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

That is the current state of play with Grass on Unity terrains.

The best you can do is match the grass more closely to the textures.

Another alternative is to use mesh based grasses and custom shaders but you will quickly run into performance issues.

I am exploring ways of getting around this - but have nothing to announce there yet.

 

I've just updated Unity to 5.5 and once again RTP terrain textures are wiped (White ground), I recall a video Adam posted with the steps to quickly fix that and have been searching for too long.

Has some one got the link or name of the video for the fix please?

Thanks Guys

 

Here is a tutorial created by one of the community: http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/adding-rtp-to-a-gaia-terrain/

I would have integrated RTP and made it easy - but the author never showed much interest when I reached out.

 

Interesting how AAA level studios decide such tasks. What I found possible is to set smaller grass pieces on the borders of bigger grass areas. That could be possible to make manually but if you got a large map that will turn into huge amount of work. Would be nice to automatise that process.

 

Thanks for that, I've seen that one and it is helpful, not sure it was the one I was looking for, It was one about resolving the 'white out' of textures after an upgrade but i have since sorted the issue, had to clear the RTP cache, re download, and then the snow effect was on full so it was all white again (but with some texture)... the RTP forum had the answers.. a bit of a pain indeed.

Cheers.

 

Beautiful landscapes. I might use it in my future games. Great asset.

 

Is it possible to flatten terrain around object spawns, like for villiages and such? I'm loving the asset, but my houses have interiors and the hills will clip through the floors, so I was just wondering if there's a way to make the terrain flat wherever I spawn my homes. Thank you!

 

Cant you just add a "plinth" object to the houses? That should allow them to be placed also on uneven terrain.

 

After adding the plinth would I need to specify a new position in the resources asset? I'm using the countryside asset by PolyPixel by the way.

 

I guess the easiest would be to just overwrite the old one

 

So there's really no way to flatten the terrain around an object? I don't have a problem with it because I can just add foundations to the houses I was just wondering.

 

Use one of the stamps, set the height to 1 or less. Set the operation mode to "Subtract Height", add a Distance mask, and then remove the height. Alternatively you can increase height.

There are a whole bunch of ways of achieving this.

 

After an Unity update RTP sometimes (Very often) resets texture and feature values. So you always should rebuild the Terrain with the LOD Manager, reload Terrain textures (Normal, Height) and reset water and snow values.
I did not try RTP + Gaia with 5.5 but I often had the problem with older unity versions. So nothing new Gonna mention that in second tutorial video I think.

Cheers
Ronny

 

Did someone have such artefacts using terrain painter with GAIA? After I prepared the scene I found that rotating editor view some glitches appears.
screenshot
If I move camera closer, those trees textures are gone
screenshot closer
What is it?

 

Is terrain painter another product ? Perhaps something to do with a shader ?

 

I cannot find the post .. but I remember that I read about an hidden feature to use Gaia with multitile terrain,

 

In GaiaDefaults.cs - Line 27 & 30, remove the comma and HideInInspector.

This will expose the tiles variables and allow you to create multi tile terrains. The underlying support for multi tile creation is there, but its not all been exposed, or integrated, so use at own risk.

 

When is the expected timeframe for confidence in multi tile terrains? I've been in the shadows for a year having purchased Gaia and Gena (just based on the fact I love Gaia), but haven't used it any production environments as my projects are generally mobile related; which generally prefer multi tile terrains.

Keep up the good work and please consider the multi tile users as well at some point. From my indie experiences, most of my players don't roll with a bunch of RAM.

 

Yeah, I found that section but then I get a skew of messages still as the stamper at least insists on only one terrain being active and it has to be at 0,0,0. I assume, these changes are the ones you have been looking into to make it multi terrain ready.

 

Yep.

 

Not sure I understood you correctly, but I used standard unity terrain tree painting tools.
Also I have found the issue, that I can not bake light to the terrain. Looks like something wrong with UV coordinates, because I see some shadows, but they are ugly scaled and placed in a wrong places.

