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

That is enabled too . I checked .

 

Btw. It is a really bad idea to have too many grass textures on a terrain tile. Unity uses the equivalent of a splat map to define the density of the grass at each location, and then has to also draw each lot of grass. The more grasses you have the greater the performance cost.

Additionally, when you move around it then has to cull it and when I was making Pegasus this was really evident as stutter which I caught in the profiler. When I removed the grass the stutter was also greatly reduced.

This is expensive from both a memory and drawing perspective.

 

Wow didn't know this. I am glad you mentioned this because I really didn't think it through. Thanks a lot Adam.

 

I updated my project to unity 5.6 and now I'm full of warnings in my console like:


Assets/Gaia/Scripts/ExtensionSystem/Extensions/CameraAndLight.cs(54,28): warning CS0618: `UnityEditor.PlayerSettings.renderingPath' is obsolete: `renderingPath is ignored, use UnityEditor.Rendering.TierSettings with UnityEditor.Rendering.SetTierSettings/GetTierSettings instead'

ssets/Gaia/Scripts/ExtensionSystem/Extensions/CameraAndLight.cs(77,24): warning CS0618: `UnityEngine.Camera.hdr' is obsolete: `use Camera.allowHDR instead.'

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Utils/Utils.cs(230,31): warning CS0618: `UnityEditor.TextureImporter.grayscaleToAlpha' is obsolete: `Use UnityEditor.TextureImporter.alphaSource instead.'

and so on.

Please help!!

 

I would like to know if road creation will be included in v2 of the software.

 

Hi @javipamp

Just a friendly request, I saw your review was basically a support request, where the forum here or email to Adam is the proper pace for it.

I am sure @AdamGoodrich will be more then happy to assist you here or in private and even more delighted if the review can be an actual review and not used as support space.
Skype removed times from the app, so don't know what time it is in Aus, but sure close to wake up time, so you will hear from him soon, sounds like a Unity bug to me anyway, remember a short while back someone else similar problem and it was def not Gaia related.

You going to love the package and specially the new features is going to blow everyone's mind, I have seen 1 - on - screenshares with Adam and also a early demo YouTube clip, I tell you, going to blow everyone's minds what Gaia v2 is going to have in store.

Cheers
Cobus

 

Was this ever in the announced feature list? I don't think so. Adam is working hard to include Multi-Tile / Mult-Thread Support. This is top priority with releasing GPU Compute Support as seperate asset. There are tutorials for River creation and also tools on the asset store which might help you for the start.

Cheers
Ronny

 

I'm sorry, I don't know much about the current or future state of Gaia, and didn't read in detail about announced features for v2, my bad.
I'm looking around to buy a solution that includes road creation inside the package, as I had seen pictures of the horrendous results where external packages were included in the mix, so I decided to stop here to ask.
As a matter of fact, maybe someone can advise, is there any integrated road creator in a procedural nature/world generator available for Unity3d?

 

Not that I can recall

As you stated, there are many tools that has this as a core product line.
At the end, Gaia is not here to replace every other tool that exist that has anything to do with terrain

Cheers
Cobus

 

I think for road type requirements rather get a package that focus on that and get Gaia for the actual terrain creation.
The same way the road tools is not going to be nearly as good as what Gaia's superpowers are

Cheers
Cobus

 

I'm thinking to buy Gaia and to use an external solution like Blender or Probuilder modeler and build a road mesh with nice details on top of Gaia's generated terrain for my scene.
Talking about that, I was reading in one of the previous pages that people converted Gaia terrain to a mesh and was curious why? Better performance and lighter scene reasons or because they wanted to export it to an external 3d package like Maya for further modifications?

 

I think both the reasons are good reasons.
never know what there end requirements of needs are

 

I'm sure this question gets asked this a lot, but what version of Unity3D do you think is stable for things like Gaia?

 

Every version from 5.1 onwards.

 

These are just "warnings", and do not harm your project.

There is a new version of camera and light in the link below... if you have issues then please take the time to have a look back a few pages in the forum - they generally get answered every page.

http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/gaia-extensions/camera-and-light-preview/

 

I have done a bunch of tests and not generally found things to be better with mesh terrains. In fact what happens is that you lose all the automated shading, tree management and grass culling etc.

I am sure that you can probably tweak them get better performance, but have never had enough of an issue to warrant having to re-engineer all the stuff that Unity gives you for free.

Additionally, I know a bunch of AAA games are all quite happily using Unity terrain, and I guess if the pros think its good enough, then we can probably follow their lead.

If you want advice on optimisation then check these posts:

http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/mobile-unity-scene-optimisation-with-gaia/
http://www.procedural-worlds.com/ga...ng-speedtree-with-gpu-instancing-in-unity-55/

 

No

 

Why not just buy a tool that specialises in this - you will most likely get a better result. I know of one that will be released soon - it looks amazing and is just about to into alpha testing.

 

General question to community:

As unity changes through the versions the auto upgrade process generates warnings. These are harmless but annoying. Do you all think I should do a special patch release of Gaia just for these warnings ? Just seems like overkill to me. Open to feedback though.

