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

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by AdamGoodrich, May 21, 2015.

  1. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Yep I am super happy with it. And what is especially cool is that it is real time on GPU - so you can see it as it is happening and tweak it in real time to get exactly the effect you want - and then when you are happy you just stamp it and done!

    Same thing goes for the texturing - real time feedback and an interface that is as intuitive as I can make it given what it is doing, is super fun!
     
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  2. EddieChristian

    EddieChristian

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    The missing Skybox and lighting is from me stripping out the TENKOKU asset from my project. But I built the terrain before I removed it. The camera currently only has FXAA Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing on it. But that isn't currently active. @evilangel89 I am building my whole game around Invector system and Bolt for multi-player. :)

    Also I am still very interested on learning how to spawn with better plants/grasses....
     
    evilangel89 likes this.
  3. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    With Gaia, the info you need is here : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/

    With Gena, there are a bunch of tutorials here : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gena/tutorials/
     
  4. Magic73

    Magic73

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  5. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Both are good products. Hydroform runs entirely on GPU. Visually I prefer hydroform. Aquas I suspect is lighter on performance.
     
  6. evilangel89

    evilangel89

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    What about PlayWay ? It has awesome visual fidelity too. I don't know any assets that can do both waves and lake water sorts other than suimono. But I am not a fan of suimono in terms of visual fidelity.
     
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  7. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    They are all great :)

    In this I need to be neutral because Gaia works with them all, and I don't want to alienate their publishers or supporters.

    Best bet is for the community to share their preferences, and as long as it is respectful then I am all for the knowledge sharing.
     
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  8. S4G4N

    S4G4N

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    I think people can post screenshots of what their results look like and state what they have used to obtain the results.
    Then others can see and decide what is best for their project needs concerning look & feel as well as performance.

    No every game is going to have HUGE scenes.
    Many have smaller scenes and a completely other water or lighting solution that is perfect for one project is not going to be right for a different type of project.

    That does not make one water asset better then another, it just means there is room for many different solutions.
     
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  9. evilangel89

    evilangel89

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    True and I agree. I was just giving an honest opinion based on experience. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt :)
     
  10. Tuskony

    Tuskony

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    I'm using Gaia and it's texture spawner to paint my terrain. But the problem I'm having that is if I'm not happy with how the terrain turned out I can't seem to paint over it because certain parts are painted with a strength of, lets say, 1. So when I do a new pass, with new rules, the textures that have a high strength are not painted over.

    How would I go about removing all the texture from the terrain? Or at least setting their strength to 0.

    I hope this makes sense!
     
  11. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    The best analogy is to think about it as if you were adding layers of paint. Each additional rule is a potential new layer of paint.

    New paint of a given type will only paint over the old paint at that location when the new paint would be stronger at that location.

    The nuance is that all textures must add up to a collective strength of 1. So if you make a texture stronger, you also make every other texture weaker so they sum to 1.

    Anyhoo, check this video out - it will show you how to work with the texture spawner and do exactly what you want:

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

    Tuskony

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    I have watched that video!

    Here is an example of what I'm doing. Lets say I want to just reset my map back to my basic texture (layer 0).

    I turn off all the other texture spawn rules so now only 1 is active. I set that texture to paint at a strength of 1 no matter what the slope/height, etc is.

    It doesn't over write my entire map with that texture. It will leave textures up that were painted before.

    I guess maybe the only way is to delete the texture from the terrain editor, and then re-add them everytime I want to make big changes to the spawner rules?
     
  13. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    As you can see from the video - the technique works - if it is not working for you then something else is at play. Your 'wipe' texture must be set to paint always, and you can check this with the visualiser.

    Another little gotchya - if you have inadvertently moved your terrain object away from height zero (y = 0) then this can throw the spawner off.

    Happy to have a look via Skype screen share if you want - should only take a minute to work out whats wrong.
     
  14. Tuskony

    Tuskony

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    I'll try that first before I bug you with a skype call lol!

