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

Screenshot 1 is very well done, well they both are really, but the colour contrasts and assets in the first highlight and accentuate the terrain morphology.

I asked a question which seems to have gotten lost in all the other questions

With regards to detail object placement of rocks, each time I spawn them they spawn in clusters. Preferably, I'd like to spawn a generic spread. What settings could you suggest to stop the clusters?

Also with regards to your list of assets from the previous page, I have two newbie questions regarding Scion and RTP3?
Do these essentially do the same thing, and is one more user friendly for the inexperienced novice?

 

Great shots Adam! That first one looks so good and real =)

 

Great pic.

Given me further inspiration

 

Hello everybody...
Anyone tried Advanced Folliage Shader?

AFS provides:
* Procedural wind animations
* Slope aware lighting and approximated translucency
* SH ambient lighting and GI
* Lightmapping

Thanks!

 

Hi Adam,

it is in my plan than buy your asset for support you.

I have a question (apologize if question has been requested): what is the maximum square meter map have you reached before unplayable for map from topic 2452 ? (standard configuration is 3.2GHz i5 + 8Go + GTX9xx )

regards,

Teq.

 

i tested it on mobile it worked perfectly with unity 5.2.1 for grass and trees

 

Was that using gamma lighting in a forward path?.
Not having much luck with (deferred/linear) AFS + Gaia. (Gaia of course works perfectly.)
I will go and shake Lars tree at some point I guess...

Cheers, was just wondering on your Path.

 

I'm with @twobob. I'm having difficulty cracking the deferred/linear code. All of the example environments from assets that I've opened in hopes of learning their secrets all use forward/gamma.

- S.

 

just using default forward gamma with unistorm mobile

 

Set the spawn mode to 'Every Location Jittered', then set the location increment to say 20 (meters). Beware though - this will place a rock (assuming the location is fit enough) semi randomly every 20 meters. On a large terrain this can be a lot of rocks.

Nope - RTP is a terrain shader, and Scion is a camera post FX. RTP isn't particularly user friendly and you need Diffuse, Normal and Height textures to take advantage of it. Scion is like instant pretty for your scene.

 

I always use Deferred / Linear with a HDR camera. Have found that this seems to generally give prettier results.

 

I just made this 8km x 8km terrain as a sample. I would not want to go much larger than this in a single terrain tile. Beyond that I would go multiple tiles.

 

Nice shot Adam! In reality you want to keep tiles small because stretching a single terrain tile ruins the depth and ability to modify with terrain tools. The paint and terrain tools will turn to blocks with no ability to tweak things. It's best to try to keep tiles closer to the 500 by 500 up to 1k X 1k. Even 2k terrain tiles can be a stretch for using the terrain tools to polish and modify things by hand (which we'll need to be able to use to dial in settings as one begins to polish the worlds manually.

Looking forward to multi Tile support.

 

So THAT is why is get the square brush when I try to use small brush sizes?!? I will keep that in mind when I go from making prototype terrains to actual ones... Thanks for explaining that!

 

NP! Shawn! It took me forever to figure that out lol.

 

@Shawn67 - You can increase your heightmap resolution on a 2000x2000+ terrain to get the smaller brush sizes and greater control over the finer details. Maybe set it to 2048, but be warned (Back up your terrain first) before you make this change as it will flatten it (undo will work, unless you exit the editor). Only ideal if you are starting on your terrains for the first time.

 

I tend to agree, I would not go any larger than 2048 x 2048.

However that was't the question asked - the question was how big can Gaia / a Unity tile handle - and you can get a nice result in 8k x 8k as shown.

That size would also require a bunch of work to optimise. It all depends on what you are looking to achieve - for some games this might be ok.

 

Ahh gotcha! =)

 

So that's why when I create a terrain stamp from World Composer my heights look like minecraft block surface.

When I create a stamp should it be 1025 x 1025 like in Gaia 1.0, or should I go to 2049 x 2049 to get finer detail?

Adam, thanks for the explanations above, I will try rock placement by decreasing the size of the box as per the video also.

Scion....looks to be a future purchase.

 

Did you say minecraft block world ??

I would also go for higher res stamps as well. If you have the detail you can throw it away, but if you don't have it, you cant get it back.

 

Hi guys,.. So much beauty here (the pictures ofc )

Anyone could give me som advice plz??.... I need better trees. I have a few classic trees from different packages but I have to admit I am quite hooked on Speedtrees but they are quite expensive for a hobbyist as me

- should I save up to buy one, perhaps two of the packages?
- or should I maybe subscribe to the modeller and make my own?