It essentially means you get another big download just to get rid of some warnings.

 

I have those warnings too but I cant really see if anything is wrong... what do you recommend? Download the zip or just wait for Gaia 2?

 

I dont think so, warnings are just warnings... And If they dont cause problems that you acutally know of so ...why bother?

You allready posted a zip anyways... We want Gaia 2 Just get it out here

peace!

(We can solve the warnings ourself, Unity tip us what to write lol. like allowhdr insted of hdrenabled = true )

 

hmmm... or could this be a reason why terrain is blue/greyish at night time and the part of world that´s in shadow? also my player is blue/greyish... but only when project is baked...

 

If is a program that someone with your knowledge likes, I would be definetly interested.
Please let me know.

 

There are a couple, but none compare to Gaia for terrain generation. I suggest you go to the asset store and look for tools for landscape and see which you like or don't like. I am not going to advertise other assets here, partly because I can't recommend any of them for a variety of reasons, and second, because this is the Gaia thread, so all about Gaia.

Good luck on your search. I would wait for this new asset tool if I were you. You will probably regret it if you do not.

 

That's to do with your ambient light settings most likely. Go into your lighting window and explore

 

I think Adam was referring to a standalone road creation plugin that works with Gaia that's close to be released. This is why I asked the name. That, or you guys are part of a conspiracy to keep me in the dark.

 

Hehe - yeah - its an unusual name and i always have a problem with it. Here it is : https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/s...tes-creator-for-roads-rivers-and-more.443121/

 

Thanks Adam, I have my eyes on that.

 

Another possible reason is the ability to curve and rotate the terrain, which a terrain object will not let you do. Having worked both sides of this coin I tend to use mesh when needing to make planet based terrain and terrains when needing an area based terrain.

 

That is the tool that I mentioned one should wait for. It is a good one.

 

Unfortunately yes I prefer you do it, because if every asset didn't fix the warnings people could end up with an absurd amount of asset warnings, and they can get in the way of seeing your own game issues.

As far as the download... it's possible to import only the things that have changed if you look at the import window... so are you just fixing the warnings in scripts? In that case at least the users could update for fixes without worrying about graphics assets I believe, which at least makes setup quicker. The download probably still has to happen.

 

Hey @AdamGoodrich

Figured it's been a while since I poked you about Gaia 2, still patiently waiting. I haven't been able to keep up as closely on the forums lately, but from what I have been able to catch it sounds like you might be getting close?

 

Hey @AdamGoodrich

This may have been answered before, but I cant seem to find anything on it. GPU instancing seems to fall off after I start moving around my scene.

I've looked at both your resources to about optimization and applied those techniques to my scene. For some reason, the batch count saved goes right down to 0 after I move around and look at all the SpeedTrees in my scene. Does GPU instancing only work for static cameras? It seems as soon as I start moving the GPU instancing on the speed trees breaks.

Im not sure whats going on? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
tom.

 

Adam has said Gaia 2 will be out I believe in a month or 6 weeks. He is working hard on it
and it takes a lot of concentration in getting Gaia 2 out ASAP, but he will release
it when he feels its ready, out of the box and not full of bugs, like possibly other dev's releases.

Edit : Just went and checked to be sure.. page 163 about half way down
Adam said " Gaia 2 will be out sometime in the next few months " End Edit .

Hence my 2 cents worth .. he is fully working on this.. Stopping to " fix " a few lines of code
just so Unity won't have " warnings " that do Not affect Gaia in anyway, is just plain silly...
since he is working hard to get Gaia 2 out for All of us here in this community space that Adam has made

 

I have noticed this type of problem in 5.6 without Gaia so may not be a Gaia thing but more something to do with Unity's GPU Instancing changes. I just assumed it was something I was misunderstanding in regards to how it works on the shaders.

 

@Xrystal

I just did another test with all unity materials (instanced) but kept the billboard as Speed tree mats. When its not trying to render Speed tree mats, its fine, GPU instancing works. But as soon as the Speed tree mats come into view, the batching increases?

So yeah, not gaia's fault, more unitys i think. But still, how did Adam achieve that low batch call in the tutorial? Or was his camera not moving?

 

Yeap, all Gaia does is automate the placement of assets into the terrain using standard Unity API's, so its sort of hard to mess instancing up unless Unity has messed up their API's.

That said - this is interesting information. I will pass it onto the Unity engineers responsible for this.

 

OK, so I have the hardest time generating what should be the easiest terrain.

I went to terrain.party and saved the USGS topological map at 8km similar to your tutorial for how to create a Gaia terrain using real world maps. I have a map of a place called Marquesas Keys, Florida. They are basically an old coral atoll held together by mangrove swamps so they are not much more than over sized sandbars now.

So I have to make the water extremely shallow because I want rid of the mangrove swamps but that's OK. I know then I have the terrain created in Gaia and it's ready to play except the Player1 won't walk around. I hear player 1's feet hit the ground but I can't turn, walk, run or anything else. I'd like to walk around the terrain and inspect it before I do things like add trees, buildings, and such but can't.