    Where is the "always paint" option? I can't find it but I might be blind!
     
  15. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Gaia 2 - loving it!

    Untouched stamp - just amazing!

    Grab 20170512164719 w1920h1029 x589y45z-1351r342.jpg
     
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  16. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Hello! I've been using Gaia for a while now and I just found som awesome Grass from turboscalpeor and a Grass shader directx11 on asset store. And I have som questions;

    1. Can I use them with Gaia, (is it possible to spawn them with the detail spawner, after I already have created a level and everything)?

    2. How do I put my own prefabs in lets say the detail spawner?

    Thanks for support and awesome asset

    //

    Mattis
     
  17. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Wait what Gaia 2?!?!?!?!
     
  18. Goodgulf

    Goodgulf

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    It's the Gaia upgrade which Adam is working on which will bring Gaia to the next level of awesomeness.
    The usual follow up question: when will it be released? When it's ready.

    Once in a while one of the forum regulars posts this link to the Gaia forum search page. It makes it easy to find information in the many many posts of this thread. Works for "Gaia 2" too.

    Hope it helps!
     
  19. RonnyDance

    RonnyDance

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    One question for all the terrain masters here:
    Was anyone lucky in creating something similar to this? (the way up to the castle on the mountain)

    I am using a mountain stamp over another terrain stamp but I think without the time-consuming work of painting the mountain on specific parts lower I will never get a similar result :(

    The problem of unitys Paint Height brush is that you always have to manually adjust the height... This is fine if everything should be flatten on the same height, but the way up to the castle is always getting higher...
    By using the Raise / Lower Terrain Brush the results are not looking so smoothly and really ugly.

    Erusion Brush is also not giving me good results. Not so easy as I thought...
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2017
  20. Xrystal

    Xrystal

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    It might be one of those times when they created a model to be the trailing cliff walkway followed obviously by a model of the castle, maybe even as one big castle with walkway model. To have that sort of refinement using terrain tools will probably take a lot of artistic expertise and skill and knowledge of the terrain tools in general.
     
  21. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    I'm not exactly a "terrain master", but I've faced this problem a few times:

    Island1.jpg

    In this scene, I had to carve a path up the mountain, a base to lay the race track on in places, and also added blended mesh rock bridges and tunnels where needed. Unless you get a third party asset like EasyRoads3D Free, EasyRoads3D Pro, or Ramp Brush, you're stuck either making a mesh model, or making long stairways with the terrain height brush, and smoothing them into ramps, which is what I did for most of this. :eek:

    Edit: You might be able to make a gradient stamp that would do what you want, but I'm betting it would still need some touch-up afterwards. It would also just substitute fiddly work in PhotoShop for fiddly terrain sculpting. :(
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2017
  22. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Just had to share this. Gaia scene, with standard 4 Gaia textures, treated with the new terrain shader! Or put another way. You will be able to do this with your Gaia environments and this shader !!

    And before anyone asks - this will not be a part of Gaia - its a collaboration between @NatureManufacture and I, and will be sold as a separate asset on the store.

    Naturally it will work very very well with Gaia :)

    Grab 20170513075251 w1920h1029 x44y77z-598r325.jpg

    Grab 20170513075420 w1920h1029 x528y76z341r252.jpg
     
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  23. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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  24. tapawafo

    tapawafo

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    Wow, amazing work! That second screenshot is just incredible. Can't wait :)
     
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  25. evilangel89

    evilangel89

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    I hate you @AdamGoodrich release this already :'(
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2017
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  26. derkoi

    derkoi

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    Hi, I've imported Gaia in to a fresh Unity 5.6.0p3 project & I'm getting these errors:

    Is there an update to fix these please?
     
  27. mattis89

    mattis89

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    For Gaia 2?
     
  28. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Those are not errors, only warnings due to Unity Update, it changes and the asset not, its only telling you that its written in an other way now
     
  29. mattis89

    mattis89

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    When can I buy the shader?
     