 

Not really sure what I can do to help you. I have never had a problem with standard unity tools.

There is also a bunch of information out there on how to set up lighting, shadows etc. I will often tweak these settings if i am unhappy with them in the scene.

 

And..... drumroll... beginning next week the next phase of dev for Gaia starts... how long will multi tile take... not sure... but if all goes well maybe I can push something out in the next few weeks

 

Let me try explain my steps here.
I have followed start guide creating terrain with standard settings. Stamped ground coverage and applied it to Terrais gameObject with size in 100x100 units (meters).
Before baking that looks like that
And after

How you see box shadow did not bake... Does it give any info for you?

 

Hello!
What are single tile specifications?
What is the width*height for pedestrian-level-of-detalisation?
What is the width*height for off-road-vehicle-level-of-detalisation?
What is the width*height for aircraft-level-of-detalisation? And with including airport detalisation?
How many stamps are available for these dimensions?
Does Gaia glue terrain tiles seamlessly, if several tiles needed to achieve arena dimensions needed?

 

Hey guys shout out to all the speed tree users. (I've tried elsewhere ) what do other people do when they need to fade the tree when it gets between the player and camera ? i have a solution that works with everything except speed trees. I need to add an adjustable alpha to the shader, if i use standard unity transperancy shaders there is no wind and they look horrid. what have others done? does anybody know of a custom speed tree shader with adjustable alpha

 

This sounds like a Unity lighting issue, not a Gaia issue. There are a lot of settings in Unity that affect shadows. Does your directional light have shadows enabled? If so, what kind? Do your 'quality' settings support shadows? If you want to bake the shadows, have you marked the cube as 'static'? You really need to look at all of these things, and spend some time learning the lighting system. Gaia produces standard Unity terrains, that are affected by all of these settings in Unity, the same as everything else.

There are no standard sizes for any of the examples you've given. Use whatever works for the game. Gaia produces a terrain size of 2048 x 2048 by default, but you can change this to any size you want, provided your system can handle it. All stamps can be used at whatever scale you decide, using the resizing tools in the Stamper. And since Gaia doesn't have multi-tile support yet, questions about how it handles seams will need to wait until that option is available. If you want to learn more about what Gaia does, and how, you should check out some of the introductory videos here: Gaia Tutorials

I just use this: Ootii Camera Controller
I know it may be more than you're looking for, but it not only fades trees and other objects (if you want) but also provides great camera collision handling, lots of (switchable) camera modes, and of course the great support you get with all Ootii products. Highly recommended.

 

When I was prototyping a top down game, I used Ultimate See Through and I was quite happy with the results.



I'm pretty sure they still blew in the wind.

 

Thanks guys - great answers.

 

Been looking at some of the advertised images, and noticed that most, if not all, trees were facing the same direction.
This has been one of the annoyances for me with the Unity terrain tool set.
My question, does your terrain script allow for random tree rotation?

 

Not sure how you have picked that up from the images on the asset page - but yep - the trees are randomly rotated, and both Unity terrain and Gaia support this.

Sometimes I have wondered the same thing - but two trees that are randomly rotated to similar rotations is also a valid 'random sequence'.

Whenever I have dug further I have satisfied myself that the rotation is working as expected.

 

In unity's terrain editor I can only see a random scaling for trees, but no random rotation. Maybe you can kindly point that one out to me?

 

Thanks for the response. Its reassuring to know that the publisher is still somewhere in this thread. Look forward to it, whenever it may be.

 

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Terrain.AddTreeInstance.html

 

Uk

Thanks heaps Keldryn and Farglebargle. Keldryn I checked out ARPG TD which I think you mentioned to me before, but it had the exact same issues in the documentation. Basically as long as speed trees still look relatively the same and have wind I'll be happy .

I'll check out ultimate, already liked ootii's just not sure yet on swapping out the current cam controller if I can get away with just adding something, but I may yet if I go with motion+bone controller (looking that way, just waiting on some spare cash).

Thanks again guys.

 

Ultimate See Through isn't a camera controller; it just handles the transparency/translucency. There is a component that you place on the camera and there is a component you place on each prefab that you want to fade out (which handles swapping the model's material to one that has the transparency). ootii's camera controller is excellent and the new version can handle virtually any perspective. The image I posted was from several months ago and I was using PhatRobit's Simple RPG Camera, but if I were doing a top-down game now I'd likely use ootii's new camera controller (I use his whole stack in my project: Motion Controller, Bone Controller, Message Dispatcher, Camera Controller, Mount Points, the motion packs...)

(I don't think it was me that suggested ARPG TD; I've suggested Simple RPG Camera before)

I haven't tried Ultimate See Through with ootii's camera controller, but I imagine it would work just fine. Also, it's only $10, so it's not a huge risk.

 

I ve tried to add Aquas, but what happens here!?
I have tried a reinstall of Aquas but Gaia will not find it
Any idea?

It works now, but i have no idea, WHY!?

 

I don't know. This code was actually written by the author of AQUAS, and I saw that he released a new version recently.

Any ideas @dogmachris ?

 

@Andreas12345 Didn't change Gaia integration with the last update. Do you have AQUAS in the AQUAS folder or have you changed that? This can happen for instance, if you used AQUAS Lite in the past or if you have moved the asset to another folder.

 

First i had Aquas-Lite, then i upgrade. Was not working (same error message). Then i saw folder is named still Aquas-Lite instead of Aquas. Then i renamed from Aquas-lite to Aquas. No success. Then i have remove Aquas complete restart and import Aquas again. Again no success.
Last try was remove Aquas again and import it again. Then it works.... I think unity cache stuff? It works so i am satisfied.
I use 32GB RAM without swap file, may be the RAM is not cleaned so fast. No idea!

 

/me wrote down "Spend 45 bucks, then curtail your gameplay for what GAIA is capable of"

Thank you for reply!

 

Not sure what you are saying here - hopefully you feel that you got value for your purchase.

I am very comfortable that even at $44.99 Gaia represents fantastic value for money. Not sure what a year of your time is worth commercially, but mine is worth a lot, and that's what was invested to create Gaia.

Gaia supports everything you can do with a single unity terrain tile. It's limitations are Unity limitations, not Gaia limitations. In the next release Gaia will support multi-tile terrains.

The multi tile update will be released FREE to my existing customers as a thank you for their ongoing support.

 

I would share my experience. I started with Unity December 2015, only few hours per months. Since end of August I am on unity every day all the day. Landscape is my great passion and even what I consider the top point for game that make the difference. I bought Gaia as first asset for terrain just looking the oustanding number of 5 starts feedback and reading this forum. I was happy since first time and you can understand that I was on Unity really for few hours ...
After, just to explore what asset store offers, I bouth other asset for terrain. I got good features, but at the end the highest quality is only from GAIA. If GAIA was at 200 bucks, I would buy that again ...same tought for GENA ...
By the way .. my passion for landscape is pushing me more and more to work on my WIP .. you can take a look to latest video ...terrain always created with GAIA

Cheers,

 

Coming along nicely

 

Thanks ...I would even create a Gaia Integration like other assets.. adn thinking even to integrate with Gena to spawn site side object ...

 

Hi,
I paid, but it's been like that for about 2 hours (%30). It did not load. why could it be?

 

From my experience that is more asset store issue . I do not think that is related to the Asset. I would suggesto to try later or open a support ticked with Unity team. But maybe someone here can give you a better suggestion.

 

Usually just restarting Unity and redownloading should work.

 

@Acissathar - yeah, that works for me any time that this happens. Definitely has nothing to do with any particular asset.

 

Sounds like a nice idea. Let me know if you need any help when it is closer to release.

Gotta love the interwebs. I find that sometimes my downloads are really fast, and other times really slow. Either way, I have no control over the way in which Unity distributes assets. You make want to make sure that you have not run out of disk space as well.