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

I am quite sure that he did the terrain with gaia and put it through PolyWorld: Woodland Low Poly Toolkit

Cheers
Cobus

 

Its not that hard really, get Gaia, get Polyworld or Mesh Materializer, go!

Edit: didnt see post above. I used mesh materializer mainly witn some use of polyworld assets here and there

 

I think there may be more stamps coming.. And maybe a method of people sharing their custom stamps.. The group was talking about stamps, recipes, and blueprints just the other day as things to do similar to what @S4G4N (3DForge) has started doing with his kits. Gaia hitting the Asset Store came quicker than any of us expected. We half expected it sitting in a queue for at least a week. I think Adam's goal was to get the website done while waiting for approval. heheh

I know earlier on there were also folders for Lakes and Waterfalls. Not sure if they are still in the install since I just loaded on top of my beta install, but I think he has plans for a lot of different stamps. Lakes may not be as much of an issue now, since we can invert mountains/mesas and use them to dig out lakes.. But I think there are a lot of other possibilities.

Also, keep in mind if you know of an area somewhere in the world that has a terrain similar to what you are looking for you can always use terrain.party to get the heightmap and convert it to a stamp using Gaia's scanner tool (hiding in the Utilities tap on Gaia Manager).

 

Love that ... its close to home for me.

So ... not sure if you've managed to use stamp size yet? Its one of the most powerful features I think. You could easily create something like that in a few stamp sessions, like :
1) Find a stamp that can be used as a base, flatten it use stamp height ... so it creates gently base terrain. Stamp it.
2) take a Hill stamp, set small size and height, rotate to suit, invert it, stamp the watering hole
3) grab some of the hills stamps, size them down and rotate to fit and start stamping the hills, and background mountains if you like
4) Then stamp some details - like huge rock outcrops etc

Somewhere along the line, you'll be putting your unique signature on it no doubt!

Gaia just inspires creativity.

Thats exactly what he used - he's in the Gaia Beta group ... I call him Mr Surreal ... he has a great eye for mixing surreal with realism.
Chats a lot too - so I'm sure you'll get a good rundown

I can't say how much effort the surreal part took (he will have too), but creating terrain with Gaia is no effort, its all fun!
EDIT: I see he replied while i was writing

 

Bought asset, spent the last 5 hours playing with it, absolutely blown away. I have not had this much fun for ages.

Well done Adam, truly a massive time saver; put it this way, my first pathetic attempt a year ago, took 4 days, in 45 minutes with gaia I'd surpassed my feeble effort and got more than a half decent terrain up and running, totally amazing.

 

Great, so we can quickly make some complete terrain, than edit and fine tune some areas manually. I just baught it as it will save me days or weeks of terrain making.

 

Thanks Shawn and mwituni. That terrain.party looks great for cities, sadly it just shows white for central Africa
I've already experimented a lot with what you said mwituni, the effects can be fantatic, but when you widen or reduce the height too much you do lose a little detail, a little flat base terrain would be handy here, very similar to the sand dunes, just without the dunes . I'll even probably have a go at making one myself over the weekend. The heightmaps are what make this asset so handy though so looking forward to place where they can be shared.

 

Spot on.

This is how terrains should work ... this should be part of Unity!

 

I don't do anything with cities.. I use the satellite version since I don't want roads and such. The problem there is not all countries allow very much detail. But the stamp I made of the western Galapagos Islands worked well for me. I had to do some touch ups but overall it stamped well with the rest of the current island environment I'm working on..

I think I posted this screenshot sometime within the past week, but now that we can talk about stamping I guess I can explain it out a little more. I took one of the island stamps out of Gaia to initially stamp and create the base. Then I blended my Galapagos stamp I created from terrain.party (the volcanos are from that stamp), and then I proceeded to blend in a large variety of mountain and mesa stamps around the island's base to give more underwater environment (90% of the sand area is actually underwater). This screenie was pre-trees, pre-rocks, and pre-grass. The only things I had spawned were textures, outposts, and houses. This was the point that I was manually adjusting all of my houses/outposts and preparing to draw my paths. So pre-path stencil as well. All in all, the process to get to this point was under an hour.



EDIT: OH.. I actually started with one of the dunes/sand plains stamps to give an ocean floor base.. Forgot about that.. Probably about 20-30 stamps of various sizes and rotations used in the complete build..

 

@AdamGoodrich

I tried using Substance Designer outputs for Gaia stampers, but the stamper input is a Texture2D while Substances are ProceduralTextures types.