  30. derkoi

    derkoi

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    These are errors, stopping my scene from playing:

     
  31. evilangel89

    evilangel89

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    Hi @AdamGoodrich , was wondering if you by any chance have got a script or a workflow for importing a library of textures/grasses into Gaia from a directory or something. I am trying to import all of @turboscalpeur's rustic grass pack to the terrain and then get the grasses into Gaia, but this may take forever :)
     
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  32. turboscalpeur

    turboscalpeur

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    We could implement with Adam, the Extensions from my Grass Assets to Gaia 2.0; it requires some works, when it will be fine for making it, you will be advised, then I'm totally agree with you !
     
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  33. Xrystal

    Xrystal

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    I have a GAIA project created after 5.6.0f3 was installed but I have never seen these errors. Perhaps you can explain the steps you took to set the project up from a blank project up to when the error occurs. Maybe try to repeat the problem by creating a new project and following the steps again.

    What other Gaia Extensions do you have ? Just in case this error kicks in for a particular extension only. If you have several, try adding the extensions one at a time and see which ones together cause the error to appear, The last one might be the cause but it could also be a collision problem between extensions.
     
  34. evilangel89

    evilangel89

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    Thanks buddy! It would be awesome!
     
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  35. GuinUK

    GuinUK

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    Having tried a couple of water assets I must say Playway looks the best for sea and for flowing water (in my opinion)
    There is also a choice of 7 different 'roughness' of water from, calm to full on hurricane. It all looks incredible alongside Gaia.

    The only issue is there is no underwater shaders and the guy who maintains it is not going to support it any more (he's letting someone else distribute it) with promise of lots of additional features.

    It does look incredible though, as shown below. You literally add an empty game object 50 high and replace the unity standard water. Takes 2 seconds.Might be worth holding off for a while though to see if it does get taken over by someone - £100 is a lot of coin for a depreciated asset however pretty it is.

    Playway water.png
     
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  36. mattis89

    mattis89

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    My bad, saw wrong
     
  37. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    Are you sure? They have an "Underwater Effects" section in their product description on the Asset Store. My only problem with them, when I decided to get Ceto instead, was their lack of shoreline foam. If their future is in doubt though, it's bad news, especially after Ceto (seen in post #8174 above) was deprecated last year. Along with Suimono, these were probably the best products for creating large oceans featuring realistic wave displacement. While they all still seem to work, Ceto is no longer being sold, and could stop working at any time, if Unity changes some crucial feature it depends on.

    I've just noticed another asset, called Realistic Water, that might be worth looking at, (for a lot less money), but I have no information on its performance relative to the rest. Other than that, there's the old standard (and free) open source Community Ocean Shader project I guess. :(
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2017
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  38. mattis89

    mattis89

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    I would recommend Suimono, looks great and have really awesome underwater caustics and effects , and above water effects too, and the developer is really supportive and updating his asset frequently :)
     
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  39. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Can you please PM me with some more detail. Perhaps a Skype session would help me to be able to help you.

    Next few weeks.

    Will work with any terrain regardless of whether Gaia was used to create it.

    Get latest camera and light here: http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/gaia-extensions/camera-and-light-preview/
     
  40. RonnyDance

    RonnyDance

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    Thanks a lot @FargleBargle,
    Ramp Brush looks pretty promising for those scenarios and is ok for the price. EasyRoads3dPro would be a little bit to much for me right now.
    I will still gonna play a little bit with the Unity Brush tool and will check if Ramp Brush makes sense for me.

