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

hi Adam,

I have bought both Gaia and GeNa. I'm sure this will bring me much joy!

One question I have so far:
I do have a very specific Unity terrain that I have converted with the following tool from a given polymesh:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/7271

Is there a way to use this specific terrain in Gaia, resp. replace the one that Gaia creates?
[ Maybe I'm searching for the wrong terms in the docs pdf.. ]

Please let me know!
m.

 

Thanks for your purchase - now the learning curve begins - I am sure you will enjoy it

Yep - take that terrain - drop it onto the panel in the scanner - and this will convert it into a stamp that can be used by Gaia. That terrain can now be scaled, rotated and blended with all the other stamps that Gaia provides

 

Thanks for that input, but I don't want to create stamps to edit a flat terrain. I would like to use a given unity terrain 'outside of gaia' with it's specific given geometry and start Gaia using that terrain for directly texturing it and spawning on it, ignoring the 'sculpting step'.

It seems whenever I start Gaia it wants me to create a new flat new terrain, sculpting it with stamps, but I don't need that process in my case. Maybe I'm missing the option in STANDARD: Step 1 to start Gaia with a given terrain..

* * *
Found a Workaround:
I just hacked the system by using my terrain with the same scene hierarchy structure (naming: "Gaia Environment" > "Terrain_0_0_ ..") and it seems to work. It only complained about a wrong height range of the terrain. But I'm sure this may introduce issues... Right?

 

Gaia shapes terrain via stamps. If you want to take an existing terrain and use it to shape new terrains in a new scene then you will need to convert it to a stamp first.

To respond to your question directly though, Gaia will happily work with existing scenes and terrains. You will need to skip the creation step, and add the types of spawners you want via the advanced menu.

If Gaia does not know about your resources (textures, trees, grass etc) you will also need to make Gaia aware of them by ingesting them into a Gaia resources file.

There are lots of tutorials on this here : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/

And if you get stuck dont hesitate to reach out and contact me directly.

 

Yep

 

And here is a sneak peek at the speed of Gaia 2.0 leveraging GPU compute to stamp the terrain in real time

 

Achieved 555 reviews of an average of 5 stars today... that's happened in just over a year since Gaia has been on the market. Anybody who knows the asset store knows just how incredible that is and I want to thank you all! I am so motivated to do more cool stuff

 

Hi Adam,
really nice to see that speed test. How large is the terrain ?

 

Help create an island size needed 15-20 KM

 

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/41326/what-is-the-largest-terrain-size-allowed-in-a-scen.html

I'm not sure if Unity actually limits you but based on the responses from this query a few years back it sounds like the larger the terrain you use the lower the resolution. I think this is due to the size/res calculation it does. If you need big size and high resolution it may not be possible. Your best bet is to experiment.

Here is one of the tutorial pages that explains changing the default settings
http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/how-to-change-the-settings-for-terrains/

However, testing this out myself I can see some problems with Gaia that may or may not be intended.

Steps taken
1. Copied Gaia Defaults and changed terrain size to 16384 and heightmap resolution to 8193.
2. Created terrain and stamper based on new Defaults
3. Chose Stamp and Grounded and FitToTerrained the stamp.
4. Mountains too small so went to adjust height to higher than 5. The width changed from 151.65 to 100.00. I had to reset it to fit the terrain again. This is what I am not sure is an intended side effect of a very large terrain.

 

Yep, Unity does not like or perform well with large terrain tiles, however it does work.

The GaiaDefaults file have the settings you want, and the documentation describes their impact.

 

Big impact ... 40 minutes + since I started it .. and it is still painting the terrain rofl. Definitely not a size I would choose. I would rather stick with 2k x 2k for a single terrain scene or 512x512 or even smaller if chunking them in 3x3 or similar.

 

Yep

 

Oops, it crashed unity trying to place game objects ....

Unity Editor [version: Unity 5.5.0f3_38b4efef76f0]

Unity.exe caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
in module Unity.exe at 0033:4184fb0d.

Error occurred at 2017-01-26_012802.
C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Unity.exe, run by tinak.
98% memory in use.
24518 MB physical memory [319 MB free].
54211 MB paging file [82 MB free].
134217728 MB user address space [134167898 MB free].
Write to location 00000000 caused an access violation.