The Unity console is no help. It has no information, warnings, or errors.

I am using Unity 2017 beta 5.

What ocean / wave shore making asset do you recommend (even though the water you include is actually more like the sea waves are at those islands)?

Also, the size of the grid made by Gaia seems to be only 1 square kilometre instead of 8 square kilometre. I guess I can scale X, Y, & Z by 8 with no adverse affect on Giaia? (hmmm...doesn't seem to do anything changing the terrain scale)

 

Since you're asking about water. I think Aquas for inland water and Suimono for seas. I like what hydrofoam looks like but there's no support for buoyancy yet although I've seen the author mention he has exposed functions to get height data for buoyancy calculations. But I'd rather go with a tool that does this by default.

Visually I don't really like suimono, but functionality wise I think suimono is a very strong asset.

I would have recommended playway to you earlier, but the author is handing over support to a different company and they haven't really picked up pace or provided any updates of any relevance as of late.

There's also the community ocean shader which can help you. It wasn't very optimized when I used it , but I hear it picked up a lot of pace and things got really great with it.

My advice is go check out all of the options available out there. Based on your requirement of visual fidelity and realism, I am sure you'll find a middle ground with most of the assets available. Do not forget to look at the opensource options too

 

Gaia has nothing at all to do with moving your player, so this sounds like a Unity issue. Gaia just creates a standard terrain. If you can't move your player around on it, the player or your control inputs are probably not configured properly. Try creating a simple cube or plane, and make sure your player can move on it before introducing a terrain.

You need to modify the GaiaDefaults file (located in the Gaia>Data folder) to change the size and resolution of terrains that you create with Gaia. For existing terrains, go to the Terrain Settings to change the size, not the terrain's transform scale settings. This is just basic Unity stuff. You should read some of Unity's terrain documentation, or Gaia's documentation, or watch some of Gaia's introductory video tutorials.

 

Hi there, can anyone recommend techniques for creating and streaming terrain with Gaia using Sectr with the current build? Or should I wait until the update?

 

Thanks for the map scale tip but Gaia does have something to do with the creating a player as under the Gaia STANDARD button is 3. Create Player, Wind, Water and Screenshotter.

I guess I will create my own Player until Adam fixes Gaia to work properly with Unity 2017 betas.

thanks

 

I think it is just a simple standard controller that you can find in the standard assets. Difficult to update to a beta version since it would require almost constant updates.

 

Yes, I've imported the Standard Assets that it takes those from and double checked the input setup and it's correct. It's pretty darn annoying that the input setup gets clobbered constantly in Unity.

I will just create a new project with only Gaia imported and check that...

 

My point was that you can just move the prefab 3rd or 1st person controller from the standard assets on to your terrain scene. You do not need to use the buttons in Gaia to put in a controller. I never use it, mostly because I always forget it is there.

 

Thanks, I did that to no avail.

And i just created a brand new project with nothing but a Gaia scene as created from the Gaia Quick Start guide & the player controller works.

So then I compare the Input between the broken project and the new working project and all 18 listed inputs are the same. The same. So that means some other asset that I've imported into the old project actually broke the Unity input without actually changing the Input configuration. And whatever did it leaves no messages, whether informational, warning, or error in the Unity console. The input simply fails to work. Just lovely.

Anyway, that is solved. Well not really, I think I know the problem asset and so won't use it again except to copy the art work models I want out of it, instead I will trash the old project and use the new one.

Gaia's nice but it looks like for these islands I will have to model them in Blender because I'm not satisfied with the ocean floor.

 

Goat, if that doesn't work then you will have to wait for Unity to update the character standard assets for the 2017 beta.

You could put some masks and noise on the ocean floor. Nice thing about Gaia is that stamps will give you lots of different choices. You can even make your stamps from height maps.

 

That's a good ideal.

Thanks. The input problem was a problem with a Unity tutorial I had imported. It works fine without that tutorial. I'll just create new projects for those tutorials from now on. Gaia & Input work fine in Unity 2017 beta 5 without the tutorial.

 

If you change GaiaDefault... duplicate it first and rename it to like GaiaDefaultMySettings or whatever so you dont screw anything up. =) Good rule of thumb!

 

Good plan. Many tutorials are intended to be used as complete standalone projects. They often include their own input settings, tags, and other project settings. They could also include standard Unity assets from whatever version of Unity they were released under, and these might clash with the ones included in a beta version of Unity. In fact any asset can clash with a different version of Unity, if it includes any standard or 3rd party assets. When bringing an asset into an existing project, always check what other things are bundled with it, and consider unchecking any duplicate standard (or other) assets.

Glad you got the character issue sorted out. While Gaia does include an "Add Character" button, this is basically just a helper to add a standard Unity character to your scene. If the standard character doesn't work on its own, the one Gaia spawns won't work either. Just like if you can't create a terrain manually, or plant a particular tree manually, Gaia won't be able to either.

And +1 on @mattis89's suggestion above. Always copy the GaiaDefaults file before modifying it, and maybe even store the modified version outside the Gaia folder, so there's no risk of losing your settings during an update.