    Thanks again for your input.
    Cheers
    Ronny
     
  41. corjn

    corjn

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    Hey Adam, I am a owner of Gaia since it was release and I have to say I love it ! I'm really looking forward the 2.0 update and have some questions about it. For more stunning terrains I often mix gaia with world machine. In one project in particular I will need the multi tile from Gaia 2. I will use color maps on it, with a classic slpatmap shader to have detail textures. My question :

    Will it be possible with gaia multi tile to export all the heightmaps (for world machines) and then apply a different material on each tile so I can put my colormaps from world machine ?
    More generally, I would like to know how Gaia 2 will handle multi tile. If, for example, with a 4 tile gaia you'll have in your inspector 4 unity built in terrain component, each one having his own heightmap. (and so, the already built in option to export it)

    Otherwise I can see that the shader you are working on right now can, in a way, achieve what I want that is to say a wide and interesting color range. So I'm sure I'll find a solution to achieve what I want :)
    Thanks in advance for the infos,
    Jonathan
     
  42. Arganth

    Arganth

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    Unity 5.6 p3
    on a fresh import of GAIA, GENA and turboscalpeur hq pack 1, 2
    the grasses are not in the gx tab
    (not in installed also not in compatible)
    no compile errors

    is there something extra to do?
     
  43. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Textures only take a few minutes to add, and besides when you have spawned the textures you could easily swap them out for your desired textures I use to do it :) and as I understood it's just to add the new grass you want with shader (rustic grass, Im gonna do this now too) to the detail spawner? Its even a tutorial, you have to excuse me if I understood your post wrong :)
     
  44. GuinUK

    GuinUK

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    I saw this and if I'm honest I haven't messed with it too much - I waited quite a long time to get the beta version posted out as the creator was having a few real life issues and wasn't responding.

    In terms of the foam, it would be nice if the water 'wet' the ground where it touched and added a bit of surf.
    The problem with all the surfs I have seen is they all look unrealistic or too cartoony for the look I want.

    I use Tenkoku's Dynamic Sky and it is an excellent product. I guess his water will be very good too.
    He was also very helpful when I was having a couple of issues with baking light. I just prefer the look of Playway water as it seemed slightly less green than on the demos.

    Certainly can't criticise the support though - and with playway being sold on I'd probably be opting for Suimono at the moment.
     
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  45. evilangel89

    evilangel89

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    Textures I agree, you wouldn't use more than 16. It's not the best workflow to keep swapping out grasses if you ask me specially since I have a good collection of grass packs. What I'm trying to do is to load the grasses at once into a unity terrain's list of grasses or trees. It's cumbersome to add them one by one initially.
     
  46. evilangel89

    evilangel89

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    I believe this is not Gaia related, but it's important to me so I hope the community and maybe @AdamGoodrich is willing enough to help me on this :)

    I got some custom tree packs that aren't from SpeedTree and I used them with Gaia to successfully populate the environment. I see that the trees have properly spawned, confirmed to the slopes and everything. But there's one problem, I can walk through the trees which kinda points and says "hey tree, you have no collider". But if the tree didn't have a collider Gaia itself wouldn't be able to properly spawn it right ? I am unable to check if the trees have colliders because I cannot select a terrain tree once they're generated. But the individual tree prefab does have a collider on it.
     
  47. turboscalpeur

    turboscalpeur

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    @Arganth Yess, it is normal as the GX eXtensions for Gaia from my Grass Assets are not finalised because there was a slight bug in the curves;
    I suggest you to wait for Gaia 2.0 at this stage, I could make it released to make you the life easier;

    @Arganth @evilangel89 On the same time, when I'm using Gaia my way is to create Grass Resources Patches (using for example same kind of Grass together as Drys, Waterside Grass, Fields or Mixing ect...) and then making a BACKUP of each Resources;
    After, I'm able to create quickly each Grass Spawner I want to use in any Project.
     
  48. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Gaia adds custom colliders when it spawns so it will happily spawn any tree.

    There is a collider setting in your Terrain Collider script, its usually under the Terrain script, and this has an 'Enable tree colliders' setting.

    Wonder if this has been changed on your terrain ?
     
  49. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Aah okay I see, damn you have alot of grass then! :D It could be done but I think its quite a complex script because its like in the editor and not the game itself.. But I have seen something similar. I'll come back to this!
     
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  50. evilangel89

    evilangel89

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    Thanks man. Worst case I will write my own script. Just lazy haha . I've got over 50 grass textures.
     
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