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

Hey Adam,

I followed this thread a while back and decided to come back to take a look. Wanted to ask a few questions from you and/or the users. I am too lazy right now to read through all the post. I will be mainly using this for demo and test scenes for my current and future 3d packs.

Can you make paths, roads with GAIA? Figure I can paint and mold it manually but wondering if there is a feature to make it easier.

I use Landscaper and love it so will probably still use it if I can but it is not made for a large or very dense forest. How would GAIA do with hundreds of thousands of trees and plants? The screenshots are beautiful but I am needing a much more dense landscape with the ground cover being placed as LOD terrain trees instead of terrain detail. How would GAIA do with that?

Thanks. Warning! If you answer these questions I will probably have more

 

You can use masks to texture and deform the landscape - but for the best result you are better off getting an asset dedicated to this.

No problemo - its dependent on how you configure it. A better question to ask is how would Unity handle that amount of density - btw - Unity 5.4 introduces GPU instancing, so we should be able to pack a bunch more in

Gaia can place trees as terrain trees or game objects. You would need to handle the LOD yourself.

Hope thats useful

 

Fern forest at night. Gaia and Tenkoku.

 

@AdamGoodrich Do you have any ETA for the asset store submit of the new version?

 

@silentneedle Was wondering the same thing. My only fear is that, for those who have not been privy to the beta test, that there will be a whole lot of complexity and features to master straight of the bat. Eventually, overtime, Gaia will perhaps go the same way as TerrainComposer.

 

Any recommendations?

 

The core part of Gaia is still the same and nothing has changed in the way that operates (other than bug and useability fixes). There's a new perlin mask option, but if you've already experimented with the masking options that Gaia v1.0 came with then you'll have no worries understanding that.

What has been added so far are things that should help with your workflow if you have the specific assets that Gaia understands how to work with and/or configure for you, as well as added systems where you could potentially share how your terrain is created (complete with texturing and object placements) if other users have the same assets as you.

 

I'm about to buy Tenkoku based on feedback on this thread and Adam obviously seems to like it and making it even easier to use with Gaia. I had been pretty set on Time of Day, but Tenkoku seems to be more under active development and having weather is pretty huge.

I'm also wanting a water system for an ocean to look good, interactive with (swim, possibly rafts) and obviously work well with Gaia. Any one have a strong recommendation for one easy to use and integrate with other assets? I've been eyeing Ceto and it's on sale, but other systems like PlayWay look really nice as well.

 

It's a relatively short and painless learning curve to use Gaia. Adam has made a lot of videos. My only stumble so far was getting my own resources to work and that was overcome very quickly by watching the 'Resources1' video. A Tenkoku/Gaia video would be helpful, although I have it working, so not a biggy.

 

Thanks for the response.

That would work fine. Can I tell the seeder not to plant trees, plants on certain textures or a mask?

I have a few scenes that I used Landscaper and it came out good. Just took a very long time to plant all the trees and plants. Would like a little more dense but Landscaper would take a very long time since it is meant for trees not plants. So hopeing GAIA will help with that. Already have the LOD trees, plants similar to SpeedTrees. So performance should be good. Yeah looking forward to 5.4.

 

I hate to say it - and as people keep asking and I keep answering the same thing - but next release of Gaia will be out - "when its done" - be assured that nobody is putting more pressure on me to get it out than me - time I should be investing into my startup is instead being put here and and it consumes on average 12+ hours a day mostly seven days a week as I am working full time on it.

One of the things I am quite proud of is that the first release launched with only a few bugs - which is pretty cool thing given the amount of work in it. I am trying to uphold the same level of quality in the next release so that everyone gets a good experience.

With respect to usability - this is right up at the top of my priorities. I really am trying not to over do the interface. I pay attention to all the feedback and many of the usability issues I have seen expressed as concerns and questions in this forum are addressed in the next release. The UX gets a new tab but I have tried to change it as little as possible, and a lot of nice to have features have been added, such as the ability to view the water level in the visualiser and spawners etc etc.

