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

Hi,

I am using terrains generated by an asset called Real world terrain.

I tiled my huge map by using 16 terrains.

I wanna use Gaia to texture them, so I only enable the terrain I wanna work with, then create a spawner for texture coverage, but then after more than 10 terrains successfully painted, I get this error when I press spawn on my terrain. [see attached]

Note that the previous terrain worked well until it reached 99.5%, then it stalled and I had to press cancel. Every terrain after that gives me the same error.

Any help?

Thanks!

 

Looks like Gaia is dying as it attempts to get textures assigned to the terrain during the spawn process.

There's a button on GaiaResources (or whatever your custom one is named) to make sure all the textures that exist on the terrain match and exist in the spawner rules. Those have to match.

 

I found the solution.

Actually, I had road architect's roads in there and they can affect the terrain, which caused problems with gaia. I disabled my road object and it went fine.

 

idk I still haven't fixed the green blobs in my trees. Regenerating materials doesn't fix it. It has fixed it before in the past but not this time.
When I click on a tree though I notice that the material selected is Default-Material. Which doesn't seem right?


Edit: I re imported Gaia and regenerated materials again and that fixed the issue.

 

One thing I have been having problems is. When putting things on my terrain. I need a way to make flat areas on my map. Whats the best way to make different sizes of flat areas where it looks good still.

 

Can you maybe give us some examples from other games ("I want a flat area that looks like this") or show us a screenshot from your terrain and tell us what you are currently unhappy with?

 

I use the paint height terrain tool with a soft-edged brush and a very, very low Opacity (sometimes even 1). That way you have a lot of control over how close to the sampled height you'll end up with.

Smoothing the terrain with similar brush settings works well too.

For either operation, do short strokes and release the button frequently; otherwise when you Undo you'll lose everything since you started holding down the button.

 

I've been busy playing with a new terrain recently - actually an old one - made with height map data from the Zhangjiajie region in China. I thought I'd use it to test how Gaia works with CTS and Vegetation Studio, as well as to try out a few other tricks - like cutting a hole in an Aquas waterplane for a floating house to sit in. Here's a few pics of the results:





Resources: Gaia, CTS, Vegetation Studio, Aquas, a few rocks, and lots of SpeedTrees and Turboscalpeur plants.

More here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/xGz1x3o2bEFX83h53

 

Is there any way we could have a spherical map? (I mean a huge one, 1/8 scale earth)

 

With Gaia alone no, Gaia will work with the unity standard terrain which is not designed to be spherical in any way. If you find any Unity extension that is able to render spherical maps AND still uses the default unity terrain, you could use Gaia in theory to make the mountains & valleys and texture them etc.

If the player in your game does not need to be able to go fully around or leave the planet, you could get away with a curved world shader maybe: https://alastaira.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/animal-crossing-curved-world-shader/
This shader just "bends" everything in such way that it seems that the game takes place on a sphere / planet.

If your player should be able to leave the planet and go around it etc. you probably need to look for another extension in the unity asset store that handles planets, I found this one for example:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/space-exploration-engine-30263

 

Seems like my friend messed something up in the project or on the terrain and now Gaia spawns trees only on the edge of the terrain. I think it may be a common problem here. Do you know what causes it and how to fix it?

 

Did not hear of this exact problem yet, can only offer a couple of things that you can check.

First thing would be using the Visualiser: When you check the visualiser for the rule, does it align / check out with where the trees are being spawned? If the Visualiser shows good fitness only for the terrain edges, you can boil the issue down by removing all spawn criteria to see which one is causing this.
If the Visualiser already shows a good fitness value for the whole terrain, you could check:

• that the terrain is not rotated
• That the collision layers in the spawner are set up correctly (These can be different from the Visualiser!)
• Just to be sure: It is no tree view distance issue with the scene view? (You only see the trees at the closest edge since the other ones are currently not displayed)
• Is the spawner size / location matching the terrain? (Click the "Fit to Terrain"-Button to be sure)
• Is there a "Max Instances" amount set in the tree spawning rule that blocks additional trees from being spawned?

If all of the above fails, you could try to add "Fresh" Gaia spawners from the Gaia Manager to see if those show the same issue.

 

Tried all above. The problem lies in a different manner: Gaia shows that it spawns trees across the whole terrain (through spawned colliders), but actually "snaps" all the trees to the edge.

 

Ah, I understood the issue as such that Gaia would only spawn at the edges....hmm...sounds like there is some issue with the terrain data. Can you check if somehow the terrain component got the wrong Terrain Data object assigned?