As it is now I can get the modeller for 8,3 months for the price of the big desktop package ;-) ...but I don't know if it is easy to get good results... watched the videos ofc..

I am already saving for a good ocean solution... Still not sure if I should pick Ceto or Playway... seems like Ceto has a lot of followers but then again Playway is a lot younger... Any views on that anyone??


.... Not to mention the need to buy ToD (since my Silverlining package was deprecated ) and maybe some of Turboscalpeurs grasses...

SOOO much to spend money on..... and it's Christmas

 

@broesby - Just so you know, there's also a free HQ ocean solution that's moving along in development. This one is aimed at mobile, but of course it will work on desktop too.

The Community Ocean: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/the-community-ocean-shader-open-source-unity-5.370818/

It's like we're being inundated with ocean solutions at the moment.

 

Hi,

The Grasses are very nice an not that expensive.
The author is even adding more updates soon, even if you just get one pack, say pack one

I took the dive and bought the desktop Tree and Ground Cover pack myself to help add nice realism.
Expensive, but I think worth it in the long run.

Cheers
Cobus

 

Yeah, if you can find the Speed Tree packs on sale you can get a nice bargain (still not cheap, but worth it). I also picked up the Desktop Tree and Ground cover packs. Sometimes things are on sale on the SpeedTree site as well so you may want to double check there.

I have yet to see anyone make trees that outdo SpeedTree, at least for general purpose types.

 

Has anybody tried this when creating grass for the scenes? I tried it but I didn't get it working. But may that is because my Unity skills are limited.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/be...s-runs-as-fast-and-looks-just-as-good.339792/

 

Don't forget Suimono. It works nicely with Tenkoku. A lot of the earlier shots in the forum were done with Suimono.

 

Hello!
New User here.. so far Im quite impressed, but must say Im not getting anything NEAR the fantastic results that the shots in this thread show, I hope you guys arent cheating too much. All these extra shaders and water effects, that are all super expensive...
But anyway, I have a couple of Newbie questions.

First, I of course dived in, and am fine with starting again, I enjoying this so much Im sure Im going to make 100s of scenes. But Im wondering about performance. and a silly thing I did, maybe.
So I followed the instructions, pretty much, except instead of using STANDARD, I DID do each step seperately, Creating the Spawners as I went, I guess I just wanted to look at each step- I did make a few tweaks, changed a few textures in the Standard Terrain texture slots (thats the right place to do that right). I didnt want to use your character, Im doing 3rd person, so I clutzed a bit there... Got her in though. and discovered that my island WAS HUGE!!!
So I went to the terrain settings and resized.. and noticed that the white bounding box that encircles Gaia was still the old size... but soldiered on... added trees grass etc and it looks OK.. But it doesnt seem to good in terms of performance... pretty jerky and slow... Any clues to what I may have done wrong?

Secondly, I wanted to GO BACK and adda few features, after all trees were added and rocks etc.. I clicked Stamper, and did the usual sizing and moving of my stamp feature, but when I pressed stamp, it imprinted, kind of the negative of the stamp, IE a huge box, underneath I can see the feature reversed. I UNDOed and hit invert , so no avail...
See images.... before I hit stamp and after...


Any stamp I add now does this, what have I done?

And lastly, Im sure I ran into a forum for this asset, but have lost it!!! Is THIS teh right place for these tech questions? No links to a forum at http://www.procedural-worlds.com/

Looking forward to making cool stuff--- let me in to the inner circle of cool terrain S***!!!

regards

MArk

 

Hi Mark and welcome to the forum

I should add a short cut for that as well - the intention is really just to get people up and running - most people would use their own characters and character controller.

Yep - but you need to make sure that your resources file is in sync with your terrain and your spawner. Gaia is actually driven by the resources file and spawner more than the terrain - so if you are adding / changing stuff in your terrains resources ensure that you also 'Get From Terrain' on your resources file, then recreate your spawners.

Gaia takes its settings from defaults file rather than terrain - resizing the terrain mid generation isn't a great experience in first release - in next release its improved and picks up from the terrain.

Best thing is to choose a terrain size in your defaults file, then follow the work flow through again, and allow Gaia to recreate spawners etc.

If you start messing with things manually you really need to have a firm understanding about how Gaia works. Next release has a lot for 'automagic' code to make messing with things easier, but for now try and stick with the general process.

You resized the terrain but did not relocate it - Gaia needs the terrain centre to be at 0,0. So on 512 x 512 terrain you would need to locate the terrain at -256, -256 to have it positioned properly. Next release autofixes this. When I do multi-tile I will remove that as a requirement.

