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

@Shawn67 & @AdamGoodrich
I am 100% into GAIA...it is absolutely amazing what it can do and how well it does it. Takes care of ~90% of the work of preparing exterior scenes for adventure. Again...I really do not use it for buildings since I prefer to hand place them....but as for terra-forming and setting up the vegetation and stones....awesome! I also do use 'complimentary' landscaping tools to help with finishing touches on the terrain prior to letting GAIA start painting and placing. Win Win.

GAIA is very deserving of the rating and reviews. It is an excellent tool by an excellent person as well.
My thanks to excellence and a friend.
Cheers
O

 

I can't take any of the credit.. I'm just around to help people as I am able and try to keep a flow of cool stamps coming. Adam is the mastermind! And I totally agree. I laugh when talking to Adam all the time. I can't count the number of times I told him I can't believe how addicted I am to working with terrains. Before Gaia I LOATHED working on terrains. It was such a pain in the ass for me to get anything that even looked close to good. I just didn't understand the workflow of the other tools.

As for setting up the vegetation and stones, wait until Adam announces the other asset he has been working on alongside Pegasus. All I'll say is, it is fun. Ok.. I lied.. I'll also say it is super cool and will be a must have for your toolbox. Regardless of what you use to create your terrains.

Oh... Getting back to stamp packs. I have been working with @TheSeawolf in putting together an awesome new Polar/Arctic pack which will bring us up to volume 9. I have to rework a couple of the stamps and then get them tested and packaged. But my goal is to try to have the package finished, online on the webstore, and submitted to the asset store by the end of the weekend.

 

Aww you guys

And looking forward to your new stamp packs Shawn

 

So I'm looking forward to this payday and picking up Pegasus, Helios and some speedtrees. But I'm also looking forward to the new object placer asset. For some reason my grass and object placement stinks.

As for the stamps that @Shawn67 has mentioned, there are really good locations in there that look fantastic when stamped. Without giving anything away there is one stamp shape in particular that will be amazing to use, and has huge potential for a very distinct scene....wait I might have said too much .....

 

Yep - the new 'coming soon' asset adds some unique features into this space I think. Am looking forward to releasing it.

Also, Pegasus has had some significant feature upgrades since it launched, which will be released as well, probably this weekend.

These include:

* Pegasus chaining - you can chain Pegasus together so that they run one after the other - think of it as the way in which camera's change perspective when filming dialog between two people.

* Pegasus triggers - the ability to trigger other game events to happen at certain points in the fly through
- its extensible - so you can use the existing ones or roll your own
- supports triggering other concurrent pegasus flythrough events
- start or stop an animation on another game object
- fade in and out on a helios playback

* Smarter auto detection and configuration - Pegasus will evaluate the world where you click and configure appropriately.

Where I am going to with this, is that you should never need to post process your video - Pegasus will do the whole lot in one take.

While its not so obvious from the way I have pitched it - but Pegasus can drive any object through your scene - and some of these features are aimed at expanding out that capability.

In my dev demo I am driving cameras, humming birds, and stags - and the setup on all of these things is super fast and simple.

 

Thank you so, so much for this post. This is invaluable information. Thanks, particularly, for opening my eyes to World Streamer. What an incredible solution to open world travel. This looks like I can create any size of world without restrictions, which is pretty crazy. I'm going to look into all of the assets you've mentioned.

 

Thank you. i just copy it to a txt file.

suggestions:
world creator has 2 nice features: [i do not own it, just saw it's videos at ytb]
1
terrain fliter
after you allready made a terrain, you may choose some different style fliter to enhance the terrain.
2
you put a terrain[A] in scene window, then create a same size default terrain and put it near A.
yeah, B left, A right. then you sculpting B as usual, it seems while you sculpting B, the A is auto sculpting like B and with details auto added. after you sculpting a basic shape in B, you get a similer and detailed terrian[A]. then you just delete B, grab A as final product.

what i mean is: look forward to your future version , such as 2.0.
good luck.

 

Hi,
what is the minimum size, from quality point of view, that it worth use Gaia.
Or is there any approach to estrapolate only a specific area from a bigger terrain?
Thanks

 

I never used SECTR, so I can't comment, but I been working with terrains and streaming for over a decade and used alot of different tools. World Streamer has been a god send for this kind of stuff. Also the developer is very helpful. Since Gaia does not have Multi Tile if you go that route you will need another tool, Which the World Streamer developer has as well. and there fairly cheap, I do not use them, I use some of my own solutions and others. Plus World Streamer ...

But I been able to make games for mobile fairly large compared to what you see on the Google Play Store... This would of never happen with out World Streamer.

 

Thanks ... I just bought SECTR COMPLETE from the 24h special deal few days ago ...
Is there any tutorial about SECTR and GAIA ?

 

I started to do one but was never able to finish it. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back to it, but feel free to PM me any questions and I'll try to help if I can.