If they were supported, we'd be able to utilize the Substance Engine to change the stamp dynamically in infinite ways prior to committing to the change, even moreso than the controls you already have available. Oh and, they would be seamlessly tileable which is the strength of Substances. Maybe something for a future release?

 

+1 for substance support, would make another great addition in the toolset.

 

Thanks for the reply! That sold it to me. It seems great either way, but being able to make beautiful, populated, random maps in game is a dream to me! I'll buy it now on the release sale and take your word for that the scripting API will be expanded with time.

 

Here is a link to the youtube channel - probably got lost in the noise

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLckEMv5tz0E71DDPQZTWxYVPvhqSGrAOQ

I will update this playlist as new videos come online.

 

Flat terrains can be a challenge for many reasons but not impossible. Create a regular Unity terrain, use a noise brush (the erosion brush on the asset store is amazing for this). Then use stamps to create the hills, but make sure you adjust the height and turn off the base. You can use Gaia to blend them into the flatter terrain below or you can use the terrain tools to smooth and blend.

I just looked at your picture and that is not very flat! lol You should be able do that with stamps from Gaia. If you have access to the free version of World Machine, you can make your own stamps there as well although free limits the size of the stamps. Just export the height maps and then use the scanner to create stamps from them. Works pretty good. WM gives you some erosion as well and should be nice for doing what you want in the picture.

 

These warnings have now been removed.

 

Yes - if you look at the introduction video below, while they have not really been shown off, all of the assets shown are included and free for you to use.

These include sample buildings from 3DForge Village Exteriors Kit, sample Rocks from MotuProprio Real Rocks vol 1, and also some freely available textures.

 

Yes.

I can't see why this wouldn't work... just be aware that multi terrain tiles are not currently supported. You would need to use Gaia in a way that its not currently tested for - and enable and disable tiles when you needed them. With care this should work fine.

This is possible with the stamper API - but not tested for - and not really designed for at this point - so it is prone to issues. It is on the road map however.

No. I use both Suimono and Ceto. Both are awesome assets.

Go into Gaia Manager - Select ADVANCED - Open 1.Create your Terrain foldout - Click Show Stamper. You will then need to drag a stamp onto it to see it. It should auto fit itself to the terrain.

Yep - vanilla Unity.

Yep - please see other responses for more detail.

It should - I have never tested.

Just follow the steps in the Quick Start guide - this is your demo

Umm - No - well sort of - but at your own risk. I chose to support the newer features in Unity 5.1.0 and above because according to Unity this is where the majority of users are. If you comment out the fields that have issues it should work as a lot of the code was developed in 4.6.x, but would be unsupported.

 

Sorry I do not have Unity 5.4.x.. the latest released version is 5.2.2. I did take a look at your screen shots though. Gaia can only currently support one active terrain - not sure how Sectr has done things in your scene. Please try creating a new test project and follow the steps in the Quick Start Guide. This will tell us whether its a conflict with the Unity you are using or a conflict with your scene.

 

Love your work

 

This is planned for a future release - i added all these cool masking and blend modes during the last month and rather than delaying launch even more chose to get Gaia out there. In the mean time Undo and Redo are your friend

It's been tested with windows 16 bit raw height maps up to around 4k x 4k. The limitation to going bigger than this should only be memory. Try it and let me know how you go

They are minimal at the moment as I initially focused on functionality. I have started on an API and I will expose this in a later release. It is extremely convenient to be able to hit a button and have things 'just work'. I have a bunch of ideas for enabling blue prints as well - which would allow people to share their creations and settings. Am also in discussion with some talented guys who want to extend Gaia with some pretty amazing stuff. More as that develops.

Seems like a pretty cool idea. I don't have multi tile support yet. Would love to support that.

Gaia has the ability to use Masks - I was testing this during development and it looks great. Will create a video of how to do this over the next week or so.

At moment just a single tile can be active at once. That tile is subject to standard Unity size and resource limitations.

Phew - getting there with the questions

 

Thanks and love your work - incredible outcome from just one hour with a whole new product!

 

Another month or so - quite a lot of code needs to be modified and I want to get it right before releasing it.

I think i got all the questions - feel free to ask more if I missed something.

 

This sounds really interesting - will dig more into it!

