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

A new support article is available: Migrating from a Gaia 1 terrain to Gaia 2 / Gaia Pro

 

A new support article is available: Creating a World Biome Mask for Gaia 2 / Pro

 

I do have to say that buying Gaia Pro as a new customer is very disappointing for me. I've been a supporter since pretty much the beginning and have been waiting patiently for multi-tile support all that time. Now I find I need to pay quite a bit; the Aussie dollar sucks right now and, as a hobbyist, it is a LOT of money for me. Very disappointed.

 

Gaia 2 is a FREE upgrade for Gaia 1 users.

It is a complete re-write, is GPU accelerated, has multi tile, biomes, more sample assets, and a whole lot more.

Additionally, if you have been a user since the start, which was in 2015, then you have received many major updates, plus a product that has been constantly supported over the years. The fact that this forum is now 210 pages long is a testament to this.

You don't need to buy Gaia Pro if you do not want to.

 

I am running AMD A8 with Radeon R5 Graphics APU (Laptop)
6GB RAM
500GB SSD (Samsung 860 EVO)
Before I got my SSD Unity would crash trying to even import GAIA, now im just getting extreme lag, any possible ways to make it easier to work with? or what upgrades should I be looking at?

 

Hmm, this seems to be quite a low end system. My sense is that your main issue here is that your computer's cpu and gpu is not really up to making rich terrain based worlds.

I can not advise on what the minimum spec is for Unity, but i would be making small worlds, and perhaps only use the Synty sample biomes, or making your own light weight biomes.

 

Hi, I noticed that indeed a price was displayed when looking for Gaia 2 even when you do own Gaia 1.x. However when you go into 'My assets' you should notice you can update your Gaia package towards Gaia 2 (it's just showing new update with the 2.something version). It's indeed a bit confusing as it's presented in this way by the Asset Store but that's not something publishers have any influence on.

 

I know there are a lot of people out there who love AMD gear, but I've had the best luck with Intel processors and nvidia (or offbrand nvidia) video gear. Laptops are a lot harder to pick up that will do more than what @AdamGoodrich said unless you are paying big bucks for the gaming laptops. Also, is your RAM a typo or do your really only have 6gb of ram? I'm hoping it is 16 but even at 16, I would be wanting a memory upgrade if trying to do anything more than single tile world creation. 16 for me is a bare minimum. Being a laptop, unfortunately you most likely can't upgrade your processor and video. The SSD was a great first attempt to make it work. Second thing I'd look into would be memory. Third if a more powerful intel/nvidia laptop is outside of the budget, I would be looking for an actual desktop computer to use as main development machine and switch to using laptop to prototyping with blocks/simple shapes to develop gameplay (or like Adam suggested the low poly Synty stuff might work great for this) and then if you want more realistic final assets, swap them out in the end on the more powerful desktop system after you get your gameplay ready.

 

Hello, I bought the GAIA2 plugin yesterday. I am using the latest version of unity.
I go through all the steps, I see the beautiful terrain get generated, then when I press the play button, the whole thing disappears and turns into a flat terrain object..... Any advise? Thanks.

 

Hey man, no unfortunately 6GB was not a typo, purchasing a new laptop/computer is not an option, but I have gone ahead to purchase 16gb of ram, if that does not fix my issue, ill be purchasing an AMD a12 CPU'd motherboard with Radeon R7 Graphics onboard. to see if that fixes it.

 

Nevermind, I guess I am a little slow. The stamp isn't automatically applied, working good now.

 

I have tried Gaia 2. So satisfying!!!
Congratulations and thanks a lot!

 

What is the difference between Gaia and Gaia pro?

 

Pretty sure they put the differences in the asset store description for Gaia Pro. It may be on the Gaia description too.

 

Hey there - here are the differences!


And some sample images made with the assets included with Gaia Pro:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/gai...d-scene-creation.327342/page-209#post-5718424

 

My impression is Pro is basically Gaia + lite version features from other PW assets?
If I already own all of your assets and other standards like Enviro, and don't need the flora, what (if anything) would I be missing by not paying again for Pro?
For example is this massive world streaming any different/better vs SECTR?

 

I'm very happy to see that there is finally the Gaia 2.
So I have a question, are there or will there be new tutorials available for Gaia 2? Or will they be shared with Gaia Pro?

 

You could certainly replace some of the Gaia Pro feature with separate assets. If you are not interested in the biome assets you would not miss out much.

The world streaming works very similar like the world streaming with a region loader with SECTR.