 

Yes, I have seen it ...I will PM you in case of any questions ... thanks a lot ... cheers

 

Thanks

 

Hi guys...
how can I create a waterfall in a terrain using GAIA ?
Not sure if is the right question as I am just moving first steps in terrain constructions.

 

Hi,
for a waterfall with GAIA I would take a stamp with an open end of a river and stamp that next to each other with a difference in height. You will get an ugly border there but that can easily be fixed with the normal terrain tools. "Sculpt" the cliff and waterfall ground and add a particle effect for the actual waterfall.

That's what I would do but there might be other or even better solutions. Easier even would be to have a stamp for the waterfall itself, no editing needed (for that area at least).

 

I just asked on the youtube page, but I should have probably asked in the forum instead:

Awesome asset! One question though: for my game, I need to tile terrains together. I have 2v2 arena type game, and each player starts on a the same flat beach terrain.. They should be connected by a middle terrain that is one of many pre-baked randomly generated terrains (using Gaia). Would that be at all possible?

 

Looking at Gaia recently, seems really good. One question I have is can you sculpt into your terrain as well?

I've looked at some of the guide videos and all I've seen is that you use stamps to generate large chunks of terrain, but what if I want to go in there and hand craft it a bit more? Is that possible?

 

If I understand what you're asking, then yes. You can generate each terrain and then turn them into a prefab and instantiate them in game as needed.

Yes, GAIA just uses regular Unity terrain so at any time you can just select the terrain itself and use Unity's tools to sculpt it as you please.

 

Yep - you can add to terrain, subtract from terrain, stencil on terrain, and various other types of function as well. Additionally you can apply various masks to blend stamps together - so you have a massive amount of control and freedom over what you do.

 

For those of you who also want to then bring your environment alive - and show it off on you tube - which is a terrific way of driving traffic to your game and getting feedback, my other product Pegasus will be getting an update this weekend:



This screen shot from the demo scene shows some of what will be released this weekend. While not very visually interesting, whats happening is very powerful.

The main Pegasus is driving the camera. A secondary Pegasus is driving the airplane, and a third Pegasus is driving the capsule (imagine NPC).

Initially the capsule flythrough is dormant - and when the main Pegasus hits the right point it will start the capsule flythrough - and later - stop it - essentially it is controlling the secondary flythrough.

This has been achieved with flythrough triggers. Other things that can be controlled with triggers include playing animations, and also video fade in and out with Helios.

The entire environment in this video was put together in less than an hour, and leverages Gaia and is shown off by Pegasus and Helios. The ship in the scene is being driven by Pegasus as well.

 

I just grabbed Gaia and love it! Only problem I'm having is trying to make a larger terrain. I created terrain, changed size to 4096x4096, but I can't figure out how to let Gaia know to use the entire size. I see "Dimensions" in the manager but I don't know how to change it (it's set to 2048x2048). One other general question: any advantage to terrain dimensions being POT? Thanks!

 

These settings are in Gaia Defaults file. There is plenty of documentation on what they do. The advantage is performance for POT

 

Hi,
I am trying to create a POI rule to spawn enemies in a GAIA world. Some troubles.
Can someone share with me a sample rule ? I would span only in "walkable" and "free" locations ....

 

You could create a mask based on your terrain - and only spawn in those locations... or you could shrink the size of your spawner - as it will only spawn within in its bounds - or you could create some spawner criteria that get what you want... i.e. virgin terrain, within a given height and slope range.

There are many ways to approach this.

 

Playing - learning how to set up megascans assets. Makes awesome textures dead simple!

 

Have to say - Gaia + Magic Spawner Asset + Megascans - pretty nice combo

 

That's it, I'm gonna have to take a look at Megascans.

 

Megascans look so nice, but simply are to expensive for me, without a sale. I mean 30-40$ a month or 100$ - 200$ for a full pack. And thats only for Freelance... Outch
Have to stick with photorealistic Textures from the Assetstore...

"Magic Spawner Asset"? Which one do you mean?

 

Magic Spawner Asset? What is that?

 

This is my next asset launch. It specializes in semi-procedural population of your scene, and adds a number innovations that have not been seen before on the asset store.

In the scene above, Gaia created and textured the terrain. The new asset did the rest. It's getting generally rave reviews from the beta group, is already in use by two AAA games and I hope to launch it within the next month.

It takes a different approach to Gaia, requires almost no configuration, and will work on meshes as easily as on single and multi tile terrains. It will also work at run time and is scriptable.

You can think of it as a very smart companion to Gaia, or whatever your favorite environmental generation product is.

 

And I successfully used in one level of my AAAAAAAAAAAAAA game - Sorry the A got stuck. knock a few off

Really nice tool! And if you think outside of the box it's versatile. Not just limited to terrain work

Edit - I would have used it in most of the levels but it wasn't ready. The one it was used in was becuase the level was redesigned so by that time it was ready. Even as a beta it took no time to do it's job.

