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

I used the shader of the indicated page and it is the same as the shader of the tree creator.
The trees only rotate when placed inside an EmptyChild GameObject and in this there is a LOD Grup directing to the Mesh.
In no case does the collider appear in the overview.
I'm using Unity 2018.1.3f1 for PS4.
Imported SpeedTree trees work. But I have many made the simple way and would like to use.

 

Would you have a solution until October at least?

 

When Gaia creates rivers will it place rocks around the edges of a river like this picture here. I'm doing this manually right now.

 

I think I can't help any further with this issue, I have never tried replacing the tree creator trees with GameObjects to achieve free rotation. Maybe someone else can advise.

If you can't see the colliders in the hierarchy, then this is the reason why the "Virgin Terrain" check does not work as intended, it is based on colliders "to see if anything is there" where it wants to spawn.
Normally Gaia should create these colliders for trees that have a bounds radius set automatically afaik. But since you want to use GameObjects as trees anyways, what happens if you put a collider on your gameobject itself? That one should be there in any case, shouldn't it?

 

Gaia has no dedicated settings / features to handle river borders, you would need to configure the spawning rules in such way that it "knows" where the river borders are. For example in the picture it looks like you have a special riverbed texture on the ground, you could make a rule like "spawn these stones where the riverbed texture is and where the terrain has a slope from X to Y". Depending on how your river is built up in Unity, you could use other methods to define the rule as well.
If you are familiar with scripting you could also write your own spawning extension where you could use everything Unity has to offer to do the river edge detection in code yourself.

 

The collider should be there, but it does not spawn.
Equal to TreeCreator and SpeedTree trees.
In prefabs placed on the ground manually, it works.

To resolve:
I will create groups already rotated to TreeCreator and change most to SpeedTree.

I look forward to an update for 2018.1.3f1, as far as the colliders avoid grass spawning. I can send you a test package to help you.

 

I'm not the Gaia developer or associated with them. I'm just a regular user trying to answer question on the forums. The developers of Gaia are here on the forum as well but the best way to contact them for support is by creating a support ticket over here: https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home

 

I guess this might work. put a line of Speedtrees along the bottom. Maybe rough up the hill tops a little.

 

I created GeNa to do this sort of fine tuning.

 

Anybody know if it's possible to assign different physic materials to different textures/materials with Gaia? Like to make dirt and grass have low friction and rock etc have more friction?

 

Unity terrain does not support this, and because Gaia uses standard Unity terrain, it also does not support this.

 

Depending on what you are trying to do, you could maybe fake it by finding out what texture is displayed on the ground, and then adjust physics settings accordingly. Here is a script that fetches you the ID of the "strongest" texture on a point on the terrain, it is a bit older but looks like it should still work: https://answers.unity.com/questions/34328/terrain-with-multiple-splat-textures-how-can-i-det.html
Once you know the texture, you could for example set the drag value of a rigidbody directly, or adjust other values of a wheel collider etc.

 

Hi Adam,
I did notice something weird with some tree I did get from the store.

For some reasons, these tree does show incorrectly on the terrain, compared to the speed tree. This is the result of a spawning rule, mixing one of the tree from the store package, with the ones included in Gaia, which are speedtree.


The issue goes away once you get close enough for the LOD to switch from bilboard to mesh; although it looks quite evident once you get far enough.

Now, the interesting thing is that the issue does not show if I place the tree by hand, instead than using either Gaia or the paint tree tool from the Unity terrain tools. Do you know why would this happen, and how to fix it? Basically I can't use any of the tree included in this package, in a Gaia rule; I can only place them by hand.

Is this a Gaia issue? A terrain issue? The trees in this package are all made with the Unity tree tools; the author of the package told me that the shaders are standard; so I wonder if you know about this weird issue.

 

Looks like a tree shader issue. I have noticed the same thing with the connifer tree pack - and to me this sounds like the authors issue - or perhaps a unity bug.

Gaia places trees into your terrain via api calls and that hasn't changed for several years now - essentially the same thing as adding to terrain and then using the tree painter.

I will try the manual thing you referred to and see if i can replicate it.

 

Thanks Adam;

The author did say that it works fine in her vanilla scenes, so suggested to check about how Enviro and Gaia manage shaders.

So when Gaia use a rule, it is calling the terrain API? That would explain why I get the same results with both Gaia and the terrain paint tree tool.