If possible, can you try and recreate your terrain from scratch by playing back your existing Gaia Session on a fresh terrain?

You could also try to loop over all tree instances in a script with TerrainData.GetTreeInstance to see if the instance position data gives any hints on what could be wrong.

 

I've searched through this forum for a good hour on information regarding a workaround for using the random terrain generator on multiple terrains, but I'm still having trouble finding a solution. I know Gaia 2 is supposed to provide a solution to this but there is a way to still do it? I generated a 16K terrain and used SECTR to split it into 16 separate terrains. I'm stuck figuring out the best way to stamp the terrains. Should I stamp the entire terrain as one and then split it into multiple terrains?

 

That is what I do at the moment, I work with multiple 1024 x 1024 terrains that are split up into smaller 128 x 128 pieces for streaming with World Streamer. I do not use the Gaia stamper, but I still create the height map, trees, textures etc. on the 1024 terrain first, and then split it down to the smaller terrains.
After a while it turned out that I had to do more and more manual steps to prepare the 1024 terrains for streaming, and every time I changed something I had to go through all these steps again. So I created a script that automates all the steps for me and I can do something else while the terrain is being "built" / prepared for streaming.

 

How many 1k terrains are you working with?

 

It is 11 x 11 of these 1024 terrains, so 121 of those. It works well in so far as that I have created the height data for all of these terrains, and had them textured with Gaia, and it works that you can wander from one end to the terrain to the other while the world is being loaded in and out dynamically. The game is an isometric game, so the 128 x 128 streaming are sufficient for me, but it could be that you need a different terrain size and / or LODs for a FPS game where you can see more in the distance.
There are still performance issues, in the editor there is a short hitch / stop whenever a terrain loads. In the standalone build it is better but still a noticeable FPS drop though. I hope I will be able to optimize that out later on.

There are also a lot of smaller & bigger problems involved, but so far I was able to resolve them in one way or another:

• Navigation / Navmeshes are difficult across multiple terrains
  
• Closing the seams for small height differences between the 1024 terrains
• World persistence: When the player picks up an object and carries it to another scene, etc.
  
• Enemies wandering from loaded into unloaded scenes and vice versa
• Splitting up all non-Terrain objects into a grid so they can be streamed as well

and probably some more stuff I already forgot about again. The key point is that once you decide to split up the terrain for streaming you got to think through what other parts of your game will be affected by the terrain streaming as well, I was far too naive in that regard

 

I'm wondering if sections is the best route for me to go then. Take a look at this section of the Horizon documentary where they talk about Frustrum culling. Isn't this what SECTR VIS tries to simply?

 

Skipped through the video and found the scene, link with timestamp

The video shows frustrum and occlusion calling in action in Horizon Zero Dawn.
From what I can see from the asset store page, Sectr VIS seems to be an alternative to the built-in occlusion culling of Unity (Umbra). So yes, Sectr VIS is supposed to make that easier, and / or give you better results than the built-in occlusion culling.

But I assume that Sectr Vis would still require you to split up your large terrain in smaller sections so it can display / hide those sections who are / aren't currently visible by the camera. (Unless it has some extra magic tech for terrain rendering in it as well)

 

Sorry for that, I thought I included the correct timing on the video I attached.

The terrain has been the biggest issue for me. The visible, open terrain from Breath of the Wild is something I want players to experience, so I'm researching the best way to tackle it. See below:

The creator of the SECTR asset said it could be used to render an environment like this. This is my first open world project. I'm gathering as much info as I can before I jump into it. I know the video game Firewatch was created using SECTR, but it looks like they utilized a 'repel down rope' feature in their game to handle the portals and rendering.

 

I know the creator of Gaia is probably annoyed with people asking this... but it's been a long time since the word "soon" was first used about Gaia 2.

Is it still coming "soon" or should we just not worry about a Gaia 2 anymore? I purchased this asset mainly to help fund the progress of the asset. But seems like the roadmap for this asset (mainly a release date) isn't anywhere to be found.

 

I know Adam said he's had some personal things get in the way with the release. Life happens. I've not been waiting as long as you so I'm in no rush personally. I just purchased Gaia and found it to be an incredible asset. But I'm probably not at the stage you are where you could use the added features. At this time I don't believe there is a firm ETA. If you reach out to him he mentioned giving beta access.

 

Thanks @jlpeyton for the info. And yes, for anyone reading these latest posts that may be interested in Gaia.. the asset as-is, is a great buy and it does exactly what it advertises. So I don't want there to be any confusion that my concerns have anything to do with the actual current product.

