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

@AdamGoodrich that juts really looks realistic, wanting to just dive in and explore inside the buildings
Nice to see the Top Down use as well showing the really wide variety use of the assets

 

Hopefully down the road if you implement a run-time ability for GAIA, when I create a world I can use the spawner to place players starting villages on the map with certain parameters, such as distance apart.

 

The spawner does support runtime spawning. You could use it for real time tree planting and growth or npc or monstor spawning.

The other spawner features such as texturing are too processor heavy to use at runtime. I will develop real time everything as a separate asset down the track if there is enough interest.

 

Does Gaia have the ability to do this on demand at run time, or is this done in the editor and then saved for play mode? Basically what I'm asking is the ability to make a pseudo open world roguelike possible through Gaia, whether it be through default behavior or hooking up with an API?

Edit: I saw you already answered this above, look forward to both (hopefully)

 

As with everything else, finding the right texture can make things seem so much better - so I tried it out on a more mountainous terrain (well... okay... the hills are a little steeper on this one than before)

 

Will this work for mobile? I'm guessing I would need to use lower textures and maybe mobile speed tree stuff.

 

Yes it will. Gaia creates a standard Unity terrain, so you'll have to choose textures/speed trees/etc. for that target platform.

One of the main focus areas of Gaia is to help simplify the creation process. I've tried to create detailed terrains manually (including tree placement and grasses/plants) and have failed miserably. In 30mins with the beta I've gone from an absolutely blank canvas to images you can see in my posts in this thread - and if I tried to do even this manually, I would be at it for probably days, if not weeks.

 

@smada luap Thanks. I also own Terrain Composer which is great, but takes forever. I will probably grab this when it comes out.

 

Once @AdamGoodrich is ready to show you how it's all done, you'll probably never touch Terrain Composer again*



*disclaimer - I've never used Terrain Composer so there may be some things you can do there that Gaia may not do in the v1.0 release

 

Sounds cool. Definitely something I'll be looking at.

 

Assuming Adam keeps some [sensible suggestions for] default settings in Gaia as he has done so far with the beta versions, then within 5 mins of starting with a flat terrain (and after you've watched the video showing you how to do it all and/or glanced at the documentation - got that disclaimer in at the right time, phew! ) you could have a terrain for your players to wander around - and 4 out of those 5 mins will probably be you choosing what sort of terrain you want


You'll then spend more time tweaking the settings to see how it affects things, but pretty soon it'll all click in place and you'll be happily (I hope so anyway ) creating landscapes for your various projects

 

This is like the most advanced generator ever on Unity.
11/10 The #1 Generator of Unity

 

That does kinda bring up a question.

I have some areas that I want to have certain features in. For example one of the areas has ruins on top of a little hill/mountain area and a river flowing through the middle of the zone. Is it possible to setup some constraints like that, or is it totally random and we'll have to modify the terrain by hand at some point?

 

There's probably going to be some modification by hand to do on any terrain that's created. Gaia will get you most of the way there

You can tell Gaia to spawn plants, etc. only on specific terrrain textures, and you don't have to have the area you're wanting to place plants/trees/etc. to be the full terrain but to be a small subset of this. Does that answer help?

(Sorry to seem cryptic but I'm trying not to give too much of the game away and spoil Adam's "thunder" when he's ready to release to everyone)

 

Yeah.. Like Paul said, we aren't permitted to give up too much of the inner workings, but you pretty much have complete control over your terrain.. Well within the constraints Unity has with terrains. You can put in tons of terrain textures, but unless you figure out some magical way to get past Unity's terrain texture limitations, your performance is going to choke.

But if you design your terrain and then decide you want a lake, or a plateau, or a volcano, or something somewhere within your terrain, you are able to put them in and modify the underlying terrain with them.. And the biome stuff Adam talked about earlier in the thread, you could then do custom spawners for the area and do different tree/grass/objects that are specific to that area..

So bottom line is, I think you will like the type (and ease) of the control you will have.

 

Hmmm...I think I got it. I'll have to see it in action to know for sure. After all the hype around TC and the money I spent on it, I'm real wary when people say stuff like "It's so easy." Easy generally comes with a cost and depending on what someone wants to do with a terrain, it may not be so easy. I'm gonna go into this skeptical, because I don't really see how it's going to make what I'm doing any easier. I'll remain optimistic, though and keep my eye out for it when it's released.

 

Well.. To give you an idea, I am a cancer survivor and after finishing chemo I have had issues following logic and with some thought processes that many find easy. I used to be able to multitask and have good memory retention but not so much now. Now following a single process can come with some difficulties. So for me to say something is easy, there is a good chance it is.. lol

But I totally get what you are saying.. I have been bitten by the "Wow, that looks so awesome and sounds easy!" bug a lot too. And maybe for some those things were. But I found them impossible to work with... Hopefully when Adam gets his videos put together for release they will show a little more and folks can make more informed decisions at that point.

 

Yep. I am being a little cryptic because I am hoping to launch something interesting and unique. Hopefully at the moment the screenshots of what it can do are telling the story.

The vision for Gaia is to make terrain creation approachable for any skill level. It splits this process up into Terraforming and Spawning.

Terra forming is about shaping your environment and Spawning is about making it interesting.

The Spawing system looks at your environment and then textures, grows the grass, plants the trees and places any game objects.

The neat thing about it is that it is replicable and prefabable. So if you change your terrain you can just run it again and it will adapt.

This week I have been focussing on the spawning system and have made some awesome progress.