Here for now. Web site has been a lower priority for me than making sure people have a good experience, and further developing Gaia. Lots of cool plans for the web site though as well after the next release is out.

Actually a lot of the more recent results you are seeing from me are 'vanilla' Gaia, perhaps with the exception of lighting. I have added some very cool new Lighting and Camera FX to the next release so that out of the box everyone will get a good starting point.

This can then be customised to your own requirements.

 

Thanks Adam,
I immediately started a new scene, and ran without tweaks, the result WAS better. I picked up the thing about reregistering the textures in the resource file... And Get what you mean about moving the terrain, I did that you are right...
One more problem for now, I DO hope these arent all covered in the 50 odd pages of this forum, I guess I need to read thru them sometime... but for now... I wanna play with new toy

I do need a smaller island so really wanted to attempt smaller terrain (Ahh.. though of something else.. see below) This time I DID do the change before I started in a duplicated defaults file
But some of the textures did not stretch across the whole area after making the terrain smaller see image.

The red lines are showing where textures seem to stop... weirdly the grass one, that seems to cut (first red line on the left) fades in again and cuts out again (line on the right). But the grassy rock one just cuts out half way across, (second red line)

OH yes... the thing I thought of. Regarding performance---- IF I want a smaller island, would I get the same (rough) fps IF I created a small island in the middle of the standard 2014x2014 terrain. surrounding it in underwater flat, with next to no texturing or details? In other words the same island stamped into a bigger tile? Or Does the size of a terrain tile actually affect memory/calls?
(Im very sorry if this is really really beginner-ish... but IM an old guy, just turned 52 and my head hurts with all the new stuff I am learning...)

Mark

 

Here's one of my first attempts with Gaia when it was back in beta.

This was before I bought a triplanar shader from the asset store, as well as a couple of other assets which I now use, but you don't have to buy lots of expensive assets just to make good looking terrains (disclaimer - I'm biased on the last bit as the pic below is mine )

 

looking at this and how Gaia with its spawning rules produces very nice results
Gaia now has many extras, the Houses, Grasses, Rocks and more.
This is a very nice natural result I see here

 

Check max instances on your texture spawner. In first release its an int - I made this an unsigned long in next release - you may be hitting the maximum value - set it to 2147483647.

Many things influence performance. Some biggies are density of your vegetation - both trees and grass. Water influences this as well and can be a performance trap if not set up properly.

 

OH.. I was only really asking about size of terrain tile here, to re-iterate, If I was to have a small island stamped into the middle of a larger tile would the performance be roughly the same as the same island on a small tile. Only that there seems to be some issues regarding if I change the size of the tile for Gaia, Id like to use the defaults where possible to not run into too many of these till I am fully up to speed with the asset.

Im still experimenting, but the performance hit I noticed MIGHT be my player set-up. Which works flawlessly on flat ground, but I'm experiencing issues on terrain, its based on the NEW standard assets 3rd person controller prefab (ethan) but with multiplayer (photon) and weather / lighting effects (Unistorm) added. As I said, these additions are not the problem as it works fine in an empty test scene, but I may have to re-evaluate the player controller itself.

Anyone know of a good, up to date THIRD PERSON controller asset, with simple re-targeting and ability to add animations? Cheap or free?


Mark

 

Unity5 Standard 3rd person controller is pretty good. I'm always using it a the beginning of any project. 10 seconds to add. One prefab for camera, one for controller and you are good to press play
Then, when you need cool functionality then Motion Controller is my best bet. Not cheap thought.

 

Thought I'd share this to show the effect I was after some time ago with the textures painted at 'random'. Exactly the result I wanted, would have been impossible to do using the regular painting using height or slope. I just used various different noise masks and applied the textures on using them, and made sure there wasn't any blending. My only hope is that some kind of process could be built into Gaia at a future date, which also allows for giving preference to certain textures, and also changing the shape of the noise (string shaped noise, etc). Also the terrain itself isn't flat, I used another noise stamp to create many little bumps which can't really be seen, but affect the vehicle so it looks like it's driving over rough terain.

Another feature that would be good would be to lock the aspect ratio between height and width on the stamper (so you don't forget), and when stamping, allow for 'fine-tuning' when using the sliders, at the moment they can jump a little too much. I noticed this when I was using EasyRoads Pro, I wanted a new cliff in an exact position, but it was quite tricky using the sliders.

Also, don't know if it's a bug but when I stamp, and play the game to experiment with the new mountain, I can't afterwards 'undo' the stamp. Even when I exit Unity without saving, it seems to get saved automatically.

 

Hey looks pretty good @jonfinlay, That red earth looks very familiar .. where are you basing your game location?

 

Thanks! I haven't decided on an exact location, but it will be a dry savanna somewhere in central Africa, either Tsavo, Kenya or Tanzania. Similar to something like this http://il6.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/9810818/thumb/1.jpg once SpeedTree has converted it's Umbrella tree into Unity 5. Good savanna environments on the Asset Store are sorely lacking, so had to build it up from scratch. Just noticed you're from Australia, I've been to the outback once and it's very similar, just a pity the Asset Store lacks any Australian animals

 

Ah ok.. I'm doing an Australian outback location so the red earth made me think of my own project.. I also have the issue of there being little to no assets (beyond some animals) for here. I'll use your idea of different noise masks when i get really stuck into the level design stuff, Thanks for the tips!

 

I'm using two texture packs and the sticks from this developer https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=popularity/query=publisher:12326

I just tinted them in Photoshop. The sticks particularly look excellent, especially when spawned randomly along their x, y, and z axis.

You could also try this sand system https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/42777
I contacted the developer and he said you can easily tint the colour of the sand to make it appear as red dirt, although I haven't bought it yet.

 

You get the option to apply perlin, billow or ridge fractal noise to all spawners in the next release. I have been showing the noise off with the trees and grass, but it applies to all things that can be spawned, including textures. You made a comment on string like noise - if you can point me right direction I will explore that as well.

Nothing I can do about this. Switching between run and edit modes in Unity trashes the memory buffer that I created for the undo.

 

Sounds great Adam! What I meant by the string like noise was like is what I got in the following two screenshots. Basically the 'rounded' noise is fine for patches, but usually you get grass which isn't round, but following a path, similar to string. In Photoshop I did this by first using the pixelate function, then adding a black and white filter from the gallery to stretch it into little squiggles.

I also have another effect here, basically there are two grass textures, a sparse grass and a dense grass. I first spawned the sparse grass, then reduced the size of the noise in photoshop, then applied the dense grass so that is appears inside the sparse grass texture. Perhaps this could still be done in the new update, just by having an option which reduces the size of the noise, but not the position.

 

Here are the two masks I was using for the grass. The first is for the outer sparse grass, the second for the inner dense grass.

 

Is there any way to make my Gaia generated Terrain voxel? In order to make holes and caves. Thanks!

 

Not via Gaia itself. There may be other Voxel tools that allow the import of heightmaps.

 

But if in first place I make a terrain with a Gaia, and then I apply this. Will I have any problem?
Thank you for your time.

 

Terrains you make with Gaia end up being just standard Unity terrains. If TerraVol can take a standard Unity terrain and make it into a voxel terrain, then it "should" work. I don't know of anyone on the beta team or haven't seen anyone in the thread mention working with voxel. But terrains created with Gaia are generic brown bag Unity terrains. Nothing special about them other than them being super easy to make with Gaia...

 

Okk, thank you.

 

Actually, I didn't realize I owned TerraVol... lol I must have bought on sale WAAAAAYYY back before I gave up the idea of voxel terrain. I'll create a project and test it out.. May take a bit.. But like I said, as long as it supports importing standard Unity terrains it shouldn't be a problem. I'll report back with some screenies once I can get testing environment up and running.

EDIT: Actually, scratch that.. It looks like TerraVol has pretty much been abandoned. I don't really want to put the time in figuring out what I need to fix to get TerraVol to work with Unity 5. I'll go back to my original statement though, if you find a voxel solution that pulls in standard unity terrain and voxelizes them, you shouldn't have an issue with terrain originally made or updated with Gaia since Gaia outputs standard unity terrains.

 

Okk. I was thinking about buying TerraVol to use with Gaia. But thanks to you I saved a lot of money. Thanks

 

np.. I usually look at the forum threads (if there is a link or search for one if not) and see how active the developer is before purchasing. Especially for major core type assets. If the developer is active and provides good support, I'll consider. If you look at the last page of the thread for that one, there is a lot of bad mojo going on.

Would be cool to hear from anyone who is using a voxel terrain solution and if they have converted terrains they have made from Gaia. Everyone I know has pretty much scrapped the idea of voxel because of dealing with extra resource requirements/considerations.. I would love it if someday we could get some type of hybrid/mixed terrain solution going.. I really want to be able to do caves without some shader hack that always breaks... lol