As side note, I did try to make a final build, just to check if the issue was with the editor, and sadly the final build show the same issue with the tree, as in the image above. At least we can exclude that it was an editor fluke.

Looking forward to your findings; it will be hell on earth to place by hand all the trees I need, since the map is a 2x2 KM.

 

Correct. Gaia does not have any shaders... its all stock standard Unity... so it will have nothing to do with the issues the author is having with their asset.

As previously commented the author of the asset needs to fix their trees. They will be able to replicate it by adding fog, adding their trees to terrain with usual terrain tree brush, adding fog, and zooming out.

 

I see. Is there anything special in the fog used? I can try a fresh scene with just unity fogs, terrain and the trees

 

Gaia does stock standard Unity - end to end - and this is by design to make it compatible with the widest range of assets.

I like the Coniferous tree pack as well - its quite spectacular - and have observed the same issues as you and was quite disappointed as you no doubt are as well.. and as per my past 3 comments on this topic - my sense is that its an issue with that pack.

Of course it could be something totally different e.g. a bug in Unity .. so if you make a break through then please share.

 

Amplify have just released an interesting new far distance based billboarding system. I spoke to them about at Unite in Berlin, and when I get a chance will explore it to see how it does.

 

Totally; I did point the issue to the author as first thing; but from her perspective; if the asset works in a vanilla scene, that is enough for saying that the asset is fine. I understand that it is not like someone can try out an asset with all the other combination of assets out there.

This pack is called "trees bundle 2.2"; by IL ranch; I really like the fact that there are plenty of trees; and to be honest; I can't spend 40 dollars for 2 trees; even if they are gorgeous like the speedtree Most of these tree goes in the background, which is why I am having hard time, since I hoped I can use Gaia to put them in different zones on my map, using different rules. Sadly at the moment I have only 2 options, which are to not use any of these tree with Gaia, and place them by hand, or figure out how to actually fix the problem; which may be quite hard since I am a coder but I know very little about shaders.
I can't really ask the author to fix the package for me, so I guess I am stuck at this point with options that are not really exciting I will try to post also in general section; maybe someone from Unity may be able to point out where the problem lies and how to fix it. Thanks Adam; will keep you updated.

 

Actually, Gaia can put certain assets in specific zones, if you use a mask. It's called an "Area Mask" in the Gaia spawner settings in the Inspection tab. You might want to look up "image masks" on Google for the definition.

Then to solve your problem you could do this: You would make an "Area Mask" that Gaia can use to spawn in specific areas.

To make an "Area Mask", you first need to have an image of your terrain as a reference. Gaia can create a "Base Map" (in Terrain Utilities---->Create Base Map). That image is your reference that you would open in Photoshop (or GIMP), then create a new empty Photoshop layer above the terrain "base map" image and paint in the areas you want the spawner to fill with specific trees, then make sure that layer is either grey scale or conforms to one of the "Area Mask" import options in Gaia, then save only the new layer by itself (that you painted as an area mask).

Then in Gaia, create a specific coverage or clustered tree spawner (in your hierarchy) and set up rules for the specific trees you want, and there is on option "Area Mask" so choose the mask you just created.

Doing that will spawn trees in the area(s) defined by the mask.

Your custom mask you've just made would be for spawning your "far-off-distance trees" in specific areas.

It's a lot of work but in your specific use it would solve your issuet.

 

The latest release of Gaia has a very sophisticated mask creation system - and with some creativity you can do a lot with it.

http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/terrain-utilities-mask-creation/
http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/terrain-utilities-noisemap-noisemask-creation/
http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/terrain-utilities-advanced-mask-creation/

I have improved it again since I made these tutorials - so it is even more powerful now.

The full set of Gaia tutorials is accessible from here : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/?section=tutorials

 

The issue is that if I use the terrain system to place them, even if I use the mask feature, the result is the same. Unless the masking does place trees without use terrain API.

BTW I did narrow down when the issue happen. So far I did create the terrain and everything works fine, as long as I do not add "Enviro". Once I add enviro via Gaia extension, the trees start to look like that.
I did look into the Enviro options and can't find any option that could affect the trees; so at this point I have no other options except contact the author of Enviro, to figure out what is going on.

BTW what is the exact sequence of actions that are performed, when the button to add Enviro to the scene is pressed?

Also, I did buy CTS; and now for some reasons, the detail resolution per patch does reset to 8 when I run the scene; so I jump from ~240 draw calls to ~1200. Is there a parameter that I have to set, to not change the parameter for the detail resolution per patch? Thanks

 

It adds Enviro to the scene. This was created by the author of Enviro, so he is the best person to talk to. He may also have some insights into the fog issue as well.