The Spawner now supports organic clustering not only of trees n grass, but prefabs as well. Its been rather fun creating villages nestled in amongst the trees.

 

Some Screenies

 

Wanted to say a big thank you to @Olander for his advice and help with the texturing and the camera settings - looks way better.

Speaking of texturing we had an interesting discussion on copyright yesterday and this prompted me to contact cgtextures.com as I thought maybe my interpretation of their licence might be wrong. Unfortunately it was, so I wont be able to include these textures in the pack, much as I really like them

If anyone in the community is good with textures I would be happy to give them a free copy of Gaia in return for being able to include their textures and a credit to them in the pack. Message me privately if you are interested please.

 

you can probably use the textures from Viking village / blacksmith environment. they are high quality texture provided by unity,you can send a copy to john riticello, but if he dont want think about me

 

Thanks - i will check them out

 

Thought you all might like this - done with latest beta of Gaia

Barring the main terrain features (which took about 30 seconds to set up), all texturing, grass, trees, rocks, buildings and animals were done procedurally via Spawners.

Thanks to 3DForge - awesome buildings there from their Village Exteriors Kit, and also to Black Horizon Studios with their Emerald Animal AI

 

@AdamGoodrich
Those are nice looking buildings Adam

 

Who gives a damn about some buildings... Those cliffs look great
And you are saying that they were generated by GAIA ?

 

At some point, I have to do a first or third person view game since looking at the world from that viewpoint is much more intense. Just can't get the same kind of feeling from a top down view. Still, that video looks pretty nice. Like the mountains. Did you solve your texture problem?

 

Wow! You do realize he is the one that made those buildings, right? lol

I love seeing the buildings in their too, Cobus.. I think the combination of your buildings and Adam's Gaia system are a recipe for some great, complete environments! Great video, Adam! Love seeing the animals added! Adds an extra layer of completion to the process!

 

Yes, yes I do But I simply don't care . I am astonished by the environmental stuff only, cuz that is what I need

 

@Iguanapl you going to love this environmental creation solution, it is going to be one of a kind in the Asset Store
With control over the results at your fingertips,
does what takes days to do in a few minutes and looking stunning

 

You can tell @AdamGoodrich has been developing this

Compare his video above with these screenshots I've come up with after delving into what he's brought to us with the latest beta release...





Everything you see here is placed procedurally

 

How large data wise is a scene like this? Trying to brainstorm ways of how I can 'fake' run time generation.

 

You are the biggest tease this forum has ever seen.

 

@MIK3K I personally think it is going to change the way small to large scene generation is going to be done with Unity
When @AdamGoodrich start to display and explain his special methods I think most users will wonder why it has not been done like this before, that it is just the way that it had to be done in the first place

 

I'll add to the teasing then, but in a friendly manner

Different terrain this time around, but still using all the same rules that governed the images I posted yesterday.



The beauty about this is that once you've got Gaia set up to create the environments that you're wanting, then it's just a few clicks from setting the terrain to being able to get your player to run around it and allow you to gawp at some of the visuals.

I probably spend 10x more time just running around looking at what's been created than I do actually designing things


Want to see something different? Make a small tweak here or there, run the spawning operation on the trees one less or more times than before, and even on the same terrain you've got a different environment.

 

Wow,these terrains are looking better and better!
I mean,seriously,i've NEVER seen such terrains out of AAA game studios.
I just can't wait to put my hands on this!

 

Any plans on the cost of this?

 

1 million dollars

 

Also, will this pack generate the landscapes?

 

@GreenBoxInteractive it is a terrain generating tool that takes care of the heavy lifting, gives you full control over final results and some really great intuitive tools to generate that landscape that you always wanted but once started see that it takes WAY to much time to make.

This is the solution that is going to do that in minutes once basic setup is done

 

There's a hefty first week discount I think

 

Gaia is an all in one scene generation tool that allows you to get pretty results fast!

Being all in one - you shouldn't need to buy other tools - the screen shots i have posted were all created 100% in Gaia. To be clear though, what I have done though is used Gaia to leverage other peoples assets - such as water, lighting, trees, rocks, buildings and animals etc.

With that in mind I will be launching with a one week release special to say thank you to you all for being so patient while I have been working on it, and then it will be priced to be competitive with the other terrain assets in the store.

I am hoping that the community will find it good value as it does the work of many assets all in one.

 

Now I realise that this is perfect for my project, I will defiantly purchase, can't want till release. Cheers for the explaining Adam.

 

Been doing some awesome testing with Gaia Beta. Being able to make AAA quality worlds in a few clicks.

Check out some of my work with Gaia, fyi this is only a few hours work.

 

Anyone else checking this thread every 15 minuets to see if its been released yet? Hurry up and take my money already

 

...and of course replies like that (and this) cause everyone's alerts to go bananas and folks check it just in case ;-)

 

Awesome

 

I think everyone is going to find it well worth the wait..

 

Hmm... i just noticed a post by @mwituni in which he commented about the prioritization of the placement of some prefabs in proximity to other prefabs in order to get a more natural effect.

Completely agree - am currently adding a new feature to the system that allows you to choose proximity to other features as a way of choosing how some things are placed in the scene. So you might want to place some types of ground cover only near large rocks etc.

 

Will be be able to use substances materials for terrain texturing?

 

I played with that a long time ago - i think so - assuming its supported by Unity. Gaia modifies the underlying texture splat values which in turn control how textures are mixed on the terrain. If you can point me to where I can test I can be definitive.