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

Sneak peek of automated lighting setup in next FREE point release of Gaia!

It's in the final stages of completion now and we hope to have it out later this week. We add full 2018.3 plus LW and HD water support, and a very cool automated pipeline and lighting setup which is coming along really nicely.



We have added interest to the hills using other trees and rocks from Nature Manufacture... looking pretty nice!

 

Sorry, am under NDA

 

Pity. Companies do love their secrets. They used to have an "official" discussion thread here, but it's locked now that they're actually working on it. I know they want to avoid getting expectations up about features they might not be able to deliver, but nature hates a vacuum. In the absence of anything official, rumors spread like wildfire. I doubt anything they talk about now that doesn't pan out could be more disappointing than some of the overblown rumors turn out to be. I suppose if it was just their customers, they might be more forthcoming and transparent, but I guess they also need to worry about spilling too much to the competition.

 

Full 2018.3 support meaning that it supports multiple terrains?

 

@AdamGoodrich

 

Importing into a fresh project I get a bunch of errors (even after importing the dependencies):

I've nothing found for this. How can we solve it?


Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Editor/GaiaManagerEditor.cs(658,21): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `GaiaReflectionProbeUpdate' could not be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Editor/GaiaManagerEditor.cs(659,21): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `GaiaUnderWaterEffects' could not be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Editor/GaiaManagerEditor.cs(660,25): error CS0841: A local variable `theProbeUpdater' cannot be used before it is declared

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Editor/GaiaManagerEditor.cs(663,50): error CS0841: A local variable `effectsSettings' cannot be used before it is declared

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Editor/GaiaManagerEditor.cs(2026,22): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `GX' does not exist in the namespace `Gaia'. Are you missing an assembly reference?

 

Deleted the Gaia-folder and reimported. Now it works.

 

Hi, I'm making a big terrain with gaia and I have a problem when I spawn my trees. They are too dark at the background and the fog doesn't affect to them so it doesnt look good. Any trick, advice or solution to make them not to be so dark or at least dissapear at certain distance on the background? Thank you very much! Here is an image

 

I would guess there's an issue with the shaders you're using on your tree billboards there. Try changing the shader on your billboards and see if that fixes the problems you're seeing...

 

No, multi-terrain support is still planned for Gaia 2, not for the upcoming update.

 

Your error messages look like the "3rd Party Sampler > Ambient Skies Samples" folder was missing from the Gaia Installation, Gaia takes parts from Ambient Skies for the skybox / water / post-processing setup. So probably that was missing or there was some compilation error, glad to hear it is working for you now.

 

As StevanJay has pointed out, this could be an issue with the tree billboard shader, please see these threads that cover the same issue:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/tree-billboards-fog-and-transparency-issue.526936/
https://forum.unity.com/threads/global-fog-doesnt-affect-billboard-trees.473300/#post-3090612

 

Nvm, problem fixed.

 

Hi,

I see that there’s a lot of silence around Gaia 2. I’m one of those people that waits for it because I need multiple terrain support. Back in December there was a sale and I bought Gaia 1 mainly to support development for Gaia 2. Back then the ETA for Gaia 2 was January. Then January passed and here we are in March with no ETA on the horozon.

I do understand that Unity is overhauling terrain and you need to wait for it to settle first. Problem is that there’s nothing on the unity roadmap related to terrain. 2019.1 has no terrain updates rather than fixes.

What does this mean for Gaia 2? Unity releases once every 3-4 months. If 2019.1 releases this month without the long-awaited terrain updates then does this mean that Gaia 2 will maybe come out 4 months from now? 8 months from now?

At least give us some rough ETA so we can plan accordingly. I need multiple terrain support in order to launch my game next year. For marketing purposes I can use Gaia 1 because it alteady supports HDRP but the uncertainty of an ETA is scarry.

 

Thanks for your support.

While we feel that the massive amount of free capability and ongoing support we have consistently delivered with Gaia for since it was launched back in 2015 is way over and above what we ever committed to, "multi tile" will be a sticking point to some and Gaia 2 will be free in order to honor an old commitment.

Eta will be as soon as we can get it out. I would say in the next 2-3 months.

 

Thank you very much for the quick reply and rough ETA, I'm glad that it will come out in the near future. And I will continue to support Gaia as it's a quality product.

 

Hello Adam
My Users "Invector Third person " And "Gaia " so the question
How do I Bake Navigation With "nevmesh Unity " it?

 

Hi, Gaia creates default unity terrain, so you should be able to bake nav meshes the same way you would do with any other scene in unity, there are no special requirements for it.

 

Question I tried Nevmesh In "Gaia Terrain " but the result is ugly Especially Terrain Open Many layers ...
And Another Requested A Picture How "Nevmesh " Right On Gaia?

 

Can you please post a screenshot to show what is ugly about your navmesh? Here is a screenshot after baking navmesh on a Gaia terrain with the default settings. It has some gaps in it but these are because the terrain is to steep in these areas which should be correct:

 

Hello!

So I know Gaia doesn't support multiple terrains (yet). However I have several terrains made that are islands and in separate scenes. Is it possible for me to use something like World Streamer (or standard asset streaming) to place these terrains side by side and make one large world? Since the terrains are all using water at their border, I don't need them to connect.

I know this isn't 100% Gaia specific but the terrains will all be made in Gaia. Thank you.

 

Is the new update for Gaia ready yet?

 

While I'm here, I wanted to show 2 beautiful islands I made with Gaia! This asset is so amazing.

 

Yes, in general you can have multiple terrains in the same scene and also use Gaia on them as well, you only can't use Gaia on all of them at the same time (yet). What you can do is to deactivate all terrains first and then activate one terrain after the other and use Gaia on the single active terrain only. This allows you to use the same Gaia settings on multiple terrains.

You can then try to have them all active at the same time during runtime, however this usually takes some heavy toll on your performance when you have multiple full-sized terrains in your scene. You can use a tool like World Streamer or Sectr to load in the terrains only when the player is close, but I fear that if you want to load full-sized terrains it will not perform well and there will be a noticeable hitch in gameplay then.
You would need to split up your terrain into smaller chunks with these tools for streaming. This would allow you to have only smaller portions of the terrain loaded around the player during runtime to save performance
- BUT -
This also increase the effort in terrain creation quite a bit and your gameplay logic might need to be adapted for this as well (E.g. a NPC would need to be able to handle it if a terrain chunk suddenly disappears because the player moved away.)

When you are working with islands anyways it could be an alternative to build a separate scene for each island and then replace the other islands with cheaper mesh placeholders since you only see them from further away, and then when the player travels between islands you would have a loading screen & switch scenes. Not as elegant as open world, but takes out a lot of the complexity of terrain streaming.

 

Not yet, we are still working on it. ETA is still "in the next few days".

 

Would you be willing to permit access to beta versions as they are improved so that we can become more used to the, likely, new workflow that Gaia 2 will bring about? I'd be more than willing to pay for the license key to upgrade to Gaia 2 in order to play around, report bugs, and determine if my current workflow for my project might benefit change for the new system.

I'm sorry if this has been asked before but there are 199 pages of comments lol.

 

Thank You Sorry Slow Reply

 

Looks great! What are you using for grass?

 

I'm using Vegetation Studio pro for the grass/trees. Works perfectly with CTS 2019 (which is being used also).

 

We usually do betas for our updates and new products as well, if you are interested I would invite you then for testing when 2.0 is ready for beta testing.

 

Have you been keeping up with various terrain changes that already made it into recent Unity versions and were discussed in roadmap talks over the last year?

I havent been fully keeping up with it and obviously more stuff is planned by Unity going forwards, but I thought I would ask because your post made it sound a bit like no big terrain changes had happened yet, and this isnt really true on either the tools or runtime sides of Unity.

 

Gaia 1.9.2 is live!

Release notes for Gaia v1.9.2 March 2019

New Features:
· Added pipeline switching support in 2018.3 or higher.
· Added shader switching between High Definition, Lightweight and Built-In.
· Added Lightweight and High Definition water shaders.
· Gaia Ambient Skies Samples supports Lightweight and High Definition light configuration.
· In Unity 2018.3 or newer Gaia creates Terrain Layers for new terrain system.
· Added Occlusion Culling setup in GX Ambient Skies Samples.
· Improved 2018.3 compatibility.

Enhancements:
· Gaia GameObject spawner settings improved for better spawning chances.
· Updated Daytime Audio to be more atmospheric and have less bird sounds.
· Updated water reflection probe y size to fix reflection bug on the water surface.
· Underwater script optimized for better performance.
· Underwater effect now supported in Lightweight and High Definition pipeline.

Fixes:
· Fixed warning message from FPS Controller.
· Fixed Terrain Layer warnings in Unity 2018.3 or higher.
· Fixed Session Manager data corruption in 2018.3 or newer.
· Fixed Dependencies importing in Unity 2018.x or newer.

Scene Lighting:
· Updated Ambient Skies samples lighting setups and redone post processing profiles.

 

And Ambient Audio, and Ambient Skies are due in about a week as well!

 

Hi guys, sorry for not going through the entire thread for similar questions so I want to apologize at front if my question is already answered.

So I've used Unity's terrain editor before, and I remember that you can use something like a paint brush to "paint" the terrain's mountains and plains.

However I am having a tough time to find a similar function in GAIA.

Basically all I want to do is to flatten out a specific area that I want to put a large building on it. I don't want to change where I place the building because I like that spot with other terrain features, the only problem is that the spot is not flat enough for me to put my building on it.

So, is there a way to flatten/rise a specific part of the terrain?

Thank you very much!

 

You can still use the unity terrain tools and Gaia. In this case you want the set height tool:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/terrain-SetHeight.html

I use it when a building spawns on uneven ground to flatten the area around and under the building. With the height tool selected hold shift to sample the height you want to paint at then flatten the area you want.

 

As camta005 already pointed out you still can use the default unity terrain tools to edit the height map. Note that these tools are "hidden" under the brush icon in the newer version of (Unity 2018.3 and newer):


You can also use the "Blend Height" stamp mode of Gaia and take a flat stamp to flatten out a terrain while keeping its natural features. Here would be a good place to build something, but the terrain is a bit too rough:


We can apply a flat stamp (low height) and with "Blend Height" stamp mode & distance mask to the area to blend the height there to become flatter:


Here is the result after I hit the spawn button 5-6 times, we have a natural plateau now without destroying the surrounding terrain.

You might still need to flatten the terrain further with the Unity tool to place your buildings, but this technique can help you to create a natural looking flat starting point for building a base.

 

I would love to be invited for testing when 2.0 is ready for beta testing.

 

Hi I am using Unity 2018 version 3.8f1. Gaia I have imported version 1.9.1, but gaia unfortunately does not work. How can I solve this problem?

Untiy Console Warring !!


i attached gaiaerror.txt.

thankyou.

 

Warnings should block Gaia from working, they will always be there especially with Unity changing their API with every new version increment. In need of help? Best reach out in their web forum (proceduralworlds) or via discord. Best describe there what exactly isn't working for you.

 

The warning messages in the error log are due to certain functions in 2018.3 became obsolete, Gaia 1.9.1 should still work regardless of these warning messages. We also just released a new Gaia version 1.9.2 that will get rid off these warning messages and brings new features for Lightweight and High Definition Rendering. Can you please download and try the newest version 1.9.2 to see if you still got issues after that?

 

Hey Adam, I don't know if you've seen this or have any interest, but I thought that rain erosion would fit right in with the sort of stuff you do.

 

Yep very cool!

 

Ohhhh, I see. Didn't notice the terrain component on Gaia's terrain. My bad!

 

Hi, I got another question: how to make GAIA not turn on the fog?

 

While the game is not running, go to Window > Rendering > Lighting Settings and deactivate Fog at the bottom. Note that deactivating fog completely will also influence the underwater rendering if you are using the Gaia Water in the scene. I personally think it looks strange if the fog is turned off underwater because you can see to far.
You can create a compromise by leaving fog enabled, but tune the near and far distance in such way that it is less visible overwater, and underwater Gaia will change the fog automatically according to what is set up in the scene hierarchy under
Gaia Environment > Ambient Skies Samples > Directional Light > Gaia Under Water Effects component
In this way you can have 0 or little fog over water, while fog will still kick in when you are going under water.

 

Yea I created a script to turn of the fog every time.

 

Guys I have another question: when I look at the grass and flowers and other environment details in the editor they looks fine, however when I run it in the build, the details become many tiny pictures:

 

Ok with all the changes in Unity and Gaia what is the best method to update my existing Gaia terrain as I like the topology and don't want to design a new terrain with every update.

 

This has most likely to do with the texture import settings for the terrain detail textures. The versions in the editor are cached and will not refresh until you remove them from the terrain & add them back or until you press the "Refresh" button in the Terrain Detail settings.

Can you please check if the import settings for these grass textures are set up like this:

 

Anyone know if there is a way to have GameObjects randomly rotated when being placed? I don't mean around just the Y axis but also across the other two?