 

@kilju - I worked with Sectr earlier in beta and had no issues.. However, I started with an 4k x 4k terrain, stamped everything out and then split it up with Sectr Stream. So I didn't really stamp on terrains that were setup with Sectr yet. What I DID do successfully was run spawners within individual sectr tiles after I split it up with stream. It can get kind of tricky, but as long as you load the Sectr you are wanting to work with run spawners and then save and load the next Sectr it works fine. I only messed with the Stream part of the Sectr Complete package though. I didn't get into Sectr deep enough to figure out creating all my other sectr areas other than using stream to grid and split up my terrain. That was probably back in late July/early August though. Haven't done any testing with it in more recent Gaia beta versions or Gaia 1.0. If there is something you want me to try, let me know and I'll give it a run. I am on Unity 5.1.3 though. Refuse to be bleeding edge. I'll probably go to 5.2 soon but that is about as bleeding edge as I get.. lol

 

Works nice with Atavism ^^

 

Hi Adam, bought the package and have watched your videos series. Excellent job on the videos, looking forward to more. Will not have much time to play for the next week or two but I wanted to get your input on how you would approach the following with Gaia.

I need to maintain an exact coastline for an island. So no matter what stamps I throw at it I need the for the coast line to maintain a recognizable outline. I would like to practice this on a small scale (single tile) terrain but the final island will cover 50x50 KM when you end up having support for multiple tiled terrains.

The second part is if i do use other tools like the erosion brush am I able to save the current terrain as a new stamp?

Thanks

Glenn

 

You will need to be careful how you do this - one way that could be quite effective is to use a mask when you are stamping - this will ensure that the outline you want will be maintained.

Yes - You can turn your current terrain into a stamp with the scanner and then stamp it to your heart content

 

To add to what @AdamGoodrich just said, when I read your question I read it as you were looking to have your beach consistent on all your terrains. You can do this by using the same settings for terrain height and sea level on all the terrains. Then when you are setting up spawners, you could set them to spawn beach/coastal items between height of 0 and 5 (positive numbers meaning above your sea level). You could then use those Gaia Defaults and Gaia Resources files with each of your terrains individually. And as long as the heights and sea levels match, your coast should be consistent moving from one terrain to the next. (once multi-terrain is supported that is)

I do something similar in my testing environment where I have built several islands in different scenes. All of them have the same sea level and terrain heights (not physical terrain height but the height it terrain settings are all 1000 even though the terrain itself may only occupy 500 of the space)..

 

@Shawn67 My island although from fiction is recognizable so I was thinking Adam's tip about using my outline as a mask where none of the stamps has any effect would be good till I have all other areas set then I could invert the mask and then fine tune my shoreline

Lets pretend this is the island I wish to create - http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net...aboombu.png/revision/latest?cb=20140405164445

I would want to lock in that specific outline and then work on the interior and under sea levels.

Adam, my $25 investment in Gaia is going to cost me a lot of money in supplementary packages - you aught to get a referral fee from them - lol

 

ups mistyped i mean unity 5.2.0f3 yea i tryed to make 100tiles with terrain composer and it worked like a charm. no idea why its not working on my scene tho. maybe its time to remake my world. i have been moving my terrains to diffrent GO groups to get diffrent rtp settings for them.

 

Any other Speedtree modelers on here? I subscribed but have yet to delve into it.

 

Such a long agonizing wait and now this amazing price. Thank you!

 

Hopefully you will find it worth the wait. A lot was changed between the start of beta and now. Almost a totally different product. It was great back then but I think the changes Adam made helped make it a lot better and will be helpful moving forward for updating!

 

just purchased! Great Asset and awesome introduction price Now I need ceto

 

Hi Adam,

I'm very interested in this Terrain Editor Package, I have actually been working on a tool over the last few days to try and add value/functionality to another terrain package I was using to allow for more randomized local rotations and variation to placed objects (like a Random Ranged editing tools for already place object groups).. not sure how far you went this aspect but looks like at least rotational variation on trees?

I do have a question - will you be considering for future releases including multiple terrains but with a managed system for loading as required? I imagine this to be say a 3x3 or even 9x9 terrain tile set and outside of that or only in a chosen direction, having say a a generic/procedural terrains (or a pre made set that are generic that could be loaded randomly so in effect if you leave the map... you could keep going but you get endless terrain effect) i hope you get what i mean.

This would make for the perfect end all terrain asset for me To further help illustrate what i am on about, in one direction outside of the map it might be endless ocean (that has a terrain underneath), in another say East maybe a desert - so pretty flat and also endless, maybe with the other 2 sides with handmade mountains to stop you going in that direction.

