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

This got me thinking

I have never done it but if I was this is what I would do - and it's probably not the norm .

Make the walkable areas from flat planes in blender or 3dwhatever

Add all visible rock parts of the levels ie. the walls, floaty parts to the planes.

Terrain textures painted on in the 3d package and/or using probuilder/meshmaker or other to paint or fine tune the textures in unity. Concentrating on only visible areas.

Rest is just adding props/plants etc

Is it possible to have a terrain texture that is nothing but alpha and allows regions of the terrain to be see through. You could have pseudo floating terrain that way if possible.

 

Just tried painting with an alpha texture. It just shows up white. Shame as could have been useful.

 

Not important but of interest as looks well done

 

Lost Ark Online

 

The sreenshot is from Lost Ark Online, but that is not important.

Hi docsavage, you say that so easily , but I am not familiar with modeling
check it here , that goes in the right direction , so I would also like with a little better textures

 

Found this - http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/TerrainTransparency. Would be great if it worked with U5.

 

I understand. I have been learning this stuff for a couple of years (not full time) and there is so much to learn. One thing that may be easy for you to get a test up and running is you could get some free rock models off the asset store. They will need a bottom. You can then flip them upside down and scale to suit. Ready made floating platform. Just a thought.

 

I've tried this a few ways. You can just drape a terrain over a mesh that forms the rest of the floating mountain. While this gives you the usual advantages of using a terrain, it does tend to force a square shape to the mountain when seen from above. You can hide this a bit with terrain displacement, rock outcroppings and such, but the plantable area is still going to be fairly square, and only on top. That's what I did here, in an earlier version of one of my levels:



I'm currently reworking this though. For better results, I may do the whole thing as a mesh, paint it using an external 3D app, and then plant trees and other vegetation manually, using something like Advanced Foliage Shader. This would give more freedom for the overall shape, and I'd be able to plant stuff on the sides as well as just the top, but I'll need more artistic skill to pull it off, since I won't get any help from tools like Gaia if I choose that route.

Another possibility is a voxel based terrain tool, but I don't have much experience with any of them, so couldn't tell you how they compare to other methods.

 

Thanks man,
Not important but very good looking that is why I wanted to know.
I always look around and when I see good looking art want to have a closer look
Thanks
Cobus

 

Anyone have a good set of parameters for spawning rocks and boulders? Like any rules that need to be followed so that they don't end up looking crazy in the landscape.

 

My assumption here is that you have used a detail mesh instead of a texture billboard in the grass detail slot for your terrain.

#tip The best way to get the grass density 'right' - because it is asset dependent - is to use the terrain grass brush to experimentally paint your grass meshes until you have the correct target strength. I have shown a billboard texture here, but the same thing applies to meshes.



Try different settings and paint on the terrain with the grass brush. Once you have determined the correct minimum and maximum target strengths, go and apply them to the min and max scale values in the DNA settings for that grass in your resources file.



So what Gaia does is evaluate each position on the terrain against that grasses fitness criteria to get a fitness. It then generates the target strength by interpolating between the min and max scale values based on that fitness.

So to use the extreme points of fitness as an example, when a grass has a fitness of 0 (i.e. not suited to that location on the terrain) the min scale value will be applied as the target strength, and when the grass has a fitness of 1 (i.e. well suited to that location) the max scale value will be applied as the target strength.

On top of this, grass will only spawn at a location if its fitness is greater that the minimum fitness value that has been configured for that spawn rule.

Gaia itself has no control over how the meshes are drawn in that location - that's handled by unity. The only criteria Gaia can change is the strength at which it is painted at that location.

FYI, I never use meshes as details because of the way Unity applies wind to them... rather that rotate the mesh around a pivot like it does with a texture billboard to give the sense of grass blowing in the wind, it slides the entire grass clump around - which looks ridiculous imho.

 

When you paint details you can set colors for that detail. Set alpha channel to 0 for both colors and those objects will not be affected by wind.

 

Never knew that - very cool. How did you go with my suggestion ?

 

I'm in the middle of project that's already released on steam early access and I've got a lot of work ahead. I might get back to it later.

 

Here is an interesting new vegetation project called Forest Vision - go check it out - i am sure the author could use some encouragement

 

I have a question to GAIA community. I heard a lot about bad performance of SpeedTrees. Is this still the case and it's better to avoid SpeedTrees if I need to have a lot of trees?

 

Wow! That looks awesome, @mcbauer!!

 

It really depends.. You can get decent performance out of them, but your really need to do a lot of tweaking to fit performance for your game. Also make sure you purchase the proper models for your game. If you are mobile, you will probably want to stick with the trees/packs developed for mobile, desktop for any desktop games.. I'm not really sure about the hero trees. I would never be able to get away with using them on my computer in game scenes, but more powerful computers you probably can.

To enhance performance, there are a lot of unnecessary colliders - again, dependent on your game. You can either strip those on all the trees, or remove from certain LODs to help out. And if you have the modeler subscription, you could even maybe cut down the number of leaf groups to give more increase.