 

I am sorry but I am a bit of a noobie on Gaia. I just bought it and cant seem to get things working correctly. I can not find any of the Standard Environment Assets in the asset store and I had no idea I would have to buy all of these expensive assets that say compatible. I seen that someone mentioned a out of the box version of this?

 

You download the Standard Environment Assets from within Unity and not from the store. Assuming you opted to install them when you installed Unity. Simply bring up the asset menu in your project window ( on windows this is using the right mouse button ) and select the Environment option for the Environment Assets and Character for the player.

Out of the box you can make some pretty good items, without paying out for another Asset from the store. Here's a link to some of the scenes I made out of the box with a stamp or two that comes with Gaia.

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/g...d-scene-creation.327342/page-137#post-2859578

This one demonstrates the multi terrain usage currently available with some toggling on and off of old terrains while using Gaia so as not to confuse it. Soon it will be a non requirement, I hope
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/g...d-scene-creation.327342/page-139#post-2865130

 

You probably ran out of memory. Not a lot I can do about that. Best not to make really big terrain tiles. Next release of Gaia will be out relatively soon and supports multi tile - this will get around some of these issues.

Yep - as above.

 

Yep as @Xrystal commented. Follow the quick start guide with Gaia - all of this is explained and it talks you through getting started.

Other assets are not required, however I would advise getting a good sky / lighting system like Tenkoku and a good water system like Aquas.

The new Unity Post FX are beautiful, and in the next version of Gaia I will set them up instead of the old Unity Post FX. You can get a pre-release copy of them from here: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/PostProcessing.

 

Yep It was more the case for showing people why big terrains are probably not a good idea.

 

I'm working on a terrain with the following settings. Is this too big, or will things work okay? Also, please let me know if any of these settings don't look right when combined with the other values. I'm still learning here

Terrain Size: 4096
Terrain Height: 4000
Heightmap Resolution: 1025
Detail Resolution: 2048
Detail Resolution Per Patch: 16
Control Texture Resolution: 2048
Base Map Size: 1024

 

Thank you I got it working!!!

 

Hello, @AdamGoodrich! Been using Gaia for a while now, big fan of all your assets.

Question. I've got a terrain I made with Unity that I really like, but I'm afraid I've sort of botched the textures and it's looking quite strange and isn't functioning properly. Nothing wrong on Gaia's side, just the asset I'm using for textures. My question is, is there some way I can save my own stamp of the terrain, or just save the layout? That way, I could create a new terrain in a different scene and apply the stamp (this would give me the same layout that I've got right now)?

Hopefully that makes sense. Have a good one.

 

@AdamGoodrich , (What was top secret is no more.).

Well sorry for the wait, but here is the first featured asset video to give people an idea of what AI Warrior's approach to AI is all about.

The featured asset video below is the first to show what can be created with AI Warrior, and other Premium assets I support, as well as their authors I believe in.

Featured assets:

AI Warrior from Kurotatsu Studios.

-ootii's Motion Controller, Sword and Shield Pack with Adventure Camera.
-Adam Goodrich's Gaia, Gena, and Pegasus.
-3D Forge's Village Exteriors Kit.
-Shpakivnia's Hair Tool.
-Guzu Cloth Editor.
-kripto289 Mesh Effects.
-Mirza Beig Ultimate VFX

 

Hello,

Sorry if the questions have already been asked but didn't really want to read the all 144 pages... I hope you understand.

I looked a lot of your videos Gaia/Gena and it seems great.
But I never saw a multi terrain editing video...

Gaia:
I need to have a 6x6km world with I think 512*512 terrains chunks.
- Is it possible with Gaia ?
- When you stamp, will it stamp on multiple terrain ?
- Does Gaia has a "terrain streaming" system or do I need to find a 3rd party asset ? (SECTR maybe ?)

Gena:
- What appends if I modify the terrain after using spawers in Gena ?
- Does every clicks are recorded, then I could reconform every actions I did ?

Thanks man

 

Hi Adam. Will those who have purchased Gaia qualify for a free upgrade when 2.0 is released?

