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

It's quite easy, you need to use the scanner tool in gaia...search in your hierarchy! if i'm not wrong, you just need to take your terrain slide it from the hierarchy to the scanner.
sorry if i made a mistake
cheers

can't wait for gaia2 to come!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks a lot @eaque! I will try that out now. When is Gaia 2 coming out?

 

@eaque, Worked! Thanks a lot!

 

I disabled AO on my camera, and the black squares on speedtrees go away. I guess I can't turn it back on until I bake light.

 

There is a setting in Post FX which can adjust AO for deferred lighting. Try again with that.

 

Another month or so. Its in alpha state right now, and am focussing on the final touches for the new shader.

The new terrain shader will be out in another 2 weeks.

 

I don't know why it shouldn't. If I am right it's just a shader. If it works with grass with a shader enable material on unity terrain it works.

 

Good news

 

Will Gaia 2 multi (unlimited) terrain be able to support different zones...like the northern areas being snowy and the southern areas being desert and mountain ranges and flat plains?

How can we make use of this "Proper multi tile support (there is a work around for now) - FREE for v1 users" until Gaia 2 comes out?

 

Create your multiple tiles and disable all but the one you are using now, and manage them one at a time, or PM me.

 

If you don't mind creating a number of scenes you can create multiple scenes and use pixel crushers' scene streamer to move in and out of scenes

 

I'm working with TerrainComposer2, but can't seem to get used to those nodes. It's taken me 3 evenings to make an untextured mountain (and it's still not how I want) and I had my terrain created for Level 1 in Gaia in a day. The reason I didn't stay with Gaia for Level 2 is because I need the unlimited/multi-terrain. Level 1 is the story intro and is linear and Level 2 is where the story is freeform. (Didn't want the player to have to play thru the same scene again ... like in Fallout 4 or Skyrim to get the shouts you want.)

With "Scene Streamer" you won't be able to see the mountain ranges off in the distance.

I think I'll keep pluging along with TC2 and if I can't get the terrain I want by the time Gaia 2 comes out, then I'll switch to Gaia 2. I don't want to put the project on hold to wait for Gaia 2.

Will Gaia 2 multi (unlimited) terrain be able to support different zones...like the northern areas being snowy and the southern areas being desert and mountain ranges and flat plains?

 

You're talking of biomes. If I understand correct each tile will be it's own biome. Which means spawning objects, spawning coverage textures, trees etc all will take place in that biome. So you can create an environment as such. Which is the whole point of having multi tile terrain. If the seams between the terrains blend/stitch I cannot say. @AdamGoodrich can answer that better.

BTW either way, for the requirement you have, you will definitely need something like world streamer or sectr. Gaia nor terrain composer streams objects around you.

 

Good point, EvilAngle89. After taking a look at both of those, I think I'm going to go with World Streamer.

Adam, "If the seams between the terrains blend/stitch I cannot say. @AdamGoodrich can answer that better."

 

I

I dont quite get the obsession with unilimited terrain If you have unlimited terrain it is most likely just going to get repetitive after some time anyway.
If you just want a really large world you can use Gaia to create multiple tiles, make it exactly as you want, then use Terrain to Mesh to get meshes for the farther away terrains and use Mesh Simplfy to decimate them while keeping the edges intact. You can then stream everything with Scene Streamer, which does have the function to use mesh lods for neighboring tiles.

and to stitch the terrain tiles you can use Terrain Stitcher

 

Hydroform runs entirely on GPU, but you think AQUAS is better for performance? That statement baffles me. I would think a GPU solution would perform better.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good winter vegetation pack? I'm all set for trees, but I'm looking for bushes, grass, etc. But I can't find anything in the store.

 

I generally like Hydroform, but sometimes it glitches, seems like it might be getting GPU stall, and happens when you move fast.

 

I don't know. I don't have it, but was considering it so performance is definitely something I'm curious about.

 

Completely agree. G2 with scripting should be adaptable to support this, but making infinite worlds is not a focus at moment.

It will texture how you want. And with the new terrain shader, you can have different tiles running different profiles - one can have snow and the other not.

 

Yep, you will love G2

 

1-will the seams between the terrains blend/stitch?
2-so then what is the difference between multi-terrain and unlimited terrain?

 

you can have different tiles running different profiles - one can have snow and the other not..... ?