Another thing you can use is @ElroyUnity's Trees Manager System. It does a great job managing large numbers of trees to increase performance and the new version, which is currently named uNature, also adds grass management support. In helping Elroy test uNature on my 5.1.0 install where I initially build my Gaia stamps for my stamp packs, I loaded a scene with cattails and other wetlands grasses, six different speedtree models, and the houses that come in the sampler assets with Gaia and I was seeing 100+ fps.. Without uNature, I was lucky to see 40 fps with the same trees and grasses.

 

Really looking forward to uNature.

Although every time I read about it, I feel like I should create my own asset called uNurture, just to generate some controversy. ;-)

 

Imho doesn't matter what sort of tree you throw into your scene, speedtree or otherwise, they can all kill performance. Speedtree can work just fine if you take the time to tune their lod's etc.

In unity 5.4 they are introducing GPU instancing, and apparently SpeedTree is getting some love, but when you read the forums themselves there has been no feedback from Unity in several weeks now.

 

@Shawn67 @AdamGoodrich
Thanks for the info.

My simple test with speedtrees got me really bad results on Unity 5.2.4. I needed one fallen tree to block the road in my current level. I've decided to use Speedtree for that, cause it has LODs, but when this tree gets culled I get 1 second delay in a scene where I get 100+ fps.

I've decided to put it in other game scene, for the test. Result is better, but I see 0.1 second when tree goes from culled to LOD2.

Hope things gets better before I will start to work on next project. Cause legacy unity trees are no longer properly supported and legacy billboards have a lot of problems with number of post effects.

 

Thanks Adam and Shawn! It's so cool to see you guys helping to promote me, especially since I've been a huge fan of Gaia from day one. Thanks again!

 

Just tested this - https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/60955 and it's works very well with gaia. The authors lightening pack is great and at this price this pack is storming It looks like he plans on growing it into something bigger and he does support his other assets well. Even the free ones. Not affiliated etc but thought if anyone looking for a cheap weather system worth a heads up.

 

Hey gang.. I know some of you have been waiting for news on my POI Packs for Gaia since I announced them when I first started doing the Stamps Packs. I am hoping to have the first pack complete and ready for release by the end of next week if the cosmos cooperates..

I posted an update with some new information on the POI Packs over in the Backwoods Gaming thread. I am currently working on stencils and texture/grass masks for the first five POIs in the Vol 1 pack and should have layouts of the last two POIs by the end of the weekend to get them started. Also brought up a question to Adam about how to deal with grass and texture spawners being added to existing environments and going to be talking with him more about that over next couple of days. So hopefully I can get the scripting automated enough so it can even work out handling spawning flower gardens and such within the POIs.

Hopefully I can get the POIs and all the scripting wrapped up by the end of next week! I should be posting some preview images in my thread in the next couple of days.

 

Could anyone provide an explanation on whether or not having more than four types of trees and grass has the same type of performance hit as having more than 4 textures on one terrain? Looking at the photos in this thread of people having lots of types of grass and trees got me wondering about whether this has the same sort of problems as textures. I admit that I don't know as much about the way Unity handles terrains as I should, but I'd like to expand my understanding now that I've been playing with Gaia and world building in more detail. Having more grass and more types of trees would really add something new to my game's world.

 

It's not the same, you're free to have as many different trees as you'd like.

 

That's what I was thinking but wasn't 100% sure. With your models you don't have limitations, but you just need to use tools to optimize what you do put in there.. As far as LODs, billboarding, occlusion, and all that stuff, right?

 

I think as many trees as you like as they are instances that get drawn. Not so sure with Grass though. Internally grass is represented as a heightmap (an array of floats) which represents the grass strength at that location. So you can have 10 arrays, each rendering full strength (as far as I am aware). My sense is that this is probably quite expensive, and certainly the loss in framerate with grass would seem to back this up. So I would be very careful about the number of grasses that you choose to put into a scene.

 

The texture limit is because each splat = 4 textures = 1 draw call. So when you go over 4 textures, you add a draw call for your terrain. Trees and grass don't have the same issue, but do have other issues, which may or may not impact your performance significantly, so each resource type really requires its own set of optimizations.

 

Is it possible to manually edit the terrain after creating it? I wan't to add paths and tracks, just want to check before buying

 

Gaia creates a normal Unity Terrain after working with it. You can Brush on the Terrain what ever you want. So yes you can edit the Terrain after creating a Terrain with Gaia.

 

hello again,
this is my test with 8k terrain size:


these are the parameters of gaiadefaults:

and these are the errors when I use these settings:

thanks again!

 

Hi folks.. I'm amazed at the results of this asset! Bravo! Anyone can recommend a Mobile saavy Gaia person to create entire Islands and worlds that won't crash a mobile device? I realize there are so many tricks and methods to keep things tight and optimal all the way around... looking for someone to help sculpt some paradise about 2km x 2km on mobile complete with extinct volcano with caves.

