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

There is nothing to see at your link. Just forget I asked.

 

Your original comment was that Gaia did not support random rotation, which you had noticed from my banner images. My response was that Gaia does support random rotation. Its also quite clear from a closer look at the images that this is the case.

You then asked about how Unity terrain did it and I referred you to the Unity documentation, and if you look at the parameters, you can see that rotation needs to be supplied when creating a terrain tree. Gaia uses this API call to pass rotation in to the trees it creates.

I am now quite confused as to what you are actually looking for. If the question is whether or not the Unity terrain tree brush randomly rotates trees, then I guess you could just answer that yourself by using it.

My answer intuitively would be yes it does, however I am not sure, as I use Gaia and GeNa for tree placement.

 

Hello,
AdamGoodrich.
I've been looking forward to ask you this, I just follow your tutorial here:

What I want to ask you is, why my project is different? I mean, I follow your tutorial step by step and it still looks different, your grass texture and the blue sky looks amazing, the colors, the light and there's even red flowers it looks so epic.., it looks so different than mine & this is the first time I'm using unity3d so Please be advised..

Thankyou,
AdamGoodrich , I will really appreciate your answers, thanks.. ^_^

 

Nice work!

It looks like you are not using latest version of Gaia because I can see old textures and old grass. Make sure you update it and then start a new scene.

The lighting is Tenkoku as well. The default lighting does not do as nice a job.

By the way - the next version of Gaia will use the latest Unity Post FX. Post FX are camera effects that can be applied to improve the visual quality of what you generate, and the latest beta stuff from Unity is just amazing

 

This is what I have been waiting for. Just checking back on the forums after a long while to check for any updates.

 

Ow now I see..That does make sense, Thankyou very much
AdamGoodrich, your answers really help me

 

It's been a long time since I made a low poly environment, and i saw a post on Reddit about it, so today I decided to make one with Gaia, Gena, PolyWorld and Simple Fantasy. I turned it into a tutorial as well. Enjoy

Video 1 : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/create-low-poly-terrains-with-gaia-and-polyworld/
Video 2: http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gena/tutorials/create-low-poly-scene-with-gaia-and-gena/

 

GeNa 1.5 is released - its a massive release. The most exciting part in my opinion is the new optimization and light probe system! Save hours or even days - off every single bake!

 

Hi, just started exploring Gaia and Gena. I'm working on a smaller scale terrain and I wanted to know how you would go about adding a road - is there a road height map I could find, or some kind of stamp that would do the job? Thanks

 

There are a bunch of ways of doing this - but Gaia is not a road tool, so the results wont be as good as what you would get with a proper roads asset.

First make a mask. To do this, first export your terrain heightmap as a png file from the Utilities menu. Then open it in photo shop and make a new layer. Then, using the heightmap as a guide, paint the mask where your road will go in white. Then create another layer and make it black and put it between the background and the road layer. What you will end up with is a white road on a black background. Save the mask back out and use it to mask where your road textures and shape will go.

There will be a bunch of examples of image mask based stamping and spawning here: http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/.

Masking works largely the same way whether you are stamping or spawning.

 

I want to share even with Gaia community the progress with Sentieri ...

Gaia create the terrain ( full workflow ) ... Sentieri created the route including the stone walls on the right side and conifer tree on the right side ( from Speedtree Coniffer Package ) and the wood fences ( from 3D Forge exterior ) ...

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/s...ds-rivers-and-more.443121/page-2#post-2900836

 

I

have trouble that the terian border are above the ground and when the player reach to terrain border it falls down to infinity

 

Yes. This is standard unity behaviour. You need to stop your player from reaching the edge of the scene.

 

Hey Adam,

I'm really interested in Gaia (still on the fence about picking it up), and I had a question. Would I be able to use it with my own assets to quickly build a city, or is this more designed for rural/suburban/forest environments?

 

Yes you can use your own Buildings, tress, rocks,plants, etc
look at his tuts, they show it all

EDIT: if you wont more control of were you wont your placement look at his other app - GeNa
look at the tuts he made for this on how to use it

 

Hm, I suppose that answers some of the question--really, it's more like the level design that I'm working with has no organic compounds to it, it's entirely man-made structures with no trees, plants, etc to break it up. I'll definitely crawl through the tutorials and give GeNa a look, too, to see if it'd be a good fit for my project.

 

Gaia does terrain - gives you a lot of control. Gena is really very powerful for structure placement. A lot of control there.

 

After looking over GeNa, I think I'm gonna take the plunge! It looks like it is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thanks!

 

Cool. Be curious to see what you think of it

 

Hey everyone - I am travelling for the next 3 days and will have adhoc access to internet connectivity, so any support requests may be a little slow. Thanks for your patience in advance.

 

Hi everyone, new owner/user of Gaia here. Quick question, really more of an excuse to also buy GeNa

So I have created a terrain with stamps, used spawners to add in rocks/trees, and am getting ready to add houses/villages, maybe with a spawner, maybe manually.

What does GeNa add to this process? I have seen some of the videos for it, but nothing that really shows why it's a great companion to Gaia, which so far does everything I need.

Thanks!

 

Hey all,

Can anybody confirm it's possible to generate terrain like this with Gaia? What I want is basically multi-leveled zones with ramps between each level. It's nice if it's mostly but not completely flat, so it still looks kind of natural (potential areas to design a top down scene). Or maybe this is easier than I think it is (I'm still new).

I saw something like this in Landscape Builder at 10:30:

Thanks in advance

 

Hello.

Is there anyway to convert the Gaia stamps back into regular high resolution r16 raw files? I am using Gaia along with another asset to create the terrain. (Terrain with other similar asset and the texturing, trees and objects with Gaia.)

 

It sounds like you are looking for a plateau like effect. In theory, it would be the case of using a plateau like stamp and perhaps adjust the height curve so that the higher values level out and the lower levels level out. Thus giving you flat lower areas and flat upper areas with high mountain edges between them dependent on the grey levelling between the low and high ground. I'll give it a try and will post a reply as to the theory being a success and how I did it.

 

Yep, as I suspected, grab a mountain stamp and tweak the Transform Height curve so that the flat areas are flat and the curved areas are curved etc. Image 1 shows what stamp and curve layout I used, Image 2 the result, Image 3 after spawning and Image 4 from a run through.

 

One way it is possible is making a stamp that reflects what you want to achieve.

This quick one I made, I took my brush in Photoshop and leveled out some of the hills, with a gray, then selected some spots and used a gradient of that gray, and black, and made a ramp.

Hope it helps.

 

Xrystal that seems to work the best. A few things to improve are that the levels need to be tweaked every time based on the height of the terrain, and it's always uniform so mountains get a ring around the entire area, and rarely look like natural plateaus.
kurotatsu thats interesting and good to remember.

Thanks for the replies guys!

 

Hi Adam. Any update on tiling?

 

You can export them as raw files directly from the Unity terrain itself.

Love seeing the creative problem solving here

Gena adds a fair bit. Have a look at the feature set on the asset page for Gena. It takes procedural spawning to a whole new level while at the same time giving you stacks of control.

I think the biggest thing I enjoy about it most is the huge amount of control it gives you - it allows you to get stuff done fast in the areas you want it to be done.

Other cool things are cliffs... Very hard to do well as they are an artistic thing as much as anything else.

Gravity is pretty cool and lots of fun. Great way to add a more natural detritus to a scene.

Auto optimisation and light probing are very cool as well. Dropped my bake time in a test scene from 8 hours to essentially nothing.

 

I've been out of touch since October. Have I missed any updates to Gaia?

 

I apologize if this has already been asked, I follow the thread pretty close, haven't seen this and there's not an easy way to search. All my resources are showing a GUID and not their name:



Not a show-stopper, but annoying. Any ideas?

 

@Dramamine0001 - You've probably got serialization set to Force Text. Set it back to Mixed and you should be fine.

It's a Unity bug.

 

@Dramamine0001 - Like TeagansDad said. Also I figured this out after many hours, should work: import it into a new project that has serialized set as Mixed, (possibly change to Force Text I forgot) then copy that folder into your Force Text project.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. When I look at the Asset Serialization setting I see this:



I thought I would try Collaboration to be able to switch between computers, but maybe it's causing issues?

 

Collaboration shouldn't break Gaia.

You will need to delete and reimport after you get the right settings.

 

Ooh, I didn't consider Collaboration as a multi computer option instead of a multi user option. I do most of my programming on the Desktop PC but I also have a Macbook Pro Laptop that I dabble on now and then but nothing specific as yet.

 

Hope to have something to show soon

 

What? Sold!

 

I'm considering buying it. But first, I have a couple questions:

Where's the demo? This AAA terrain system is useless if it doesn't run well on my target environment. Why isn't there a demo available? Why is it always videos with you AAA people? Videos are misleading. A demo shows you what you're actually getting and how it will perform on your computer.