 

Yes.

One has multiple tiles and can represent a large area - the other has multiple tiles and can they keep on generating as you get further away - and can go on forever. G2 will be all about large areas, not inifinite areas as I really can't see the point of them.

The latter also poses significant and real technical challenges, as well as significant content challenges. I would argue that people want interesting game play more than they want infinite worlds. No mans sky - infinite in size - infinitely empty - inifinitely the same game play. Imho - once you worked thru the basic game play - then infinitely boring.

To provide a sense of perspective - FarCry 4 is about 14 sq km in size.

 

Yep.

 

Does Gaia work well in VR?

 

Gaia simply allows you to generate and populate standard Unity terrain. So if standard Unity terrain works well in VR then so does Gaia.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a go. By the way, Stix's Directx grass shader has LOD which I think conflicts with Gaia LOD. If I have to choose one, Gaia is the easy choice.

Keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to 2.0. Can I clear texture/trees and such, and add the 2.0 ones to the existing terrain when it is released? Or, would it be better to just wait? I have other facets of the project that need work anyhow in the meantime.

I am now scaling and stamping a section of my old terrain which I need for a castle in the new Gaia generated one, via the scanner. Gaia is really incredible.

 

Yes. However the sample assets are not VR optimised, so assuming you know how to do VR then you will be fine as you just need to configure the terrain settings for VR (a simple thing). Next version of Gaia will automate these configurations.

This was done with Gaia : https://www.townshiptale.com/

 

It should just work.

 

Hi @AdamGoodrich , please correct me if I am wrong here. I understand that two different terrain tiles can obviously have different texture setups. But what about the Gaia spawners ? Will be spawners be tile specific or will the spawners be global ? I think it's better workflow wise to have spawners attached to tiles instead of being global, so you can individually treat each tile as a separate biome. Is this how Gaia 2 will function ?

 

If you look at your spawner, it is movable and resizable, ergo you can choose how and where your spawn stuff and therefore you have biomes

The same approach will flow through to G2.

 

@RoyS I guess this answers your question

 

Hey @AdamGoodrich if it's not too late there was something that I wish you'd implement in Gaia 2, and that's to be able to copy spawner criteria between different spawners.

For instance between the coverage texture spawners and the detail spawners.

 

Nice idea, added to dev list

 

Do you mean the directx 11 grass shader? I just bought it so, that would suck.

 

As I understand it, to use this you need to spawn your grass as game objects rather than unity grass. Whatever LOD's you set up in your prefabs will work just fine.

A word of warning - Gaia can spawn hundreds of thousands of grass instances - if you try to do that with game objects you will surely crash Unity. This is a Unity limitation, not a Gaia limitation.

@turboscalpeur can probably comment - how knows this shader pretty well.

 

I know this is a touch off-topic but I was thinking of getting Suimono but since you know so much about asset store products Adam, which would you recommend for a large-scale world?

 

Just some game and real world stats.

Skyrim - 37.6 sq km (14.5 sq miles)
Oblivion - 57 sq km (22 sq miles)
Morrowind - 24 sq km (9.3 sq miles)
Fallout 3 - 130 sq km (50 sq miles)
Fallout 3 New Vegas - 54 sq km (21 sq miles)
Fallout 4 - 9.90 sq km (3.82 sq miles)
GTA V - 81 sq km (31.3 sq miles)
GTA San Andreas - 36 sq km (13.9 sq miles)
Witcher 3 - 135 sq km (52 sq miles)

Real World
U.S. Virgin Island - 347 sq km (134 sq miles)
Cayman Islands - 260 sq km (100 sq miles)
Bermuda - 53 sq km (20 sq miles)
Norfolk Island - 35 sq km (13 sq miles)
Tuvalu - 26 sq km (10 sq miles)
Macao - 24 sq km (9.3 sq miles)
Nauru - 21 sq km (8.1 sq miles)

Someone posted on a game that it took them 11 minutes to go from one end to the other on the Fallout 4 map. I made myself invisible and I think it took me 9-10 minutes to go across Vvardenfel (mainland Morrowind).

Just a thought - Mount St Helens horseshoe-shaped crater is 1.6 km (1 mile) wide.

 

So what is our limit on multi-tiles for Gaia? ie, How many multi-tiles will Gaia permit us to have?

