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

I'm not 100% certain in how Gaia handles the spawning of objects added to the terrain data as Detail Meshes (as opposed to the textures for regular grasses, flowers, etc.)

I, personally, now have all trees, bushes, etc. spawning as game objects rather than terrain objects - it's easier to move a game object tree if it comes in at just the wrong place than it is to faff around and delete a tree from the terrain data and replace it manually.

 

Yeah that's a very valid point you make about moving the game objects once they're placed, hadn't thought of that. Thanks

 

I've had this issue before and slightly increasing the near clipping value has remedied it.

 

Agreed

 

I'm sure this has been asked before, but reading 52 pages isn't gonna happen. Will this work on mobile? I'm assuming yes since its basic Unity terrain but just want to make sure

 

It will, as it just works with the unity terrain system. How complex it becomes is down to you

 

Hello,

i see a few beautiful screenshots !!

Adam, is it possible to add Stats screen on some ?

Regards,

TD

 

Hi Adam, great tool and a huge forum to sift through so I'll just ask.. Are you planning to add an option to hook up a pre-existing terrain to the Gaia Manager to be worked on and altered through Gaia?

 

Hi. OOTB I would suggest - using Speedtrees - most of these things run in the 2000-3000 draw calls counts with circa 60FPS on high end machines.

With the optimisations we have pushed over it will certainly be possible to reduce that at the inception stage to something like half that. In testing we managed to furnish a 2km² Terrain very sumptuously for a decent result on mid-range hardware.

I think this pretty sparse one here was sub 900 with all kinds of widgets hanging around
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ga...nd-scene-creation.327342/page-47#post-2398505

 

That's what I figured. Just have to watch my textures and tris I guess

 

Forgive me if this has been asked prior, I've not searched through all of the forum pages... Do you have any destructible environment properties built in?

Thanks

 

no. It uses the Unity Terrain system.

 

You would probably be better switching out to a well-deconstructed mesh, although we did push a few, sparsely decorated mobile-happy looking numbers at certain points with the default terrain, so it is do-able. Your tree, and detail, decisions will be critical. Not sure the default 2048 size is well suited either, might have to look at paring that down somehow.

 

I have a pretty detailed terrain running on mobile now. Its 2km by 2km. Running 75-85fps. But I'm looking for a way out of decorating whole terrain by hand. Its taken me a while as is and only have about 1/3 done

 

And now I have run into the problem that Unity 5.3 has broken my lighting. So I switched back to 5.2.3 and its still messed up so trying to figure out root of that or just start over

 

You can do this now. New release due next week makes it a little easier.

Yeah I will include some stats - but have to say - they really don't mean anything - how heavy or light a scene is based entirely on how much you throw into it - and then on how you optimise it.

I have been considering setting up some 'light' vs 'heavy' configurations. But as Gaia is not an art asset - and its the grass, trees, and other assets you put in that drive this, even that is difficult to do.

This is an interesting question. It would be awesome if unity published how the terrain system actually works so that we could get some insights here. I guess the best thing is to just try it and look at the performance stats.

You can do this - but unless lodded properly you may run into some performance issues. One of the benefits of this approach is that you can get the object to conform to the slope it is placed on - and this can add some nice variation to a scene with its trees. So by default, when unity places a tree via its terrain system, it grows 'up'. To add variation I also sometimes place some trees as a game object, and limit its slope to say 10 degrees, and conform it to the slope - this shouldn't hit performance too much - and visually can look pretty awesome.

 

Ouch. I have heard a lot of people saying that Unity 5.3 is very buggy. For the others here it sounds like a good idea to stay away from it for the moment.

 

You need Gaia - it will take a lot of the sting out of decorating it - once you get used to it you will never want to go back

 

I think I'm right in saying this is the first Gaia/Ceto driven multiplayer example.
All delivered via asset bundels. 4.5Mb base build, rest streamed.

(Should you actually want to test it, just press ENTER 5 TIMES when it loads, I rigged the buttons )
http://kaycare.co.uk/games/koast/


I shared the nuts and bolts of how this was done
HERE (The AssetBundle Manager Tutorial Q&A)
Minimal effort was actually put into "making it pretty" but this forms the basis for all multi-player worlds - and indeed - if we expand our minds a little, a way to circumnavigate our users having to download a different EXE for every game.

We simply create a "Portal", and then stream in the chosen world/game. This would be a nice touch to have for the procedural world creation options in Gaia... Simply pick a seed and off you go.

fun.

 

I think have procedural details etc would help me a ton. I'm a one man newbie just doing this for fun. Once I get some money after holidays I will most likely purchase

 

That's awesome. I can't believe how fast it generates and how everything looks proper (tree roots, house bases, etc) I'm going to have to purchase this one Side note, you might want to add script making it so that you cannot spawn over water. Happened the first time around

So you can easily choose what objects (infinite?) you want procedurally placed throughout the terrain? Does it work with prefabs that contain code? Thanks.

 

Yep

 

Nice, is everything mesh combined then?

 

No - Gaia isn't a mesh combiner - its a procedural scene generation tool. You could run other mesh combiners on what Gaia does for you after they have been placed in the scene.

 

hello,

MeshBaker is a must have. Is possible to try with it, Adam (or other if you want).