 

You are correct. The terrain still needed to be split up. But VIS worked perfect. If I run into any issues I'll reach out. Thanks for the help!

 

What's the size of your expected terrain?and the size of your playable area?

I guess there could be different solutions but Having Zelda BOTW as targeted experience is a great inspiration i think! I'm on the same path....

 

Hello, I have a question regarding Gaia, is it possible to create "Sky Islands" / "Floating Islands" in Gaia? I just imported gaia and I am playing around with the manager but I don't think I am getting anywhere.

Thank you very much for your help

 

Gaia performs all its operations to create mountains, place trees etc. on the Unity standard terrain, which would not look very good if you place one of those in the sky alone. It would just be a floating square with mountains on it, and I think the terrain would be invisible when watched from "the wrong angle" below.

It could work if you use a terrain for the top part of the island, and some rock / mountain meshes to cover up the bottom and the sides of the island. Depending on the size of the island that would probably mean a lot of meshes or ugly giant ones though.
Using another terrain for the bottom is not possible I think because you can't rotate the Unity standard terrains.

Another "half-idea" could be to create mountains and valleys on a terrain in Unity and export the terrain height map to your 3d modeling application to create a proper island mesh from that. Texturing the island mesh could be difficult though then, depending on the size of your island.

Do you know any 3d games that feature floating islands that seem to use some terrain system for them? I only know "A Story About My Uncle", that one seems to use meshes for the floating islands since they usually aren't that big.

 

I'm looking at a 16k map. I purchased World Creator 2. The stand alone application. It's pretty amazing. The pro version allows you to work on a full 16K map (as long as your GPU can handle it). Then you import it into Unity.

 

OneManDandGames, how did you use Gaia with multiple terrains?
I thought one of the limitations of Gaia is that it only works with one terrains. I was waiting for Gaia 2 to bring in multi-terrains.

Thanks

 

I don't, I use Gaia separately on each of the 1024-terrains, one after another, never at the same time. I then use scripts to close gaps in the height levels between the terrains. Depending on what texture spawn rules I use, there can still be problems with textures across the borders.
For example if I want to spawn a darker grass around trees and a tree is close to the border on the first terrain, Gaia will not "remember" that tree when spawning the textures on the next terrain, and will therefore not spawn the darker texture there. I'm hoping for Gaia 2 here as well to solve my cross-terrain-texturing woes.

 

If I try that Gaia insists that each terrain is centered around 0,0,0
How do you overcome that?

 

Afaik that only appears when you use the stamping system. I don't use the stamper to create hills and valleys, I import a heightmap for the terrains. The spawning system works without issues / error messages when the terrain is shifted to a different position.
You could try to place the terrain at 0,0,0 while stamping and then place it back at the intended position when you are done. If you find yourself doing that too often, because you want to go back to using the stamper now and then, you could create a script for that.

 

@AdamGoodrich ,

Any moves towards an integration with RAM - River Auto Material?

 

Hey everyone - sorry for the lack of response here lately. I have been hard at work on some upcoming goodies and been so busy that I have largely blocked out the rest of the world.

So as a quick update - I have a strategy for where I want to take Procedural Worlds, and am in the process of hiring the right people to grow the company. I have big plans for the future, am investing heavily for growth, and one of the pieces for that future is a complete re-imagining of Gaia 2.

I know it annoys some people that I am being quiet about Gaia 2 functionality and timelines, but the hard learning I received from the Gaia 2 beta is that I need to keep my IP to myself until it is ready to be deployed. In the mean time Gaia 1 is and continues to be a mature and very capable product.

Speaking of which.. Gaia 1 has almost hit 900 reviews with an average of 5 stars!!!

I was wondering if there was any interest in me doing a live twitch stream to both celebrate with some giveaways, as well as to answer any questions / demonstrate any techniques on how to better get value out of Gaia?

I also want to say a big thanks to @OneManBandGames for helping out here. Your support is much appreciated!

Don't forget - I have a tracked support system here - and every question posed will get a response : https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home

 

I would watch a live stream, I watched the one with you and @TheMessyCoder I'm sure other's would watch as well.

 

@AdamGoodrich ,

Any chance of tidy extensions for Horizon and RTP assets as well as the RAM asset mention below???

 

I reached out to the author of RTP quite some time ago now and he wasn't interested in doing an extension. CTS is however already integrated.