This system could also be used for endless Runners/Driving games for example.. or even have say repeat (randomly) in a certain direction a set of roads for a set amount of time or tiles. That would make this the most powerful Terrain Asset in the Universe

EDIT: Just saw a post a few back that mentions procedural - awesome! so if that can be visualized in the editor as a terrain with perhaps a widget that shows it's procedural/infinite with an arrow or something would be very cool. NO falling of the end of the world again! - and onto the core of the game play i would go!

And to elaborate even more on the previous points, You create one terrain (currently all that is available) then you set in all neighbors (when you implement that) can be either procedural or from a set of tiles... they are set as infinite so the most basic implementation of the concept would be this;

Basically you can go in any direction endlessly, perhaps with a counter for tiles you have traversed so the game programmer can set behaviors based on this (the further you stray the further you get closer to death or kinda like battlefield if you enter any of these in the first instance you are warned to return to the main map) It's the kind of thing if implemented well would make this an all round game world solution.. as no matter what terrain asset someone uses currently (to my knowledge) it's still a finite rectangle with an "End of World" problem, You could also incorporate Wrapping like Pac-Man lol (but that's not for me)

 

oh problem might be that i didnt export my sectors before trying to mess with em just disabled them. nut no worrys i made new terrain and gaia is working great right now gotta try sectror them again and do some testing thanks bro

 

How long have we got now on the deal on Asset Store?

 

As the release date states 29/10/2015 i would suggest till 4th November - be careful of timezone stuff though i guess.

Are you counting your pennies as well?

 

Yes.. I had Horizon[ON] in my project and was going to try to use it. It works fine. My only problem was being with an island environment using Sectr Stream, I couldn't really get Horizon[ON] to work the way I wanted it to. But it did work without any issues.[/QUOTE]


Thanks..



Yet to get a reply about mobile .. or streaming.. I asked this question and got no reply. I know you got a ton of reply's to do.. so soon as you can reply about this, I will wait and buy this... My question was does this work well with mobile, and can the terrains be split so you can stream the world for large terrains. Thanks.

 

I would like to know this as well.

 

Good Question, can you import any Terrain Mesh? (With TC you would have to export as an .asset first i think as it uses Unity Terrain at it's core, so i guess it should work IF Gaia supports terrain Import)

Streaming.. that's the word i was looking for RE: endless terrain.

 

ok i tryed to make 7x7 terrains and odd thing gaia will work on some terrains and others give index out of range error. some terrains give no error but doesnt stamp. really odd i try later to downlaod newest unity version and try on fresh project. seems like it doesnt like that i have so many terrains

 

Hi there,

Just wondering how this integrates with RTP. I'm building an RTS and need to be able to use RTP with some sort of terrain generation tool.

How does one apply the RTP shader to a terrain created by GAIA?

Also, can I manually brush edit terrains after they are built in GAIA?

 

Multi-tile isn't supported yet in Gaia.

 

Gaia produces vanilla Unity terrains, so you can plug in whatever shader system (such as RTP) into the terrain data and it'll work.

Once you've got your terrain sorted, you can happily remove the Gaia components from your heirarchy (move out any terrains first ) and un-parent any spawned gameobjects from their respective spawner components, and then further modify the terrain as you need


"How does one apply the RTP shader to a terrain created by GAIA?"
The RTP docs will explain how to get the shader to work with Unity terrains.

 

So can I use the texturing spawner and then convert that texture placement to RTP shading?

 

Yes. Gaia does not do any tricks. The output from Gaia is unity terrain. The input to Rtp is unity terrain..

You will still need to then configure Rtp. As Paul commented you will need to read the Rtp docs to do that.

 

Yes. You can import a terrain or a mesh. Gaia will convert this to a stamp using the scanner and you can go from there.

Re steaming. Its just unity terrain. If the streaming tool takes unity terrain as an input then it should work.

 

As Smada said, Gaia is all about keeping standard Unity terrain, and thats one of its greatest features. Adam worked hard to keep it simple.

It has no special code or components that remain in you project once you're done, which is awesome as other tools just work as before.

So once you're happy with your terrain, just remove Gaia components from your hierarchy (and Project if you like) to reduce your build size ... I suggest a backup before (only as I only removed my terrain by mistake!), and you're away.

I use the "ats Colormap ULTRA Terrain Shader" (similar to RTP but only $10) and have been during the beta tests, and its been working great for me - even while I was busy using Gaia. But again, doesn't matter - Gaia won't affect other tools as you can simply remove it.

EDIT:Sorry - was slow in typing that ... its been answered already.

 

ye but should work when only one terrain is enabled. right?