This may well be a bug - I am doing an update to CTS at the moment and will look into it. In the mean time you can disable the optimization by unselecting the 'strip textures from scene' option on your profile under advanced settings.

 

@darshie1976 Your color scheme on the area mask image has to be exact. How are you making your custom (far-off-trees-area) mask?

@AdamGoodrich Those map creation utilities you mentioned are helpful, because they create the reference map (a reference image of the terrain), but he will still have to export that "base map" into Photoshop and on a separate PS layer, paint out (and save again) a custom mask to use as an "area mask" in the Gaia spawner, if he wants spawning in limited or specific areas, as he mentioned.

 

Hello everyone.
Somebody know why i got this strange behaviour when i spawn grass?
Thx.

 

This is because your location increment on your spawner is incorrect. Decrease it by about a factor of 5.

I did an optimisation with the latest few releases of Gaia which works fine when Gaia sets things up for you - but it seems to have issues with some terrains that have not been set up by Gaia. This generally only happens in terrains that have been configured with sub optimal settings for their underlying control resolutions. I will be doing an update to Gaia soon and will see if I can resolve this.

My general rule of thumb is to set all terrain control resolutions at 1/2 of the terrain size.

 

Thank you for your answer but when i decrease the location increment to 0.5 i got this :
. And 0.1 this : . I have all the time this line of grass. This happen also when i paint grass from the terrain editor. Strange.

 

I think Adam's tip was good in so far that it removed that grid pattern, but if you can't paint outside that line with the unity terrain editor itself, there must be another thing wrong that has nothing to do with Gaia.
Can you try to create a fresh empty scene with a new, empty terrain with the default settings in it? Just add the grass and nothing else and try if you can paint it on that terrain properly. If that works, there must be a difference in your actual scene / terrain somewhere that creates that issue and you can compare with your working scene until you figure out what causes this.

 

ok thx. I will try it.

 

Correct. The only other time I have seen weirdness like that is with 'Detail Resolution Per Patch' in your terrain settings. Try dropping it to 8.

 

If you can answer this question (related to the subject of the topic) I will be very grateful!

https://forum.unity.com/threads/what-is-the-best-terrain-generator-for-mobile-racing-game.539749/

 

Both World Creator and Gaia will do a great job of your terrain.

In both cases you will still need to take care about performance on mobile.

Comes down to which one you feel more comfortable using.

 

I submitted this to the support website as well, but I figured I would check here just in case someone else ran into it too. I did some searching of the thread, but it doesn't appear anyone hit what I have.

I'm trying to run one of the shipped GAIA sessions (River Island), however, nothing is showing up and the terrain remains flat.

Notably, it looks like all steps are happening, except the stamping. All spawners are being spawned, the terrain is created, etc. Interestingly, when "Applying" one of the 3 stamps, the Stamper does update with the stamp, it just doesn't do it when hitting play.

No errors are displaying, and the only message I get is when the session finishes.

Did 2018.2 break something, or (more realistically) am I just missing a step?


Edit: Tried it on 2018.1.5 and having the same results.

 

Yep I have seen this - and spent a bunch of time looking into it - but at moment am unsure how to fix it.

The issue is that Unity deprecated one of the variables in their animation curves system.. and as Gaia uses curves extensively, this is breaking the loading of a session that was created across 2017.x - 2018.x boundaries.

The documentation says nothing, and I have no idea who to contact at Unity to try and get a resolution.

 

Is it possible to add tunnels through the terrain with Gaia? In other words, to cut holes in the terrain

 

You can dig depresions but not cut holes. If you add CTS you can create transparencies (i.e. holes for tunnels), but you still need to handle the terrain colliders yourself.

 

Is there some trick to get the Gaia manager to stay docked to a window? I can dock it but then the next time I use it in Advanced mode it expands and blows out of its dock location.

 

Unfortunately no - it does a check on start and if it is outside of the main window it will open itself again.

I had to make this hack unfortunately because in some cases Unity was placing the Gaia window off screen somewhere, and there was no way to get it back.

Appreciate how annoying these things can be. I will add a switch to be able to manually disable this check in the next release.

 

when I saved my island from the tutorial the terrain is gone when i try to load it later. I can see it in the hierarchy, but when I click on it the move tool moves to where Unity thinks it is but there is no terrain there. What could I be doing wrong. I doubt it is a bug and more likely that I am making a mistake. Any Ideas what I could be doing wrong to cause this?