 

The tutorials will be shared with Gaia Pro since the UI is pretty much the same (minus the features only available in Pro of course). These are the first tutorial videos we released and these can be applied to Gaia 2 as well:

 

A new hotfix is available for Gaia 2 / Gaia Pro that fixes two issues with collision masks: https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk....rticles/33000252279-gaia-pro-2-hotfix-2-1-3-1

 

Hi when i am importing Gaia i am getting this error.
error CS0101: The namespace 'Gaia' already contains a definition for 'SeasonMode'
and the second error is
The type or namespace name 'CollisionMaskType' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

 

It is good news that there are shared tutorials for both Gaia 2 and Gaia Pro.

I would be interested in Gaia Pro, but I also have other assets that do the same as Gaia Pro, I think. Unless I'm wrong.

I have over 200 top-rated assets, including:

SECTR COMPLETE 2019
Enviro - Sky and Weather
Weather Maker - Unity Weather System, Sky, Water, Volumetric Clouds and Light
Vegetation Studio Pro
CTS 2019
GeNa 2
R.A.M.2019
Path Painter
Digger - Terrain Caves
Nature Manufacture almost all

Does Gaia Pro have anything more than the above assets?

 

Hi,

Is it possible to make waterfalls and caves using Gaia?

 

Just upgraded to 2.1.3, empty scene, Unity 2020.3.11f1

Just creating an initial terrain, I get an empty desert-like surface no matter what terrain type I'm using. Render = built-in.

[Imgur](https://imgur.com/Vfd57Jl)

Any ideas?

 

Answered on discord, the reason was there was an older version of Gaia installed prior.

 

No, I think with the assets you have you should be able to replace the additional Pro functionalities.

 

Not fully - you could carve your terrain to run a river through it, but for waterfalls you usually would need additional techniques and a dedicated water shader for rivers / waterfalls that can simulate water flow. I would recommend taking a look at R.A.M. from Nature Manufacture for this.

Caves are a special topic on their own: Unity terrain is heightmap based where every X-Z coordinate on the terrain has one Y height value. This does not support caves and overhangs directly, but with 2019.3 unity added a hole feature for the terrain shader that allows you to make a hole in the terrain, you can then use a cave mesh underneath it made with Pro builder or other modelling tools.

 

Please check the "Gizmos" button on top of the screen view, it needs to be enabled for the stamper visualization to appear in the scene.

 

OMG! So many hours and that's all it was?? Thank you!!

 

None of the tools listed actually make terrains. (Height maps) Also, with Pro has extra features if you look at the comparsion list and features of GAIA pro, it has some tools like above, like biomes and others, but its done differently...Also pro included a ton of scans, that type of stuff cost a lot more typically than, what they are charging for the entire package. So, even if you own other scans. Having more is a good thing and it may include stuff that will be needed for a different biome.

 

I just saw that Gaia 2 DOES have multi-tile support. I'm a happy little vegemite now. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

 

hello

is this asset support to making terrain run time edit in unity?

 

Some question about the speed of GAIA Pro inside of Unity.

I created a new project, add URP, GAIA Pro and Invector Third Person Controller Light. Used GAIA Manager to create a test world with build in assets.

I also set the Editor to "Entering Play Mode" without Domain/Scene reload to speed up entering play mode.

I am on an iMac Pro 8-Core Intel Xeon W 3,2GHz with 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 RAM and a Radeon Pro Vega 64 with 16GB on the latest macOS and Unity 2019.3.11f1 using Metal.

If I press Play it takes up to 10 seconds to enter play mode(!) and it takes up to 12 seconds to exit play mode.

I never saw an iteration like this after Unity introduced entering play mode without Domain/Scene-Reload.

I could understand that it takes a few more seconds to load all the stuff to enter play mode, but why it takes so long to exit play mode?

Is there anything I can do to speed up this process?

Here are some screenshots of the project, maybe some of them can help to figure out what happened.

Thank you!

BTW: Nothing was changed in play mode. Just hit play and exit after a few seconds.

 

I just downloaded some new GIS data, and thought I'd make a stamp in Gaia 2... but there's no scanner. It says the feature is "coming soon". So how soon? Any other way to bring in outside terrain data in the mean time?

 

Unfortunately not at the moment - Gaia makes use of functionality of Editor features which are not available in a standalone build.

 

I'd like to use Gaia in a project on 2019.1 that I can't upgrade to 2019.3 for a while for stability reasons. Is there any way to download Gaia 1? I don't seem to have it on my system anymore...

I know I can create terrains in a separate project and export them, but that's a fair amount of extra hassle and hard drive space.

Thanks!

