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

That was a pretty sweet tutorial @evilangel89 it added quite a bit of awesomeness to my terrain, sadly it didn't aleviate my problem though :/

 

This is really a RTP specific question / problem. I would post this question in the RTP thread so Tom the creator of RTP can explain to you the idea of his texture blending / transition better.

Anyway I am gonna try to help you:
As you mentioned RTP uses Layer Heightmaps for blending. So heightmaps define how good the blending is. Under the "Combined Textures" Tab you see which textures where combined. This is done by RTP automatically you don't have any sliders to define that.
The important Buzzword for the problem is the "Crosspass heightblend" feature of RTP. In LOD Manager the feature is normally enabled. You can deactivate it though and see if this delivers better results for you.
Here you see what I am talking about:

Taken from the RTP Documentation. I suppose you want to have something like on the left image because that's whats Gaia Terrains look like without RTP.

You also should be aware that GAIA uses Tile Sizes X and Y of 15m. If you switch to RTP, RTP will use 5x5. So the terrain will look different because the textures are smaller and you will have a bigger "tilling effect" which you need to fix through perlin normal map and UV blending.

Hope I could help.
Cheers
Ronny

 

Thank you!
In the video posted above you switch back to 15x15 so I did that too
But Really, I'd like to have Crosspass Heightblending xD
Which is why I think it's a Gaia issue and not an RTP issue.

It just struck me while writing this that it could be because the splatmap stays the same size and the same amount of pixels are then "stretched" to cover more terrain, which would cause the borders to be a lot less defined.
I'll have to look into that.
Thanks again for replying!

 

Ok, after some reading, the solution seems to be the approach of Gaia 2 where the terrain is split into multiple sections, each with their own splat map

 

Hehe - Gaia just textures terrain and if it works in the standard shader the Gaia has done its job.

RTP is the one shading it - so am unsure how RTP's issues texturing are related. My suggestion is to speak with the RTP author.

However, if you want sharper graduations in textures, rather than nice blends, then please watch the video below. You just need to make your curves tighter.

http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/spawners-unity-terrain-textures/

 

C̶a̶n̶ ̶G̶a̶i̶a̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶e̶x̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶o̶p̶u̶l̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶e̶r̶r̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶G̶a̶i̶a̶?̶ Yes

 

Yep

 

Whadaya know, it actually worked
I had to switch off noise though, there was no way to tighten the borders enough for it not to look silly, but without that, and both slope and height set at vertical degrees, I managed to get tight enough borders.
Thanks
(I am a little worried about the full map though as it needs to be around 6 times larger than this map.. but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it)

 

Btw for anyone who cares, Enviro + Gaia and Enviro + Megasplat is now available. Enviro released the update earlier today. Can't wait to try.

 

I figured I'd just show it off too, as I'm very happy with the result.
The scene itself is still far from finished and needs weather effects and screen effects and whatnot (oh and water that isn't just a giant blue plane), but the terrain texturing looks good now!
Thanks again everyone

 

Wait, what? Wow! Thank you.

 

Yea it's released finally. Hope to see a few screenshots of your gaia projects with enviro sky in the next weeks


(Gaia + Enviro + MegaSplat + Aquas + Unity PostEffect Stack)

 

Holy F*** that looks absolutely stunningly beautiful!!

 

Awesome! Going to check your asset out now as I noticed you are integrating with Ultimate Survival as well!

 

Cool

I only changed a few lines of code to replace current Ultimate Survival ToD system with Enviro and it's working great
Have thrown a few assets together and got a decent looking survival game with Gaia + Ultimate Survival + Enviro in no time! So everyone who needs help with that can message me

 

Anyone experiencing a "pink terrain" when using GAIA in Unity 5.6?

P.S.
I am using GAIN 1.5.3 and it seems to only happen when I set the lighting to "evening light". All other lighting environments are okay.



Thanks!

 

Just the visual similarity. When I first watched the advert my first thoughts was of Gaia.

 

Check if the terrain's material is correctly assigned.

 

So i took a little time out last weekend for my mother's 70th birthday - was lovely to see family again.

While I didn't get much development done, stepping away and getting some space to do some design paid some real dividends.