PS: Sorry if there is a better thread or forum to post this, pray-tell

John

 

Hi John.. Not sure if they are what you are looking for or not, but I do have an Island Stamps Pack for Gaia available on the asset store that has some pre-made island stamps. That will at least give you some molded island options to use. I think the thing that you will have the most issues with on mobile is learning how to deal with the grasses and game objects to get them optimized for performance. I know there are a couple of frequent posters here in the thread working with mobile. Maybe one of them will chime in with some advice.

 

The issue here is not the terrain settings but the stamp. It's been sourced from an image, and the blocky lines you can see are compression artefacts from the original image. I think there were one or two that I did the wrong way that were left in Gaia - will remove them from future versions. Just choose another stamp, or conversely make your own from a satellite scan. There is a video tutorial on how to do this here : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/import-real-world-terrain/.

 

When making a terrain that large, I'm thinking a lot of stamps will be too low resolution to use for the whole terrain without seeing artifacts. The pixel resolution of the source image looks like it's lower than the heightmap resolution of the terrain, so you're seeing pixelation. You can try adding some smoothing, to see if that gets rid of some of the blockiness, or use a mix of smaller detail stamps instead of one big stamp to create the terrain features. If the resolution of the area the stamps are covering is closer to the stamp resolution, the artifacts will at least not be quite as noticeable.

 

You are right - if you stretch one stamp over the entire terrain you will lose detail.. but that's not the issue above - the issue is poor source data in the first place.

For everyones general information, what gaia does is interpolate between the stamps resolution and the terrains heightmap resolution, and always does its operations at the terrains heightmap resolution - this way you get the best possible outcome visually.

To increase the visual resolution use multiple stamps over smaller areas, or conversely scan and import source materials at higher resolutions. Gaia doesn't mind either way. The reason for the resolution choice in Gaia's stamps was to provide a good balance between resolution, overall asset size and general stamping speed.

 

Good to know. I ran into this issue with one of the first stamps I made from real world terrain data. The stamp's source resolution or greyscale range was too low, and I ended up with a "terraced" slope on my volcano. I tried smoothing it, but lost too much other detail in the process, so I eventually hunted down higher resolution heightmap data for my stamp, and re-stamped it.

 

I am wondering if anyone would consider being my 350th reviewer? Currently sitting at 349 mostly 5* reviews

I am very proud of this - Gaia has been a huge time commitment and its really lovely to see that this it is being well received!!

What most people don't realise when they see these numbers is that Gaia has only been live on the asset store since the beginning of November last year!

So its done this in just over seven months!!

Can't wait to show off my next asset!

 

Just cracked 350 reviews with an average rating of 5 stars - awesooome!!

And thanks so much everyone for making this a cool place where we share information and help each other to succeed!

 

One thing to keep in mind too when using real world data is to realize that not all areas of the world are available in the better resolutions. I've run into similar problems working with captures of lower detail areas doing stuff like this. Not quite to the extent of the poster that Adam was responding to, but a lot more artifacts than say a scan from somewhere in the US.

 

what is your next asset

 

exactly what is your next asset.....
also how can i get terrain height maps at higher resolution...?
there is no settings in terrain.party to do that

 

Terrain Party isn't the only source available, though it's a fairly good one. It's still just a terrain data aggregator though, and doesn't have access to everything that's available. If it doesn't give you the resolution you want in the area you want, you may need to research other sources. Thanks to the space shuttle, there's fairly good LIDAR imagery available for most of the planet (if you can get your hands on it). You can check NASA and USGS sources to see what's available. Another way is to fake it by finding similar geographic features in an area that does have decent imagery, and use that. If it's just for a game, that should be fine. If you're doing a simulation of a specific area, and it needs to be accurate, you should put funds aside to buy detailed geographic data if necessary though. The best resolution data is often locked up behind pay walls.

 

I have the same problem. I am also using terrain.party for realworld terrains but the 1k heightmaps are not really detailed. Without paying something you are very limited. For money you can get your hands on WorldMachine or WorldComposer (In the Assetstore). But well we are talking about 100$ or 50$ here.
That's also why I asked Shawn67 if his stamps are based on higher resultion heightmaps. As I am aware of he is working on getting heigh reso stamps.

 

thanks for your replies..
@AdamGoodrich I've followed step by step your guide about the creation from real world... the problem may be the low detail of the raw took from the site

 

If you pay close attention to the video - it shows you how to do the import without the jaggies. I used to have the same issue. That said, you also need to consider the source material. Inside the USA you often get about 10m resolution, outside of USA it is often quite low resolution - e.g. 100m.

I would still be curious as to where they got their data, and at what resolution.

 

All in good time. The majority of the people I have spoken to about it so far have all said they want it

 

mmh, is the part on photoshop??
it's a place in italy... my land and with a very poor quality... I'll try to find a similar place in the USA

 

Lot's of movie studios now give teaser trailers that are 18 months in advance of release. I would recommend you take this approach asap or there will be revolt in the ranks

Edit - plus I am impatient. Seriously though - looking forward to seeing what's next from the goodrich camp