 

The scanner will be included in the next update which I would expect to come out next week. Note that the image masks in the stamper in Gaia 2 now directly work with any texture - as long as you can convert your GIS data in an image format that unity recognizes for textures (& ideally the color depth is 16 bit or higher for quality) you should be able to use it in the stamper. This guide has instructions how to use heightmap images from terrain.party in the stamper, you should be able to apply the same workflow with your GIS data as well.
https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk....173-import-real-world-terrain-into-gaia-2-pro

 

No feedback from PW?

 

Gaia 2 is available in 2019.3 and upwards, earlier Unity versions should still receive the Gaia 1 package when downloading.

You can check if there is still the older Gaia 1 installation package in the package cache of the asset store on your computer, or if not, you can force the download of Gaia 1 by removing all stored Gaia packages and starting the download from within 2019.1.

Check the asset store cache for Gaia under
%appdata%\Unity\Asset Store-5.x\Procedural Worlds\Editor ExtensionsTerrain
(assuming you are running windows)

In there you should see multiple packages, if the original Gaia 1 package is still there, you could use that directly for installation by double clicking on it. (The original Gaia 1 package would just be named "Gaia" without the "2". ). If you can only see the Gaia 2 package, delete that one and open the asset store in your 2019.1 project to download Gaia 2. Since you are downloading from 2019.1, it should pull the package for Gaia 1 for installation then instead of downloading Gaia 2.

 

What about my question?

 

Sorry, we are currently still swamped with questions and requests from the Unity sale and the Gaia 2 launch. For your question I had to review 1-2 things to make sure I don't tell you nonsense:

When 2019.3 came into release candidate stage, we noticed that entering and exiting playmode had increased significantly in a Gaia scene - up to a point where it was unusable (>1 Minute when exiting playmode). We found that there were two factors in this:

- Activating the experimental Playmode settings reduced that amount a bit
- There was an issue with mesh colliders being migrated from earlier versions of unity that would cause a re-calculation of every mesh collider in the scene, since our art assets were created in an earlier version of unity, this was the core reason for the delays. We then had to invent a workaround to fix mesh colliders when Gaia is installed in a higher unity version, you can see this happening in the maintenance task upon first opening the Gaia Manager.

When I currently test entering / exiting play mode, it takes about 2-3 seconds for me in a Gaia Standard scene (all default settings) which is not great, but not terrible either. When profiling the editor while doing this, I found that the VFX manager of Gaia contributes a bit to this with half a second, we need to review this as this can most likely be made more efficient in one way or another. But the rest seems to be internal startup processes of unity itself.



When stopping playmode it seems that the largest chunk is taken by loading back the scene again in its original state in the editor, I did not see anything Gaia specific there creating a holdup.



So I'm afraid most of these delays are outside of our control and simply come to happen through the additional content on the terrains being present in the scene. I can't rule out however that there is an additional issue that creates the longer startup times for you, could you please try to profile the Editor for starting / stopping the scene as well to see if you can find anything out of the ordinary in the profiler hierarchy?

 

Thank you for the hint with the Profiler!

It seems that the Editor itself needs a looooot of time to get stuff done. I never thought that Unity could get so fast this slow. Unbelievable!

PW seems to be one of the good Asset developers out there. So maybe you've a hint how situations like these could speed up?

Have a look at my Profiler results:



I create a new project, imported UWP and GAIA Pro, created a large world for Desktop Powerful with Alpine Meadow.

 

And here the Enter PlayMode data:



As you can see PW_VFX_Manager takes nearly 4 seconds, which is to much in my opinion. Is there a technical reason, why it needs so much time to enter Playmode on a machine like this?

 

As mentioned in my post this is something we need to investigate, at first sight it looks like the VFX effects for birds etc. are all looking for the camera at scene start which is inefficient, we should be able to handle this differently.
About the rest I can't say that much, unless there is something in there like the VFX_Manager that points to the Gaia assets / scripts there is not much we can do to reduce startup / stop times as this is beyond our control then.

 

A new update v2.1.4 for Gaia 2 and Gaia Pro was released on the PW Store and the Unity Asset Store. (Click the product names for the release notes for each version!)

 

Why has GAIA 2 so much grass within the fence, or it is the ground texture that it is something wrong with ? Installed 2018.4 so I got GAIA 1, and it looks much better on the texturing on the ground in villages .

 

I am trying to use Gaia Pro.
I am getting the shaders error.
Exceeded keywords limit 256.
I found that the shaders that Gaia uses include a lot of keywords uses I scene.
Please help

 

great to see gaia2 finally out!
But why restrict it to Unity 2019!! What about U2018??!!! What's in 2019 that 2018 doesn't have to make it work??
so sad....

 

This is due to Unity Limitations, we needed to upgrade to make the latest changes! You can, however, upgrade an existing project to the latest version of Unity, and we have made a tutorial if you are interested! Please see this link: