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

I've returned to Unity recently, and I've forgotten a few things in Gaia. How do I make random terrain? do you need to have a already existent terrain?

 

Yes, you need to have a Terrain object in your scene (generally done with "Create Terrain & Show Stamper" in the Gaia Manager).

Then you click Session Manager (inside the Gaia object) and turn on the Random Terrain Generator option (in the Inspector window):

• In here you pick how many stamps you want, your scales and customize the percentage chance of picking different stamp types - do that
• Click Add Stamps (it'll take a moment to pick them all), you can do this step more than once
• Click Play Session after you've added your stamps

Bam! Random Terrain for you to texture and populate to your heart's content.

 

Great question. The idea is to make common work flows easier - so if you have Suimono and Tenkoku for instance, then configuring them is a simple 1 click thing and is auto exposed via the GX menu whenever both assets are in the same project. When used with art assets like Turbo's grasses, then all the resource and spawner configuration is pre-configured. So you just have to hit a few buttons to apply them to your scene.

 

Playing around with Random Terrain Generator and I noticed something weird with the Chance fields.
They are seemingly ignored and I don't know why (and maybe I'm misunderstanding how random stamp selection is working).

In this example, I have Village Chance all the way up to 1 and everything else at 0 - my expectation is that when I click Add Stamps, it will only select from the Village folder.


So I hit Add Stamps and not a single Village stamp is selected. What did I do wrong here?

 

Looks suspiciously like a bug! Are you using latest version ?

 

Uhhh good question, i didn't even think to check.

Yes, it's the latest Gaia, my Unity version is 5.3.4f1 if that matters at all (i tend to not grab the latest and greatest Unity versions)

 

Is there a way to check inside the Gaia asset folders for what version it is? Occurs to me that I could've updated the asset but not imported the new update.

Edit: 99% sure that I have the latest Gaia updated and imported

 

Been playing about with this and finally got something working

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24445504/CetoGaiaExtension.unitypackage

 

I've noticed this same thing as well. I wasn't sure if it was a problem with the chances or with certain stamps not getting picked up. I have most of @Shawn67 's stamp packs and the only ones that ever get included in a random generator are the Vol. 2 Mountains ones. The Village ones never get picked up, even if I push the chance all the way up to 1, and the Coastal ones don't even appear in the list (they get placed in the Adhoc folder).

 

Ok there is definately something wrong here - I will dig into it

Thanks very much John - I will test and post it on the extensions site if it tests ok

 

If anyone else has any integrations / extensions then please let me know - will be happy to publish them so that the community as a whole will benefit.

@John G. Did the extensions doco make sense ?

For anyone who is wondering - there is an increasing number of integrations with other assets - you can see them here - I am working with the authors of a bunch more

Also - does anyone have experience with wiki's? I would like to make something that is more community driven so that we can capture the awesome information being shared here.

 

@AdamGoodrich yes was very helpful.
Also looking at other extensions like distingo made some things clear.

 

I can recommend MediaWiki or DokuWiki as Wiki. Pretty up2date and easy.

As for extensions:
- You can also add Speedtrees Hero Packages. I am wondering why only Desktop is added.
- All 3DForge Assets (Interiors, Exteriors) for the Blueprints of 3DForge?

 

Are hero res speed trees really performant enough to be spawning all over terrain? I was under the impression that those were designed for one off 'special point of interest tree' in a scene type use.

 

That's exactly how Hero SpeedTrees are meant to be used.

It all depends what you're building. If it's a game hero trees should be used with care, but if it's a demo or cinematic scene you maybe can go for hero trees everywhere.

 

I agree.
Anyway right now I am using lot of hero trees in my terrain and the perfomance is still great. But I have to mention that I am using a 980ti with Skylake 6600k.
Anyway as jimmikaelkael already mentioned some threads before with unity 5.4 beta the performance should increase pretty much because of new faster object rendering functions of Unity. Upcoming uNature2 will do the rest in the future.

So if you ask me lot of Hero models in the terrain (which also are older than 1 year by now) are already playable in my opinion.

 

That's what I noticed too: not much of a performance impact. I think nowadays desktops are not too sensible to polycount. The batches count is the most important thing to take care of and Hero trees are not really adding more batches.

 

Found Unity's download folder, deleted it and then tried again, this seemed to have solved the issue. Cheers!..

 

Can anyone say if RTPv3.3 works with GAIA even it's not "approved"?

 

Yes, I works perfectly.

 

#tip For those of you new to unity here is a free game development course by Adam Tuliper from Microsoft. If you ever get the opportunity to meet Adam then go for it. Awesome and super helpful guy. Enjoy

'The course covers topics from game objects & architecture to coding & animations and a bit of everything in between.

If you aren't sure where to start with game dev, this is the perfect bite sized intro course for you and best of all, it is free. The course runs about two hours and covers 8 sections.'

http://www.adamtuliper.com/2016/06/getting-started-with-game-development.html

 

And he works a t Microsoft? Well now I've seen everything!

I was expecting some hand waving about game development in general, but this actually focuses on Unity, so this introduction covers specifics that can be directly applied to what you're working on. Thanks.

 

I used to work at Microsoft - its an awesome company and the quality of the people there is amazing. I have had the pleasure of meeting Adam several times now and you would be amazed at the number of gods of the gaming industry he is connected with

One thing Microsoft is not good at imho is marketing its cool stuff. I am a startup focused tech guy, and I had never heard of BizSpark until I worked there.

If you have a game that targets windows, or uses Microsoft tech then take the time to check it out because its brilliant. You get free hosting and free access to all their tech and tools. From memory the main requirement is to have a registered company that is less than 5yo, and doing less than 1m of business.

Check it out at https://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/.

 

I'm sure you're right, but another thing Microsoft is notoriously not good at is responding to technical issues individual users sometimes have with their products. I'm always reminded of this joke whenever I deal with them:

The pilot of a small plane was trying to land at the Redmond airport. It was extremely foggy and he couldn't see the ground or the runway, and he had no instruments to make a non-visual landing. As he was trying to find the airport, he flew past a tall building and saw a man standing in front of an open window.

"Where am I?", he yelled to the man.

"In an airplane," the man replied.

The pilot immediately turned the plane, and made a perfect landing at the airport. One of the passengers asked the pilot how he had found the runway when he couldn't see the ground through the fog.

"The answer the man in the window gave me was 100% accurate, but totally useless" he replied. "So I knew that building had to be Microsoft's technical support department. And I knew Microsoft technical support was exactly 1/2 mile SSW of the airport."

In an organization that large, finding the right person to talk to about a given issue, who actually understands it and can offer useful solutions, can be a bit of a frustrating process. And sometimes their corporate direction veers away from the needs of certain fringe users, leaving them stranded due to discontinued support for features they depended on. I know it's a bit of a bad rap, since with the number of users they have it's impossible to give them all everything they want, but it's still fun to tease them about it.

Speaking of which, I just watched the intro video in the series, and managed to learn a few things from it, even after working with Unity for years... but I needed to watch it using Internet Explorer, because the video wouldn't play in Firefox.

 

Yep. Same could be said of many big tech companies

 

Some screens from my current project:

Plugins used: RTP, Aquas apart from GAIA

 

I had no trouble watching the videos in Firefox. (...?)

 

In the next release of Gaia I will be adding some free SkyBoxes - these will add some nice additional depth to your scenes.

 

will these skyboxes work with the "Set <Time> Light" presets? never been able to figure out how to get a good looking effect with those presets and a skybox (though I barely know what I'm doing)

 

I have AllSky but I still change the lighting a lot and jump between the presets in Gaia and it overwrites my sky boxes and I have not changed it yet... but I need to add a day-night-cycle anyway at some point, was thinking maybe TENKOKU.

 

Yes - the light, distance fog, and sun position will be matched up with the skyboxes. Am also considering doing some cinematic fx setups - much much nicer effects than the older ones.

Yep once you have a custom lighting solution then you wont need my solution Tenkoku is very nice, and @chingwa has taken the time to make an nice integration with Gaia and that integration also has nice presets which allow you to easily change both the time of day and the weather settings.

 

Hmmm. I just checked the page again, and the videos use iframes, which I always have trouble with in Firefox. Probably means they're being blocked by my security settings or ad blocker or something. All I got when I clicked "Play" was a black screen, but I was finally able to open and view the video frames in a new tab. Thanks for the feedback. Knowing it can work is the first step in figuring out why it doesn't.

 

I have decided to extend the sale of Gaia until the next release - which will be soon. Get it while it is cheaper

 

Sure, if you are just making games for yourself to play on your own personal system. What happens when you distribute your game and 90% of your audience can't play the game because they don't have a supercomputer? You should plan to target much lower spec machines and build scalability into your game so high-end users can get the better graphics, but others can still play it.

 

Wondering if anyone can help me out. Really simple issue- I've got a Gaia terrain in a scene and I'd like to basically "duplicate" it into a new scene, with it still editable but with changes only being applied to the new scene. I think I need to use the session manager but I always end up with changes effecting the terrain in both scenes.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

 

Find the TerrainData for your existing terrain in the project view. (you can select your terrain, and find it on the Terrain Collider component).
Duplicate it.
Drag the duplicated TerrainData from the project view into the new scene.

 

@Jaimi Thanks, but I have tried that, but again the changes I make are showing up on both terrains. I'm thinking there must be a reference somewhere inside Gaia that's causing it. I'm sure the session manager can do this, but I just can't seem to get it to work.

Edit just to add it is really simple I just completely missed it! Just clear the terrain, open Gaia in the new scene, go to session manager, select the session with the terrain I wanted, hit playback and BAM! Exactly like the old terrain, but I can modify it separately and it won't effect the original

 

So I could have your time with buying.

 

If automatic procedural placement for trees is not good - how can I delete individual trees manually?

 

Yep. That's one off the main purposes of the session manager. You can also share that session file with someone else, and they will be able to replicate it as well if they have the same assets in their project

 

Yes. Just use the usual terrain painting tools. Alternatively you can use Gaia to delete all trees.

 

Ah thanks, this helps.

 

I got some trouble with RTPv3.3 on GAIA 1.5.3 (Unity 5.3.5). Can anybody confirm this? After I importet RTP, I got transparent hills and mountains...

 

Hey it' seems that you ve forgotten to add Tesselation Terrain Height- & Normalmap for your terrain.
You need to create a Global Heightmap for your terrain if you activated Tesselation in your LOD Manager.
Go to Window / Relief Tools / Prepare Height / Normal Texture for Terrain. Drag and Drop your Terrain File to the "Source Terrain Data" field and save the generated terrain to a project folder (For example RTP folder).
After that go to your RTP Settings / Global Maps and drag and drop the saved texture to the "Tesselation Heights & Normal Settings").

After that your terrain should fully displayed.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Ronny

 

Hmm... i seem to recall you were going to do a configuration tutorial for me so I could add RTP setup to Gaia.. hint hint

 

Have you misplaced your 2x4 hinting stick again? lol

 

Hey Adam, loving Gaia, but my machine is struggling with the GameObjects spawning. Everything else runs more or less as yours does in the tutorials, but the GameObjects takes easily 40min. I have a six core intel cpu and all cores are running hot, 80% + for the duration. Any tips on speeding it up? I have the lighmap unchecked. If its been answered before, apologies, and could I have a link to the answer Thanks.

 

40 mins that doesn't sound right. Do you have a massive amount of game objects? Are they very complex? I have a less powerful rig than that and it rarely takes over 1 min with loads on.

 

I'm literally copying the quick start guide step by step, using the same stamps etc, nothing custom

edit Im new to Unity so was hoping there was something you guys take for granted the should be off or on that I don't know about

 

Do you happen to have the Lighting on auto for the scene by chance? If you go to the window tab and go down to lighting. It is a check box at the bottom of the scene tab called other settings.. Next to the Build button. Uncheck it . It is usually on auto every time you make a new scene