I just noticed this error in the console

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
Gaia.TerrainHelper.GetTerrain (Vector3 locationWU) (at Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Utils/TerrainHelper.cs:251)
Gaia.TerrainHelper.GetTerrainBounds (Vector3 locationWU, UnityEngine.Bounds& bounds) (at Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Utils/TerrainHelper.cs:304)
Gaia.GaiaSessionManager.OnDrawGizmosSelected () (at Assets/Gaia/Scripts/SessionSystem/GaiaSessionManager.cs:1570)
UnityEngine.GUIUtilityrocessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)

Update I think I know what I did. I am almost certain it was because I deleted the terrain data from my assets folder leaving the scene no terrain data to load. kinda embarrassing

 

Oops

 

Hi @AdamGoodrich

Sorry for digging this sinking topic out but I am facing to a very similar error after importing Gaia 1.7 into my blank Unity 5.5.0 project: "error cs1061 type unityEngine.Texture2d does not contain a definition for EncodeToEXR. Are you missing an assembly reference?" And my Gaia manager never shows up in Window menu. I have GeNa, Pegasus and CTS imported in the same project, and all of them can't show up in the popup menu via right-mouse-button click, too...[Tears]

I tried to import Gaia in a blank Unity 2017 project and it works fine. But my project team has chosen Unity 5.5 for current project then I have to go back to this error...may I ask how to get rid of it?

Thanks in advance and sorry for this interruption.

Edit: Console snap:


And the code targeted:

 

One more beginner question. As the terrain texture order seems to matter for terrain auto-texturing, is there a way to edit texture orders without going through a delete/add process on the terrain each time? I don't see a way to do this in the Gaia resource file or on the terrain itself. To be clear, I want to re-order the terrain textures as they appear in the small boxes on the terrain tab in the Inspector, thereby changing the order in which Gaia applies them. Frankly the management process for terrain textures and trees in the Unity terrain Inspector is very primitive and almost appears to be an afterthought. Thank you!

 

Yeap I deprecated support for 5.5 as the EXR support introduced in 5.6 represents a significant improvement to Gaia's masking capability. My suggestion is to go back to an earlier release of Gaia. Please drop me a message via my support site (in my support link on my signature below), and include your invoice in the request and I can give you access to an older version of Gaia.

Setting this up takes 5 minutes, and you can then save it forever in a Gaia resources file as every new terrain you create from that resources file will then apply the textures in the way you configured them.

Gaia assumes the following order in the way its been set up: sand, grass, grassy rocky, rocky cliff

This represents your journey from low to high in your terrain and works well for a wide range of use cases, however it is arbitrary and you can set up any way you please.

Simplest way:

1. change the textures in your terrain using the terrain texture controls in the terrain settings
2. duplicate your resources file, select the new one
3. hit the update from terrain button on it - it will now contain the new textures you set in your terrain
4. use the new resources file when creating new terrains

You can configure fitness and spawning rules to your own taste.

For more information there is a whole suite of tutorials on resource management here:
http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/?section=tutorials

Some of these are a little out of date - but the basic structure and approach has not changed since Gaia was launched as it works.

 

Thanks a lot for this quick reply! I have submitted a ticket in the support site with a PDF version of my invoice already.

Thanks again.

 

Hey there,
Haven´t found a specific answer so I try it here: Can I export heightmap files (as raw16/32 or PNG) with Gaia ?

Edit:
Currently I cannot import the Gaia package. Tried on 5.6 and 2017.2 and get this error in a new and clean project:



Thanks !

 

You can export heightmap as RAW directly from Unity terrain. Gaia not required...

Unity doesn't support 16 bit PNG, however latest Gaia can export heightmap as 16 bit .EXR in terrain utilities under advanced menu in Gaia.

Not much I can do about issues with Unity itself, however I have some pointers here:
https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk....ackage-with-error-couldn-t-decompress-package

 

Thanks Adam,
Totally forgot about the native raw export.... have been working only with mapmagic for years now
For the package error: So bad luck for me then ? Strangly it´s the only package where I´ve ever encountered this problem. I´ll try to import on my laptop then and copy over the folders.

 

This is a common issue with Unity if you do a Google search, and you just happen to have lucked into it with Gaia.

I am pretty sure I have seen it across the years as well and from memory deleting from the cache, and re-downloading works.