My landmass is an island type, but I would like enough terrain under the water where you can't see the edges of the terrain. That was the issue with my Level 1 which I used Gaia for. I had to hide the edges, by creating hills, but I'll have to put a "drown" on the character so if he goes in the water, he won't explore beyond the small map.

 

To this I would say the limit would be how much Unity and your PC can handle. Gaia doesn't tamper with the standard Unity terrain. It more or less complements it by allowing you to use a feature set to populate a terrain easily than painting. That is all Gaia is and that is all Gaia does. Procedural stamper and texture/detail/game object spawner.

So just like what I said before, your performance will heavily depend on the number of objects you have in the scene and for which you may need some sort of streaming. World Streamer is the best for Gaia in my opinion right now because even if you create a 40km2 environment, you're able to slice the terrian into chucks within World Streamer itself. I haven't used this, @NatureManufacture should be able to tell you more about it since he's the author of the tool .

What I am not sure about streaming is when it comes to stuff like grass. I guess you'll have to control them by fade distance or something on the terrain for detail distance.

You need to get a bit creative too. Like use a lesser culling distance on your camera and may be use an effect like fog to hide the clipping like I've done here. 1.5 km culling distance.

There's also the zero origin floating point error you need to think about, which World Streamer handles for you if I am right.

Your imagination and a proper streaming tool is your only limit in creating large terrains



Btw I too agree with what Adam says about large terrains. Look at your own facts

Fallout 3 - 130 sq km (50 sq miles)
Fallout 3 New Vegas - 54 sq km (21 sq miles)
Fallout 4 - 9.90 sq km (3.82 sq miles)

Tell me Fallout 4 wasn't the best Lack of landscape allows you to create a richly detailed environment that otherwise fails to create interesting stuff.

 

Is there some summary whats new about G2 somewhere? Im a bit out of the loop atm : )
Planning on starting terrain creation any time now and wonder if i should hold it of?

 

I dunno how much G2 is priced at so I would recommend taking G1 since it's a free upgrade.

 

I already have G1 : )

 

The question is usually asked every few pages so there should be something going back a few pages, either a link to a post or some info.

 

The description on the asset store. Scroll to the bottom for gaia 2 info

 

G2 - new, free to existing users, and with a bunch of very cool features (10 months of full time effort):

* Multi tile - obviously - limited only by memory
* Multi device wizard - setup will be targeted to type of device - desktop, mobile, VR etc
* Fractal stamp extension - explore a whole bunch of different fractals - unlimited stamps
* Powerful filtering system - terracing, various filters, erosion
* Way way faster - even without GPU compute
* New cameras, camera and lighting
* Skyboxes

The paid GPU Compute addons will make most of that work in real time. I may or may not include some of the filters in the free upgrade - for example erosion may move to GPU compute only.

I have promised free because of multi-tile but am struggling with it as I have added so much more into the product than I envisaged when I said this - by the time it launches there will have been another ten months of full time effort invested and so much extra speed and capability. Curious to get some feedback on this.

Hopefully people will support me by also purchasing the GPU compute plugins.

 

Personally, all Gaia compatible assets are on my wish list, for when I have the funds to spend on an asset that is a long time down the chain of practical use. At the moment I am only using Gaia for fun and practise.

Out of the list above I personally find the following would be a reasonable asset store breakdown. Hopefully it will allow people to add the assets as the need or ability arises. This is based on the ability to make these items optional assets.

Standard Price Asset Packs
Gaia 1 - Single Terrain System
Gaia 2 - Multi Terrain System
Gaia 2 - Extras Pack ( all the optional assets minus GPU Extras )
Gaia 2 - Extras + GPU Extras Pack

Part of the Free Upgrade
Gaia 2 - Multi Terrain System
Gaia 2 - Cameras and Lighting ( or a cheap optional asset )

Low cost optional assets
Gaia 2 - Skyboxes,
Gaia 2 - Multi device wizard

Mid cost optional assets
Gaia 2 - Fractal Stamps
Gaia 2 - Simple Filters

High cost optional asset
Gaia 2 - GPU Compute
Gaia 2 - GPU Compute Filters

 

Multi tile.
THIS! Awesome : D

 

Hi Adam, I am playing around with Gaia and for .some reason the spawners don't work, basically nothing happens when I click on spawn, there are no rules. everything else works. Is there something obvious I'm overlooking?