 

It would be launched already - but I added this really cool feature - and its actually quite a lot of work to implement properly... the wait will be worth it though

 

I've been using it a bit different in my testing. I'm letting Gaia do everything as before, but then using the new tool to add in detail areas and fine tune areas in my spawns. Put in more defined forest areas, better detail on shorelines, spawning smaller detail items in specific areas of interest/biome specific detail items.

The way I look at my new workflow is Gaia does all the heavy lifting and initial layout/spawning and then the new tool I will use for finishing touches in areas that Gaia detected for certain types of spawns. Really, there's a lot more to it than that. But I definitely think it will be a must have item for everyone's tool box!

 

With the new Tool you really should consider releasing the "AdamGood Suite": GAIA + Pegasus + new Magic Tool.
(I removed the rich because everything is so cheap )
All you need for awesome any easy AAA Unity5 Projects regarding Terrain / Object Spawning and Recording it after that.

Damn Adam. You are so fast, that I can't finish your new updates and Assets before another one is coming out!

Keep it up!
Ronny

 

Hello,

I'm really interested in buying Gaia but was wondering if I can stitch together multiple terrains? I know the max unity terrain is roughly 4km x 4km. The world I'm building is 20km x 20km, can Gaia create something this big by stitching multiple terrains together?

Thanks

 

Looking for some noob advice on Gaia workflow. I want to start developing my game logic before deciding on the world assets and finalising the terrain. The normally dormant neat and tidy part of my brain would like to keep the two separate: develop the game using dummy, plain terrain, develop the terrain elsewhere, then import the finished terrain into the game with as little of the Gaia editor attached as possible.

What's the best way of doing this? Can I create & populate a terrain in one Unity project then import into another without Gaia? (if so how? I've read the manual but still haven't managed it yet). Would it be better to do the terrain in a separate scene in the same project?

Or am I just making things ridiculously over complicated? (It wouldn't be the first time)

I'd be interested in hearing how others approach workflow with Gaia. Thanks.

 

Gaia can only work on one terrain at a time. You can join them together with Terrain Stitcher ($4.99).

I haven't tried, but you can definately remove Gaia - that's a 'by design' feature as Gaia is primarily intended for design time usage.

What Gaia does is take and apply assets into your scene - it's all vanilla unity - and if you have no dependency on Gaia assets because you have replaced them with your own - then there is no need to have any trace of Gaia in your project once you have done this.

In your scene hierarchy, remove the Gaia group of objects - note - if you have spawned any game objects (prefabs) you will need to re-parent them first. You will see the spawned objects as children to the spawner. They have been placed that way only to keep things neat.

If you want to remove Gaia completely, then you can delete the Gaia directories in your project view - but again - you need to make sure that any dependencies have been moved first.

 

Thanks Adam, I'll play around and see works best for me.

 

Hi,
Can I spawn objects according to the color of the texture on the terrain ?
Regards,
Antonio

 

What is the maximum size that is supported with this asset per Terrain?

 

Gaia doesn't have a limit. It just creates a standard Unity terrain. So it would be whatever Unity limits are.

You can base spawn criteria off of the actual terrain textures.

 

Can you share an example ? @Shawn67

 

Check out the videos Adam made on the spawner. Pretty sure he covers in there. http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/

Basically in your spawner criteria there is an option for textures at the bottom. You just put in the numbers of the texture slot you want to limit spawning to and have the box checked to activate the texture criteria. Textures are numbered by the order they are shown when you look at them on your terrain's inspector with the first texture being texture #0. So if I use the default Gaia setup, sand would be texture 0, grass would be texture 1, etc.

 

So it isnt a custom Terrain System its just a Terrain extension from the Unity Terrain. Is this correct?

 

Yes. I know that and I used .
But maybe I was not clear in my request. I am using some particular texture like a "objects color map".
Now I would spawn object according to the color of those textures. For example, if I have a "yellow area" I would spawn in that area a specific POI

 

Gaia has not a limit this is True, however, Unity has a limit of 65535 terrain objects (Unsigned 16bit Int)

**Note: This does not apply to objects placed as objects and not terrain objects...but you will need your own LOD and Culling Management systems in lieu of Unity Auto

Cheers
O

 

Gaia can not select for specific colours. The new asset GeNa can, but its not launched yet.

 

That's nice ... I am working with Satellite maps and OpenStreetMap data, and I would like have references to spawn grass, tree, building and so on. I was thinking to create set of colors to identify the different area.
What is the ETA for GeNa ? Is there any beta test program ?Thanks a lot

 

Is it compatible with this asset?
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/5664

Also did someone allready created an Open World with this Asset and can say if it works or if it gets laggy like other Assets do when it goes to big

 

Gaia works with RTP and any asset that works with Unity terrain as RTP does.

You can use 3rd party assets like Worlds Streamer to make large environments and still have them perform well.

GeNa is hopefully within the next month. The beta has been running for the past 4 months. A lot of work has gone into it - as with Gaia.