Not really sure about how I would do Horizon, but if the author is interested in collaborating then I am happy to try and make it work.

 

@AdamGoodrich ,

Understood. Probably going to buy CTS anyway re RTP. However, could see Horizon working really nicely with Gaia, and RAM could also be a spectacular extension. I've emailed all those authors too re extensions...

 

@AdamGoodrich ,

1) Is it possible (and I suspect I am not the first to ask, so I plead semi-naivity) to outline, even in rough no-promises terms, when (a) the GPU speed-enhanced version of GAIA will be released [just the speed enhanced version even] and (b) the World Manager API functionality?;

2) re CTS/GAIA, what about ground mist? At a certain time of day, how best to achieve it?;

3) Village Exteriors Kit BLUEPRINTS Premium - room for one or more new extensions?; and finally

4) in CTS (just bought) if I create new profiles, will they appear on the CTS extension as options when extending?

 

With @AdamGoodrich 's concent

When LOVE is in the air, how can you keep the two apart ?
Maybe you have one or neither at all. Now is the time to grab them at a nice discounted price.
The Village Interiors Kit & Village Exteriors Kit are both on a HUGE -25% discount Valentines SALE 14-21 Feb





* Don't forget to STAR rate your 3DForge purchases

Cheers
Cobus

 

Latest picture on my MP fps arena game with Forge! Using Gaia!!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8l8y02iosrqmluz/test333.PNG?dl=0

 

How can I have gaia stamp and detail everything (spawners and everything) on a 100000 squared terrain? I tried and it and the progression bar didnt move, anyway to fix it?

I am making large open world maps

Thank you!

 

Just got the package, I've been loving it while making some sample scenes trying out stamps and such. But some "issues" have arised, which maybe are due to my inexperience with the package.
For example is there some way to "mask" out a stamp or use only certain parts of it? (I have a terrain with some mountains and I want to add another mountain, so Only the "mountain" part of the stamp is stamped not the whole stamp, I tried with the blending options but none allowed me to do that. Instead the mountain is stamped leaving a square shape in the graund where the limits of the stamp where)

 

I just tried to stamp a 100k x 100k terrain out of curiosity, and I get an error message in the console, and the progress bar does not move.

Do you get an error message in the console as well?

I tried to debug the error, but did not fully understand what was going on there. Stamping a 10k x 10k terrain did work for me. If you are getting a console error as well, you could try to open a support request on the procedural worlds website.

Before you do, be aware though that 100k x 100k is quite a large terrain, and will most likely create other problems in your game as well. Just one example: Did you check out how the texture / terrain detail resolution looks on a terrain this size? Try cranking up the base texture resolution to the max (2048) and paint on your terrain with the smallest brush possible (Size=1). You will notice that you will only be able to texture your terrain in large, rough, chunks because your terrain is so much larger than the base resolution that controls which texture goes where. The same should happen if you try to draw terrain details like grass etc. with the smallest brush size.

This is just one issue, there will probably be much more along the road. So if it is possible to make your game somehow on smaller terrains, maybe with different areas or zones that can be loaded individually, that will save you a lot of trouble in the future. Or you could look into terrain / world streaming, but that is another rabbit hole with its own share of problems

If you want to open the support ticket, you can find procedural worlds support over here: https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home

 

Can you check / try two things?

1. Is "Stamp Base" enabled? If yes, try deactivating it.
2. Change "Operation Type" to "Raise Height" only, so that gaia only makes the terrain higher when stamping.

 

Thanks for the reply, it was already disabled the Stamp Base. And also the Operation Type was Raise Height, I tried the othe operations and also tried inverting the stamp. I'll post an image later to show what I mean.

 

Thank you!! I found on the procedural worlds gaia forum I might need to mess with the resolution setttings. I will mess with that before I put up a support ticket

I am creating open world maps for my Arena FPS multiplayer game, Trying to be as detailed and big as possible

Thank you!

 

I know there is a stupid simple way to do exactly what you want .. but with my memory I can't remember how to now..
But I know there is a tutorial that mentions this as well. I went to the support link and found this .. If you can't find the information in that, personally I'd put in a support question, since I know Adam can point you to the right tutorial for this.

But I think you may find the answer to the mountain stamping in this link ..

https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk....-do-i-blend-stamps-together-to-get-nice-edgeshttps://proceduralworlds.freshdesk....-do-i-blend-stamps-together-to-get-nice-edges

 

Excellent thanks for the answer, it clarifies perfectly my concern, and I can see now, how poerful the Gaia engine is!