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

For streaming you can use this tool.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/36486





Also posted this in the Ceto thread but will post here as may be of use to Gaia/Ceto users:

To get shoreline edge foam working:

After creating your terrain in Gaia you can export an alpha map from the utilities section in Gaia.

You need to add the shorelinemask script to any empty game object, I added it directly to the terrain initially and couldn't get it to center.

In the inspector for the script you need to add the png image that Gaia created to the Height Mask slot, also you can add the same image to the Edge Foam slot also to have waves reduced to flat at the shoreline.

Most important is to make sure the yellow box is the correct size to fit your terrain.
My island I thought was 2000x2000 but on closer inspection it was 2048x2048 and was causing me not to see the effect as they were inside the island.

Also make sure you click on the image and in its properties make sure alpha from greyscale is selected.

 

if you want to use multiple terrain tile, for now work one tile at time, disable the other tiles you are not working on, put your terrain inside of spawner bounds. move to the next tile

 

I jumped right in with a terrain utility (although i was aware that it was unity terrain being created as the result) so am not sure of what is and isn't vanilla unity terrain to be honest. Still from anything i search on streaming i get a lot of very old posts (2008 even) and a lot of well you start by writing your own manager for it...

Will you be looking to incorporate a streaming manager? (i'm assuming you're saying Unity has a terrain streamer builtin- or at least an asset streamer in general)

EDIT.. BIG Picture above of a product that does it... oops missed that.. another asset to spend money on :/

 

3RD time, does this work with Android.

 

Sorry Shawn, last night I was absolutely exhausted when I checked that site, after seeing your excellent Galapagos Island I went back to that site and released I could change to satellite view. That site is simply fantastic! All of Africa is covered. It's just made Gaia infinitely more useful as we can create our own heightmaps. The site should be recommended somewhere in the documentation if it isn't already there.

Are you using the 18km and then converting the first png into jpg to be scanned in Gaia? I did that and it worked fine, just wanted to confirm it was the best way. Cheers again for link

I think you were looking at the second photo I linked to, which I agree is definitely not flat! The picture was just to highlight the type of mountains found there. When I was talking about flat lands I was referring to the foreground in this photo http://www.maasaicamp.com/assets/tsavo.gif Although terrain.party which Shawn mentioned seems to do this perfectly, you could also try the free Terrain Toolkit and export the heightmap.

 

Ahh, right! Yeah, that is more flat. My method would work well for that.

 

Hey everyone,

After several customer requests from users that bought Gaia and does not own the Village Exteriors Kit, I have decided to place the Village Exteriors Kit on a companion promotion for the duration of the Gaia Launch Special at
a MASSIVE -50% discount. It will never be this low again, so grab it while at this low price.






Cheers
Cobus

 

WorldStreamer maybe the easiest way to get there i guess.. thanks for the reminder (i had seem it before actually but was having so much grief with my terrain app that i had nothing to stream really!)

With the Other part you mention, wouldn't it be easiest to have the Editor to create the Empty gameobject and insert the shoreline? just a thought, I'm not really in the market for water.

Also in general i would love to see some really high end screenshots of what people have done with Gaia (and quickly the sale is only for a week )

err and EDIT: again.. just as I was typing someone posts some AAA renders lol, nice to see! - oh or are they new.. as in with Gaia actually? Developer buddies?

 

@ZenMicro, look at the screenshots on this thread. Lots of them and they are very nice.

 

I can see it now "GAIA: Stamp Collection Vol. 1" - $25 Nooooo.... actually a rethink i think if there was say 100 stamps @ $10 say, that contained say 10 of things like Impact Craters, River segments, Hills, Mountains, Gorge Segments etc... it would not be too bad really.

 

Stamps are easy to make with the scanner and any height map you find or even ones you make using Unity's terrain, World Machine, or any other terrain tool. I think the goal of this tool is use your own creativity to create your terrains. By learning to make them yourself, you open the possibilities of Gaia.

 

haha, so buy it now and all existing and future BLUEPRINT stamps will be yours

 

Thanks S4G4N for your sale as well . . . anybody else want any money?



Well now I'm broke so too bad!

 

Like that post i replied to i think they were talking about a share site... sounds good a resource like that.. can't go wrong really then.

Well not if they would be add-on packs!