 

That size terrain should perform fine on most desktops. Your settings are generally fine. I made a few tweaks. I dropped the overall height - imho having really high mountains doesn't really work in smaller game environments :

Terrain Size: 4096
Terrain Height: 1000
Heightmap Resolution: 2049
Detail Resolution: 2048
Detail Resolution Per Patch: 16
Control Texture Resolution: 2048

You could create a Scanner from the advanced menu, and drag the terrain into it - that would create a new stamp from your terrain which you could use in another scene.

Alternatively, you could swap the textures and just re-run the texture spawner. There are a whole bunch of resource management videos in here : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/

Gaia does not currently support multi tile environments natively. There is a work around in which you disable all but the tile you need to work on, do your thing, then move to the next. It's not ideal, and stamping across tiles is problematic.

I should have the next release out and supporting multi tile hopefully within a month. Am making great progress on it.

Not currently. I am looking at leveraging the Unity multi scene capability when I do the next release to support streaming.

Nothing You can respawn your textures etc if this is what you want to happen.

The session management system records every stamp and every spawn. This is very powerful as it allows you to regenerate entire scenes. You can also choose to enable or disable steps within the sequence to get rid of things you dont like.

 

Gaia 2.0 will be free to all Gaia 1.x users. It will have multi threading enabled (meaning significantly faster generation via parallel operation and it will work on all platforms). It will also support multi tile, and I will do a whole range of speedups and tweaks, and even add some free Skyboxes. I will also work more on the Post FX setup I do for you with the experimental Post FX from Unity. They are spectacular.

Additionally, there will be a GPU compute version of Gaia. Perhaps Gaia Pro. In my current testing this speeds up generation by between 200 and 500x (check the video further up the page). This will be made available for an additional upgrade fee. I am not sure what that will be yet. The pro version will also be where I add advanced features like erosion.

 

Hello,

Is it possible to after I created a stamp with a height map based on a game I used to play, to stamp something like a color map onto this generated terrain to use as a guide to place assets and recreate the map as close as possible to the original one?

 

Yes.

 

Hi Adam,

Congrats for all the great reviews You have for Gaia. It's weel deserved! The stamping system is fantastic! Thanks to you my project became possible!
Here are 2 questions i posted on the Landscape Builder forum that i would like to ask you:
-Do you think of a solution to stream terrains around player in Gaia multi tile terrain update?
-Do you plan to create a component (like Megasplat) to return the name of the texture hitten by a collider (or by it's position) to play footsteps sounds or do other things?

Thanks in advance

 

Hello Adam,
I am struggling to solve an issue with Gaia.
I am texturing a terrain with custom spawners and custom textures, but I cannot figure out why a texture is spawn where I do not want.
Visualiser confirm that location is not good, but texture is here. As spawn criteria I set as Max heigth 6, but texture is spawned all over map.
Am I missing something?
Some screenshots in attachment.

Thanks!

 

Wow! Great stuff. Now I just need to get my education establishment to figure out how to get Unity Asset installation through the firewall. Attempts today were catastrophic with even free assets not able to be installed. I'm now installing from home using the same account, but worried that I will not be able to install the assets on my work PC that I teach from.

 

I teach part time as well, and with Unity now supporting educational institutions this is a pretty big deal as it takes the licence pressure off. Ours lets the unity asset store stuff though the firewall, but its still problematic at times.

You can download the .unitypackage files locally, share on LAN, and then people should be ok, but yeah, better to use the asset store.

Btw.. your students might like this - its a big list of free stuff that I put together : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/blog/best-free-unity-assets-categorised-mega-list/

If you have anything you would like to add then please let me know and I will add it.

 

Adam, do you care to elaborate more on how can I do that using Gaia?
Thank you!

 

Hey there..
Ive got an error and some warnings :/

Error:
Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Utils/Utils.cs(611,18): error CS0619: `UnityEngine.Mesh.Optimize()' is obsolete: `This method is no longer supported (UnityUpgradable)'

I think the warnings are not important

 

Sorry if this is already answered somewhere in the 144 pages of earlier comments, but I couldn't find it via a quick search or some hop-around reading. In the asset store listing it says:
"This extension requires one license per seat"

I was going to get Gaia and start working on my current machine, but am worried that when I replace it in a couple months it will be hard/impossible to move to a new machine. Is it easy to unregister on one and reregister on another or...?

