native terrain placement tools either, so it wasn't Gaia's fault. The only fix in those cases was to delete them all, close and restart Unity, and repopulate the vegetation slots in the terrain. Then, after testing to confirm they worked on the terrain by itself, I'd go to my resource file and get them from the terrain. Then Gaia's spawners would all work again too.

    If planting works with the terrain by itself, but not with Gaia, I'd double check things like sea level, and spawn criteria and fitness (look in both the resource file and the session manager settings).
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2016
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  26. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Yep - first thing to do is to test that it works in the Unity terrain using the default Unity terrain tools - if its not working there then there is nothing that Gaia can do, as Gaia just manipulates standard terrain.

    If you are still having issues then check your visualiser - don't forget to take a look at the documentation and the video tutorials.

    If after that you are still stuck then please send me a private message and we can Skype to look into it at a deeper level.
     
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  27. elbows

    elbows

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  28. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    You mean like this ? Yes it is stunning!!

    Grab 20160414173909 w1920h1029 x28y58z-75r349.jpg
     
  29. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Some more images - lighting is Tenkoku :)

    Grab 20160414174411 w1920h1029 x20y59z-74r150.jpg Grab 20160414174541 w1920h1029 x23y59z-77r19.jpg Grab 20160414181940 w1920h1029 x0y63z0r114.jpg Grab 20160414183416 w1920h1029 x-13y62z-81r149.jpg
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2016
  30. S4G4N

    S4G4N

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    TeagansDad and AdamGoodrich like this.
  31. turboscalpeur

    turboscalpeur

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  32. wolfen231

    wolfen231

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  33. Kiwi-Hawk

    Kiwi-Hawk

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    While I understand this, it can be quite hard to find the finer details, for example the two post FargleBargle posted for me back a few pages. That info I hard never found and they are directly related to getting out good terrains, a work of art can be totally trashed but bad textures or lighting, FPS can go down the toilet with badly sized textures. I guess this came about mate cause, YOU yep YOU and your community have forward more help here than I even found in the main forums,.. KUDOS to you all, well done mate, you great ed/ing a growing hub.

    Anyhow,.. thanks to you all for your efforts
     
  34. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    #resource Yeah - its an ongoing thing - i spend a lot of time experimenting because I am learning as well - there doesn't seem to be much best practice information out there.

    I need to balance my time between developing Gaia and family and work. At some point I will make a concerted effort to profile and dig into how to get really high performance scenes - and when I do I will share the results.

    In the mean time the information being shared by the community here is really awesome - which reminds me - there are a couple of great web site I came across that I been meaning to check out and share :

    Unity 3d Open Source

    Best Unity GitHub Repositories
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2016
  35. Phesant33

    Phesant33

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    Would very much appreciate this! Also adding in things like that volumetric fog as default would be great (if that's possible etc). Thanks for all the efforts helping us get the most from this excellent tool
     
  36. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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  37. Arganth

    Arganth

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    is this also with tenkoku?
     
  38. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Nope. Plain old directional light plus skybox.
     
  39. creat327

    creat327

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    Hi
    Have you guys tried with Unity 5.4b14 ? I'm getting weird issues:
    1) Material names and objects are all random numbers/letters, so instead of Ground Layer or whatever, it shows a 2asdf23adfa73a string.
    2) Shore lines seem gone. No matter where I place the sea level, I see no sea and no sand at that area, the grass just keep going under the sea level.
     
  40. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    The material names issue is a serialization problem. I've had that with a lot of different assets in the past. If you go to Edit -> Preferences -> Editor and look at Asset Serialization, I've always had to keep this on Mixed. Whenever I've changed it I've run into the numbers instead of text issue.

    Not sure about the shorelines problem.. I wonder if your terrain may have gotten moved on the Y axis somehow making your sea level not match what it should be?
     
  41. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    Coastal area stamps pack will be available at my web store as well as submitted to asset store tomorrow.. Here are a couple of shots from one of the stamps... Nighttime on the Coast.. Using Tenkoku for sky and Suimono for water.. All grasses and trees from Gaia defaults..

    Grab 20160415195304 w1900h1200 x-46y65z-49r264.jpg

    Grab 20160415195423 w1900h1200 x306y89z-293r8.jpg

    Getting ready to post daytime shots from the same general area looking in both directions in my stamps pack thread.. Daytime shots are using Time of Day and AQUAS. :)

    EDIT: Having issues getting the images to upload for my thread.. The daytime images will be there as soon as I can get them to upload... :(
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2016
  42. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Loving the black on black is the new black Shawn ;)
     
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  43. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    Uploaded, they are a lot more black than the originals for some reason. Must be something in the way slack and the forums here receive them and do some extra compression type stuff of something... :(

    Just woke back up.. Going to try again to upload the daytime versions on my thread as I had tried to last night.
     
  44. creat327

    creat327

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    It's already on mixed. It happens only with Gaia... you've tested on 5.4b14 already and works fine for you? :?
     
  45. turboscalpeur

    turboscalpeur

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    I have just made a Demo #Made With Gaia/Unity 5 i'm sharing only in Windows for instance.
    You can try in it as well a small bunch of my Grasses from the HQ Photographic Textures Grass Pack Vol.1 & 2:




    and coupled with some others Assets, i'm listing here:
    Creation Scene in Unity 5.3.4 using:

    Gaia 1.5.3
    Grass
    Backwoods Gaming
    WitchWood
    Viking Village
    Volumetric Fog & Mist
    Realistic Smoke Set
    Bird Flock Bundle
    Distingo
    Cinematic Image Effects pre-release
    Time Of Day
    Scion
    Colorful FX
    Amplify Color
    Some others Unity Scripts.

    You will be able to screen with the F12 key in it too and having some cool Screenshots, as that ones i did quickly to show you:






    EDIT: Finally, i may provide some Demos directly on my Assets on next updates, i feel sorry for people whose wanted to try it them out, but it appears some ill-intentioned persons could make illegal things within'. so.


     
    Last edited: May 4, 2016
  46. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    No.. I don't have time and energy to beta test Unity. I usually am a few versions back but am actually doing all my stamps pack screenshots and final testing on 5.3.4. The only people using beta versions should be those who are testing Unity. If you are actually developing, you should be using a release version. I am having none of issues like you are describing with stable Unity versions.

    Maybe Adam or someone else here has done something with the beta and can comment.
     
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  47. llJIMBOBll

    llJIMBOBll

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    Hi, I bought the Desktop Tree Package from SpeedTree website, I'm wondering If I can make it work with Gaia Integration. or does it have to come from Asset Store.

    From the website I got a .zip file with folder called Desktop_Tree_Package. Theres not a Asset file.

    Thank You :)

    EDIT! I just read the 1st page of this forum, THANKYOU :D
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2016
  48. Phesant33

    Phesant33

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    Enjoy![/QUOTE]
    This would be really useful, thanks!!!!
     
  49. Phesant33

    Phesant33

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    Yep, you were right... thanks heaps :)
     
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  50. magique

    magique

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