 

Hi,

The assets suits the scenery so well, that's why @AdamGoodrich included some single mesh examples

Lets see if one or more of the publishers might also come to the GREAT PARTY
Maybe Water, Tree and rock publishers

Cheers
Cobus

 

Another feature that would rock my socks would be a spline based (or similar) system for roads and rivers etc... Add it to the feature request.. go go

I know there are Assets for this (seen in the screenshots in this thread even).. Modular system is another option, so you can drag a path over the terrain and using a set of modular roads/river/gorge, ridge) would then terraform based on that.

 

As its just Unity terrain it should do yes, same restrictions should apply.

 

On that topic.. i recently got this free pack of rocks and mesh plants and was quite impressed.. the guy who made them worked for DICE apparently.. anyway it's free maybe worth a look, maybe it can be included in the Gaia Samples, i changed the colors for the rocks myself as they are kinda black which didn't suit my style.... maybe it was just my lighting (or lack thereof)
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/24708

 

just started fresh project with 16x terrains and it does same thing. it lets me stamp on some terrains like terrainx0_y0 and terrain1x_y0 but others give me range error.

 

First of all, add-on packs that might exist would be optional, just like the terrain packs already out there, which, btw, would make great stamps. If you want them, you buy them, if not, don't.

Second, some folks might share. But really, if you want a unique game with unique terrain, why would you not make your own? Lots can go wrong..lol...like no one contributes, or the ones there don't work, or they are not exactly what you want.

 

it works if you disable other terrains and use unity not beta version

 

[Deleted] Sorry, I should do a little more research
Looking forward to Gaia supporting multiple tiles

 

I know what you mean - custom content is well unique and your own, but often it's easier to use already tried and true stamps in this case and then you can modify them in Photoshop or whatever and no one would even know (just imaging a steep gorge stamp... might smooth the edges out a bit so it's more ramped than a wall - stuff like that) at least it is something i can relate to by being Visual unlike the sliders and layers that has set me aback in my terrain making so far with other assets... talk about a headache.

I'll be getting GAIA and i think i'll be modifying stamps if required... I do have a rather specific requirement (Australian Outback Terrain - so a lot of flats with sheer plateaus and gorges) The more content shared for it the better, kind of funny really that to my knowledge there hasn't been a Height map sharing site like there is for Textures etc.

 

Hi,

This might interest you
http://terrain.party/

Cheers
Cobus

 

Hold off on the anger a little. It's probably got lost amidst all the other posts that have appeared recently.

To answer your question - Gaia works with Unity's terrain to give you the results that you want. There's no special shaders or other code required to make the terrains work with any other system or platform. Strip away all Gaia related elements and the terrain data you're left with is pure Unity.

 

This is not aimed directly at yourself, but it may be the best course of action that until Adam officially releases fully functioning multi-tile capabilities in Gaia that everyone tries to refrain from trying to get and/or expecting this to work properly. Whilst it may work with 2 or 3 terrains in a scene, there's obviously something going awrt when there's significantly more.

Thanks.

 

As a beta tester mentioned earlier the ability to share stamps would be a nice feature down the road. Would love to see completed terrain tile data shared also but then would have to figure out how to get around paid assets being used.

 

i will try with newest unity later if it doesnt work i will wait
yea i think that workaound doesnt work right with that many terrain so i need to wait for adam to add multi tile feature
but still 5 stars for gaia really nice terrain tool

 

Just like a paid asset i have requested a refund on (actually i was offered a refund and now accepted)... this is all i get apart from the streetview...



Australia just doesn't have the data.. i guess the government does.. but it's not available or is sketchy at best in Bing (Bad) Google (Better) - but always inconsistent if you move around etc. and always dodgy at the sites you're most interested in!

I'll be going old school and using my imagination along with GAIA i think

Thanks though i had not seen that site before... but a site for Height Map textures i guess i mean... Guess someone on this forum needs to use their WebDev skills to make a site for such things.

I know they are called Stamps but i keep calling them Brushes (to myself anyway)

 

I figured it did,but wanted to be sure. Thanks.

 

You can't read my face. It was to let him or someone know that i ASKED a question. So before you assume, make sure you know for sure if someone is angry.. A little annoyed yes, there is a difference.

But thanks for answering the question..

 

Hi,
If you zoom out one or two click and fiddle with the settings bottom right to tell it what type terrain to show, then you could get some usable data

Cheers
Cobus

 

There would not be any getting around
After Gaia was used and can be removed, you would be left with a standard scene that you can export as aa .Unity package and uncheck all deficiencies to make it small

You can then share it with someone but that person would need to have those dependencies ie Grass, trees and buildings in his project space otherwise they would just be the well know PINK colour

Cheers
Cobus

 

No i had a look, yes zoom out so the feature is like the size of this O character.. when it should fill the entire map.. anyway cheers!