And yes, I have had issues doing that with Adobe CS... why do you ask?

 

That isn't a problem.

It just means you can only use it on the computer you are using. If you change your computer then that is fine. Imagine labelling a seat Gaia User, whoever is sitting on that chair can use the asset.

 

Can somebody tell me why I get 27 errors when I import Gaia into an existing project?
Also there are missing files when I import it in an existing project, if I create a new one and import Gaia this thing doesn't happen

 

We can't really tell you without a sample of what some of those error messages are.

 

Sure, all my errors are listed here:
http://pastebin.com/3rSYXZmS

Edit: Now I found out that it seems that Gaia conflicts with my scipts because when I Import them to the new Project the errors appears again

 

Gaia does not conflict with other assets - everything in it is namespaced.

I have seen the issues you describe - it happens with one specific platform I think. Set your platform to PC / Mac, do your work with Gaia, and then switch back afterwards. You can delete the Gaia scripts once you have done your environmental work, and re-import them when you need them again. The issue is caused by the different versions of .Net that unity uses for different platforms. I think sometimes people also do weird things with their compiler and that can lead to issues like this as well. I started to dig into this at one point and went down a rabbit warren of issue after issue. Send me a PM and let me know more about your platform and I will look into it for the next release.

I interpret this as one licence per user, not per computer.

Correct. They are harmless so ignore them for now. Different versions of Unity change the API's and then start throwing warnings. Gaia is compatible from Unity version 5.1 onwards, so this issue creeps in with new releases. I personally find it really annoying when assets do not correct this and Unity is probably the worst of all with its standard assets. I will remove them in the next version of Gaia.

You need to take and image of your old environment and turn it into a greyscale image that represents a heightmap. White is high, black is low. You can fudge this to an extent with tools like photoshop. When you have done your processing save it as an IBM Raw file. Then grab that file and scan it with the scanner (under advanced). This will turn it into a stamp for use as usual.

 

I will be exploring this.

I hadn't considered this as that's not what Gaia is about, however its not particularly difficult to do.

Yep. Send me a PM and I can have a look at your setup via screen share.

 

Okay I will give it a try, can you tell me how to set my platform only to Windows?
Sorry for that newbish question, but I'm really new with Unity

 

Hey, your asset is really great. I would just like to report a little bug (which could be fixed already but it is hard to track the updates). The bug is with gaia defaults. When setting Detail Resolution to 4000, gaia sets it to 4096, but if I do it on the actual terrain, unity sets the detail resolution to 4048, not 4096. Unity side seems to be more complicated than just 2 to the power of something. This leads to detail offsets on larger terrains.

 

The temporary fix was to edit the GaiaDefaults script to also check if the detailResolution is not 4048, but the same thing might apply for other resolutions.

 

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/BuildSettings.html

Hmm... will take a look. It should be power of 2. Maybe unity does something weird.

 

Hello Adam, as for creating the stamp using grayscale and photoshop I managed to do that, thank you! But my main question is AFTER I have created the terrain with Gaia, I have to place the objects where I think they are supposed to be.
I would like to know if after the stamp is created, is it possible to "stamp" a color map somehow?!
It would allow me to pain in photoshop where the houses would go, paths, etc... and then just fill with my 3d assets.

 

In Gaia color maps are not supported, in Gena they are.

There is a whole bunch of quite sophisticated masking in Gaia. Check out http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/.

 

Hi EwanRGR, the 145 pages now does make it a bit difficult at times to find information and I agree browsing through all of it takes a day or so. However forum search to the rescue: https://forum.unity3d.com/search/1971443/?searchform=1&t=post&o=date&c[thread]=327342

(You can use it for other threads by replacing the thread idea (327342 for Gaia) you'll find in the URL of any thread).

If you type "license per seat" you'll see an earlier post in the list of results. Hope it helps for anyone new to this thread, it surely helped me retrieving posts I knew to be in it.