Came up with some really simple and powerful ideas that will significantly increase the capability of Gaia 2. Of course they now need to be built - can't wait to show this stuff all off!

Also, the new terrain shader is getting very close to release. @NatureManufacture and I found a way to crack a number of really significant hurdles we had been chipping away at this week and I am working on the final UX now.

It will rival the best terrain shaders on the market, and will be delivered with an obsessive focus on simplicity, speed, capability and usability!

Here is an example of height blending in action

 

Wow. Hopefully my search for the best looking terrain shader comes to an end with your asset. I got RTP, wasn't happy, got Megasplat, slightly happy, then there's distingo ultra to look out for, but you got my attention Adam. Please keep more screenshots coming. Really looking forward to your terrain shader. Any idea how much you're going to price this at ?

 

Long time owner of GAIA but not been in the community for a while. I was wondering if there are any resources for sessions people have made and shared out with the community?

 

I don't think there is a single resource location. But this is a link to the session info I uploaded for one of my scenes I liked the look of that was created with the basic stuff that comes with Gaia.

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/s...d-scene-creation.327342/page-146#post-2949250

 

Looks amazing.

Some questions:
- This will be a terrain shader only or does it also work on meshes like UBER? Asking because getting snow / water effect at the same time when terrain textures are getting them would be pretty cool. Right now I am using UBER + RTP + Enviro for that.
- Will the Terrain be editable if the Shader is applied? Meaning can you change the Terrain by painting new textures changing height etc using the pencil also after adding your shader to the terrain or will this not be possible? The thing here is after adding RTP and using tesselation features for the terrain, you can't change any heights anymore. So before adding RTP you really should have finished your terrain completely by painting / editing it.

Cheers
Ronny

 

This is a nice idea. If people want to share resource files with me I will be happy to put on Gaia web site.

Initially terrain. No reason it couldn't work on mesh as well though, so will explore this. The issue is more about crunching the data to set it up.

Initially snow, then adding water.

Yes. It will detect changes to the terrain and then re-crunch its internal data. I am working at optimising this at the moment. Painting the terrain will be real time.

 

@AdamGoodrich are there any issues with Gaia and Unity 5.6 you know of? I've recently updated Unity and wanted to create a brand new environment. After importing Gaia 1.5.3 I got a 5 warnings in the console, and then going back to basics and following the quick start guide, things just don't appear like they used to! I only see my ground if I click the "Stamper" in the hierarchy, I can't seem to spawn anything, and even clicking on something like "Create Camera Effects" gives me a warning to tell me I need to import the standard assets -> effects. which I've already done.

Maybe I'm just being dumb but the steps in the easy start document just seemed to work before! Thanks.

 

None that I am aware of - I have had no issues using it. You do need to do the automatic upgrade however.

I tend not to use the old FX as I far prefer the new ones. Maybe Unity changed them, so I will look into it. I will be upgrading all the FX stuff to the new post FX in Gaia 2.0 as they are far better imho.

Also, with 5.6, I though the new progressive light mapping would be awesome, but instead found it to be very flakey - on the first scene I tried it with it caused Unity to crash - every single time!!

I spoke with one of the Unity terrain engineers, and apparently baked terrain shadows won't be in until 2017.1 - which is a real pity as distant shadows on the terrain are a must to create immersive environments.

 

This is totally amazing. Being able to work on the terrain already having the shader activated. This already makes the asset stands out!

I think for meshes the most important features are: POM / Tesselation and the weather effects like Snow and later on water. Because normally on meshes you don't need the whole blending Perlin / UV Mapping stuff to reduce tiling. Except your terrain is a Mesh of course.

Every answer of you is making the waiting a torture!
Cheers
Ronny

 

What we can do ? wait for the new update. If you released G2 now. many customers will complain . U5.6 still unstable for me. I'm using U5.5.3 version and its good. Adam, don't hurray, wait till unity get stable, and this may take months.

 

Disagree. The Progressive Lightmapper is listed as an experimental feature in 5.6 and as such I dont think people should be waiting for it to become mature in 5.6.

 

I'm having this exact same problem. I have the villages pack from Backwoods Gaming and the stamps are correctly installed in the Gaia villages folder, but the random terrain generator never selects them regardless of the settings.