 

Hi just a quick question about the tree spawner. In the manual, it says the DNA width and height is automatically generated. However when I first used my own trees, some of the trees seemed to be 'squashed' or with their trunks half way into the ground. I believe this was because I just changed the default trees to my own, so I deleted the trees from the register, and set them up again. Now, the DNA width and height is set to 0, and it hasn't been automatically generated. Any ideas how it can be automatically set, or where I can get the values for it? Thanks

 

Just picked this up.

Time to make stuff

 

I'll apologise, but see the rd in caps in "3RD time, does this work with Android", I was hoping to diffuse a situation where you may be angry about not being answered as it seemed like you were shouting in frustration

 

Are these Unity trees or Speedtrees? ie. ones that would be affected by wind zones, etc. Adam would have to speak as to why the DNA values are zero as I'm not entirely sure where it's determining that data from.

As for them sinking halfway into the ground - where the pivot point on the tree? That's most likely what's causing the starting point for Unity in placing the tree on the terrain.

 

Thanks, the trees are from the Shanty Town African pack, I don't believe they are SpeedTrees. I think the problem is how I imported them, I'll have another try thanks.

As work around, I've been able to drag and drop them into the gameobject drag and drop box and copy the height and width from there.

 

One question, is the preview used to show the mesh to apply or can be used to preview the operation as well ?

Thanks

 

In the spirit of Adam's "screenies or it didn't happen" mantra, here's some images that from my latest WIP using a mixture of assets.

The terrain's been done with Gaia and I initially spawned the houses and then tweaked their positions (rotated them a little so they were facing more in the direction I wanted them, etc.). The houses were built using 3DForge's Exteriors Kit and dropped into Gaia as a gameobject item. I then built the fence (again using the 3DForge assets) but used my own tool to create this (link in signature below) to form a barrier surrounding the houses in the starting area. I did the fence at this stage as I didn't want to worry about trying to make it fit around already placed trees and rocks.

When it came to spawning in the rocks, trees, bushes and details, Gaia took note of the colliders built into the fence prefabs already in the scene which meant I wouldn't have trees suddenly 'growing' through a fence panel

 

Some more











All of this done in about 30 mins, and most of that time was dealing with the placement of the houses and modifying the terrain around where they were placed and also painting in a cobblestone path across the terrain to guide the player on where to go

 

Looks pretty darn, good.. i notice on the hill 2 identical trees next to each other without random rotation (or just bad luck).. are the trees getting random rotation by GAIA or Unity for that matter? i think i read they can't be due to billboards as a limitation of Unity's trees?

Your character there.. is that Clare (that's what i call her) from The FirstPersonLover Asset freebies?

 

I'm not quite following the final part of the question. The preview in the stamper shows you where it will be applied. It's not as high a resolution as perhaps the end result but it is there to give you a good idea as to what you should get.

Plus, if you're not entirely happy, there's always the Undo button

 

I mean if there is way to show the result (e.g. subtraction etc), than the stamp mesh itself. The undo is certainly the option if the result is not the desired

 

They're Unity trees from Forst.

Looking at the code, Adam's applying this when each tree gets added using the AddTreeInstance api call.

Code (csharp):

1. t.rotation = spawnInfo.m_spawner.GetRandomFloat(0f, Mathf.PI * 2f);

It may be that there's either a bug in Unity that's not rotating the trees, or I've been incredibly unlucky

Also, the fact that I'm only using 2 different trees at the moment makes this appear more prominent in screenshots. Once I plug in more variations of the trees that I've got, this visual effect should be minimised.

 

Nope. Gaia doesn't show the result of the stamp until you actually click on Stamp. The Undo button is your friend should you get a result that you didn't want

 

Just saw your additional bit as I was replying to your first part.

Nope. The character there is one of my own down using Mixamo Fuse.

 

I was getting the same problem with the trees. When I used the Tree Spawner, every tree was placed at exactly the same rotation. There doesn't seem a way to have them rotated. Now I'm just adding them via the GameObject Spawner

 

I wonder if there's a bug somewhere within Unity's random number generating system. I've looked at Adam's coding and nothing seems wrong.


Edit - nope. Nothing's wrong with the code anywhere. I've just experimented with having just one type of tree and then positioned myself looking at what was placed. If they were all at the same rotation I would have seen exactly the same profile on each tree but they were different.

I think it's just been a case of bad luck for other scenarios.