Can it generate worlds from a seed at runtime? You mention "minecraft-like worlds" on your website and describe various features as "procedural" in the Asset Store description, which makes it sort of sound like it might be available at runtime, but you don't actually come right out and say it, which makes me hesitant. I've been burned before.

Thanks, and I hope can give me a reason to make a purchase.

 

There isn't a demo because I would have to give away a year of work to make one. Gaia doesnt do anything at runtime it just generates Unity terrain so if that works in your target environment then you are good.

There are 20 odd videos showing it in operation and 500+ reviews with an average of 5 stars and a forum with many pages and many examples of what can be done, and this seems to work for most people in terms of making an assessment on the product.

Gaia uses seeds to generate deterministically but is not a runtime generation system.

 

Which also means that performance testing on any specific device is really based upon how well that device can handle standard Unity terrain and with what terrain size\complexity.

 

The only setting I saw mentioned was the Asset Serialization which is greyed out when using Collaboration, so if this is the cause, it kinda does break Gaia (not saying it's your fault obviously). Since I'm just using this to be able to switch between computers, I'll probably just disable it.

Thanks!

 

I will dig into this. Was sure I had collaboration on in a Gaia project and it was OK. They have been evolving it as well so maybe it changed.

Be most unhappy if they have done this as its not necessarily a trivial thing to fix.

 

I am using collaborate with Gaia and have not had any issues.

 

woot!

 

What are you talking about? The asset store says it only takes ten minutes to make terrain with your product. So just spend the ten minutes, make some terrain, upload what you make as an executable or a webplayer file or whatever, and link to it from your description like everybody else.

Besides, if you can make the video, that means you already did the year's worth of work to make the terrain. All you have to do is compile and upload it. (If a project with your terrain takes a year to compile, I don't want it.)

If you're worried about people decompiling the unity project so they can get some terrain without buying your product, or something crazy like that, just put some really obnoxious watermarks in it. Make your logo out of islands or something. Be creative. Make the kind of terrain that nobody can use in a game. The kind of thing that would be instantly recognized by anyone as stolen goods if it appeared in Baby's First Asset Flip on Steam.

If you're worried about somehow losing the source code because you uploaded a demo executable, (which I would hope is not possible but I don't know anything about your implementation so I can't rule anything out) then I have news for you. The first time somebody actually releases a game made with your product, the pirates of the world will decompile THAT executable instead.

Any way I can think of to parse your statement, it rings false. What did you actually mean? How does uploading an exe with a little camera panning around some island you made with your product so I can see how it runs equate to "giving away a year of work?"

Anyway videos are marketing. Testimonials are lies. If I didn't see it with my own eyes, it's not real. What part of "I've been burned before" and "how it runs on my computer" did you not understand?

 

I know Adam and others have persistently tried to make this clear, but people still make statements and ask questions like this. Performance has NOTHING to do with Gaia.You will only get as good performance as you are capable of getting by using the right assets and optimizing your game levels, which involves so many other factors that I don't even want to begin listing them here. Gaia generates terrain and spawns objects on it. But it uses standard Unity terrain and the objects you spawn are up to you. How many you spawn is up to you. What terrain settings you use is up to you. What optimizations you use are up to you. Performance is completely dependent on you.

 

mmm sounds like you have talked yourself out of a great Product.

 

I think there is some confusion here. Gaia is used only in the Unity IDE. Once you are done with using it, you can remove it from the project. There is nothing proprietary from Gaia in the generated terrain - it is just terrain with grass, trees and prefabs that you choose to be spawned. Gaia is *not* in the final game exe - it is only used for making your life easier in working with standard Unity terrain.

WarpZone, when you are asking for a demo, you're really asking to run around standard Unity terrain which is something you can create by hand already.

 

Thanks everyone for the comments

Gaia can make any environment you like from mobile to vr to desktop. Gaia just makes the process of shaping, texturing and populating your environment faster and generally better than doing it by hand.

As has been commented, you still need to have an idea of what your target platform can handle, and then you need to configure Gaia appropriately. The defaults that come with Gaia work pretty well with most desktop environments.

Onto other news... Gaia 2.0

Along with multi-tile I will be exploring using multi-threading and compute based shaders to do the lions share of the number crunching.

What this will allow me to do is utilize multi threading and gpu compute to execute multiple steps in parallel and the impact of this will be that terraforming and texturing will be sped up by orders of magnitude and this may open the door to a pure runtime / streaming based approach.

I have many ideas on how to do really cool large worlds which I will be exploring as well.