Beyond the render with Giai, the performance will be the difference with others tools.


++

 

Yep - You should be able to combine meshes. The GameObject spawner makes itself the parent of all the prefabs that it spawns... so it should be easy to use tools like Mesh Baker to combine them.

Here is a screen shot showing you the output of a GameObject spawn. There is a small cluster of spawned rocks in the foreground, and you can see the spawned objects underneath the spawner to the left.

 

A bit of excitement - I just got the first part of a very cool new feature working for Gaia - the ability to export Gaia configurations. Tomorrow I will get the import and generate feature running.

This means that you can backup your progress - and share it with anyone else just by exchanging as small binary file... so for example in this forum I could share not only screen shots, but also the entire configuration I used to generate them so that you could generate them as well, and vice versa !!

For those of you doing runtime generation / networked games - you will be able to send entire worlds across the wire in 25k or so... as compared to 20mb + or so...

This is very powerful !!! Next release of Gaia is going to be very cool

 

That my friend is an awesome christmas present

 

+1

with this, i'll buy.

 

Until the format is absolutely set in stone: Might I ask for a text manifest as well.
The extra 1-2kb of "version", "assets/Id's", and any other helpful debug information that might be required to fix-up rogue scenarios. just a thought

 

OMG that is amazing!!!
GAIA was a no brainier when I first purchased it but man now it's just becoming the best thing in my past 10 years of game design!!!

 

Just wanted to say that Gaia is fantastic .. so fast and fun to use !
It took me 10mns on my first run to create this world ( 2mns for the terrain creation, 8mns to figure out how to place details where i wanted them)
I am really impressed and very happy with my purchase

 

add example scenes to package pls

 

Have to ask this, but why? Gaia's a terrain creation tool and if you follow the example in the docs then you'll have a terrain to further experiment with rather quickly. Everyone will get something completely different out of this.

 

Not to mention there are videos to help you get started. Example scenes aren't going to help you learn anything with Gaia. It is all so simple if you take the time to follow the videos and read the docs. Personally, I really can't see the point in having example scenes included in the package. Gaia isn't advertised as a terrain package where you have ready to use terrains out of the box. It is a tool to help build terrains easier. And with the included stamps and how easy it is to import new stamps, you have ready made resources included to start building with!

 

I agree with the above that you should follow the videos etc to learn because once you have a grasp of the spawners etc you can make awesome scenes.

Actually once Adam get's the new import / export feature working you could just import an example scene hopefully from a community supported repository

If we need hosting for such etc I would provide that for free to the community

 

Nice idea. Will add in some descriptive text as well.

The whole idea of Gaia is that you don't need example scenes - if you follow the quickstart guide you will generate your own.

That said with the new configuration code I am working on however I will include a bunch of them in configuration form. As I develop the project I create some amazing worlds - and then just delete them at the end of the session - and it sort of feels like a little death. With this new feature I will save the configuration so other people can use them too

Thank you My plan is to build an extension that allows you to upload your configuration plus a screen shot to the procedural worlds web site, and then people can browse and select any world they want.

When I get that working I am also going to run a competition

 

Wow - really beautiful!! What lighting are you using ?

 

It is just a simple lightning with a modified version of the Global Fog i have found on the forum .. you can check the thread here : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/extended-global-fog-unity5.313358/
A bit of bloom, color correction .. and voila

 

Had to get this, the results look terrific. Can't wait for the update. Do we get the update if we just purchased?

 

Yep - everyone gets it - really excited by the new updates. Will do a bunch more videos after it has been submitted.

 

Thanks - really nice

 

Hello Adam,

What I am looking for is the ability to generate a full island in the ocean at runtime (basically as you are at a certain distance from the island it will start getting generated) while getting a proper look (island beach, proper scattering of objects and meshes, etc...) and have all that based on a seed so that if you return to the same location on the map the island will get generated again and look the same as you first saw it.

Would GAIA be useful in this scenario?

 

With the upcoming release yes, however you are going to have to write code as well. Runtime generation expects that you will be calling API's and giving them meaningful instructions.

 

Does 1.1 include the runtime procedural generation you mentioned in email?

EDIT: Ack I should have refreshed the page before asking, as it appears your post above confirms it is?

 

Yep.

 

Not finding a direct link to my search query so putting here.
If I add RTP to my terrain and run the compiler my terrain turns transparent.
Any ideas?

 

I'm using RTP without any particular issue. Running Deffered Linear.

GAIAA spits out standard Unity landscapes so should not be a problem in itself. I would suggest playing around a bit with RTP itself. Perhaps try different target platforms in the _RTP_LODmanager. Also maybe check the target platform selected in Unity build settings

 

My bad wrong forum, should be in the RTP forum, sorry.
I'm using deferred linear as well, but still the terrain turns transparent.
Settings all look right, but will check again.
Can't run Gaia until some errors are fixed.
Adam said they would be fixed in next update.
Think the "stuck on web player" issue I have here may be playing a part, dunno.
5.3.0f4

 

I have never had any issues with it. Have also heard a number of people say that unity 5.3 is giving them major issues.

The inability to change the project away from web player is an annoying issue. That is most likely also causing RTP to bomb out - which would explain the transparent terrain.

I can give you an interim copy of Gaia that will solve the compilation issue.