Has this been looked into?

Edit: It seems that valleys never get picked either.

 

It's possible there is a bug with this - i plan to revamp this in the next release. Have you tried just selecting villages ?

 

Yes just villages (and also just valleys) with everything else set to 0. It never selects any villages or valleys. They were the only ones that seemed to never get selected.

 

I can confirm this happening too. I've tried selecting villages only.

 

I will take a look at the code and see if i can replicate. This section grew and grew and in the end should have been implemented differently.

In the mean time - and its a hacky work around - but you could move the stamps and the stamp data into other directories to get them included in the random selection process.

I would really like to do something far more sophisticated with this, but as ever it just takes time.

 

Here's a Work In Progress screenshot for my next video in the "What you can do with Unity terrain and great assets like Gaia and MegaSplat"-series. Assets used (so far): Gaia, Tenkoku, Unity PostProcessing (anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion and color grading) and a bit of tinkering of my own.

 

Wow, I like what you've done with the mountain texture.

 

You found the clue!
I aim to publish the video next weekend.

 

Looks really nice, would you share your Post Processing settings?

 

Sure here we go:

 

Thank you!

 

Has anyone tried the new Vulkan Graphics API in Unity 5.6? I'm curious how it handles Gaia terrains with lots of trees and vegetation, compared to DX9/11/12 for instance. I'm guessing it'll be faster, but since it's still experimental, may not work for everyone. I've done some Qubemark tests between it and DX12, using the versions included in Unity 5.5 beta 4, and it certainly seemed to have a clear edge, but the test software hasn't been updated yet to check the versions shipped with 5.6.0f3. And as usual, real world results may vary.

If anyone has been brave enough to try this on a "real" project, please share how it went. Of course if you haven't, but are thinking about it, remember to back up your project first, since it will update your renderers and other graphics settings, and may make unwanted changes.

 

I haven't tried Vulkan yet, but the Metal implementation lacks many of the features of openGL, and actually tops out at shader model 3.5. Metal is now default on OSX, so if you use any advanced shaders that previously worked on OSX, they might now be broken on Metal until you remove Metal from your list of allowed APIs. I have heard Vulkan is in a similar state.

 

That sounds about right. I don't think it even works in the Editor yet in Windows (at least according to this), but does that mean I can still make builds that will use Vulkan? Looks like they're prioritizing Android/Linux initially, and will flesh out other platforms later. That even makes some sense, since Android is probably the most common development platform these days, and also most in need of a graphics performance boost. Linux gets to tag along because it's related I guess.

 

Is there any good way to convert gaia landscapes to low-poly?

 

There are a few tools on the store:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/18572
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/55808
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/47276
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28583
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/59295

 

Can i make with Gaia like 1 terrain (lets say 10km x 10km ) with like 4 or 5 different islands ?

 

Yes.

Here is a video tutorial i did that among other things covers creating low poly terrains.

 

New Gaia user here. How do you save a new Gaia project?
Built the first demo, went fine, generated it out to a windows 32 bit build. saved scenes, saved project, exited Unity.
Reopened the project the next day to build a 64 bit test for comparison and the project opens, with the GAIA menu window still open, but the scene has only the original camera and directional light.
What did I miss? I explicitly saved scene and project before I did the windows export.

 

You save it the same way you save any Unity project. Gaia doesn't change how Unity works in any way. If you've made a new project, the project needs a name, and each new scene needs a name. If all you're seeing when you re-open a project is a camera and directional light, either you've created a new scene instead of opening the one you saved, or you didn't give the one you "saved" a name, which would result in it not being saved. If you did give your scene a name, you should be able to find a scene file by that name in the Assets folder of your project. Just open it and your scene should be restored.

If there are no scene files in your Asset folder, all may not be lost. Gaia also creates a Session file when you use it to create a terrain. You can find it in the Gaia > Data directory. It should have a name like "GS-2017xxxxx-xxxxxx". If you have a file like this, just create a new session using the Gaia Advanced menu, and drag the existing session data file into the "Session" field, instead of the new one it will try to create. Then just play back the old session file, using the "Play Session" button at the bottom, to recreate your terrain.

 

Thanks guys! I´ll look into it