I guess the point I want to make is that I am genuinely excited by the next release. It takes the first release, beds it down, and turbo charges it by adding new spawning features, a completely new and quite awesome directed random terrain generation system - including pure fractal for those that want it, sessioning and session management, extensions (this is massive - i will share some awesome announcements when I launch), screen shotter, camera and lighting FX, awesome textures and grass, really pretty new stamps and many many usability tweaks.

For those of you who have already purchased (thank you), this is all a free update despite the fact that it is an investment of another three months of development time.

Am on the home straight now - and am pushing as hard as I can to release a robust and awesome product

 

Some of the more recent videos have me setting up lighting at the end - however after launch I will do specific tutorials.

 

Well, current version of Gaia, I'm new to Unity3d so I'm at Unity 5.3.1p4 and seeing this:

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Editor/GaiaManagerEditor.cs(69,47): warning CS0618: `UnityEditor.EditorApplication.currentScene' is obsolete: `Use EditorSceneManager to see which scenes are currently loaded'

As a software developer, when we release a new SDK, we have to support previous interfaces, and I guess that's not the case in Unity3d? I keep thinking the latest should fix things but more things are breaking?

So I asked this before, but what version are you all using? I'll uninstall I guess and install the older version?

 

@kerrmedia Unity in 5.3 has been releasing with a lot of inexplicable bugs. It's been frustrating for a lot of people. There is a new version (5.3.2) and a patch (5.3.2p1) that were released today. They've fixed most problems I had, but I can't say if they will fix this particular issue or not. For stability I've had good luck in 5.2.2.

 

Version 5.2.2f1 (no major probs, in fact none, touch wood.)

 

OK, I'll try one more time with 5.3.2p1, if that does not work, I'll go back to 5.2.2f1.
Thank you.

 

Assets/Time of Day/Examples/TOD_WeatherManager.cs(157,89): warning CS0618: `UnityEngine.ParticleSystem.emissionRate' is obsolete: `emissionRate property is deprecated. Use emission.rate instead.'

Assets/Time of Day/Examples/TOD_WeatherManager.cs(157,44): warning CS0618: `UnityEngine.ParticleSystem.emissionRate' is obsolete: `emissionRate property is deprecated. Use emission.rate instead.'

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/ResourcesSystem/ResourceVisualiser.cs(64,26): warning CS0414: The private field `Gaia.ResourceVisualiser.m_lastUpdateDate' is assigned but its value is never used

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/StampingSystem/Stamper.cs(225,21): warning CS0414: The private field `Gaia.Stamper.m_featureID' is assigned but its value is never used


Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Editor/GaiaManagerEditor.cs(69,47): warning CS0618: `UnityEditor.EditorApplication.currentScene' is obsolete: `Use EditorSceneManager to see which scenes are currently loaded'


guess I'm going to try to install 5.2.2f1

 

I use this same version for demo building

 

Just bought Ceto, and it looks pretty good from both above and below. It also works very well with Gaia's shoreline mask script to create foam around coastlines. Can't speak for Playway, which looks pretty great in the demo pics, but at the sale price (nearly half of PlayWay's), I don't think you'll go too far wrong with Ceto right now.

 

I will look into it. I have not seen this issue prior to 5.3.1p3 - which is the latest version of Unity i have tested Gaia on :/

Note - it does say warning - this is usually used as a way to signal future changes and is just that - a warning - i will check anyway.

 

For the all roads needs I would recommend EasyRoads3D, https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/469
Pretty easy to use and lots of features. And it seems it is on sale right now.

 

I think he's had it at that price ever since it came onto the store

 

If you need something to populate your beautiful terrains I just discovered that Herdsim is on 70% sale costing only 10$:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/26648

Great for roaming animals....

@FargleBargle: CETO looks great in those screenshots !! I suppose I must buy it as well... hmmmm,... so much to spend money on...

If you're like me, short on funds for assets, you should look at the open source ocean by Elias which is really developing quickly... Hopeful drew my attention to it some pages back in this forum... now I hope to return the favor for some others...

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

... and yes: EasyRoads is a great asset and the developer will send you the new version with a lot more options if you mail him. (And it is correct that the price has been like that for ages..).

 

@AdamGoodrich

What an excellent product you have here! I sent a mail to some of my colleagues in the field who will most certainly purchase it as well.

After some playing around with it, I would however suggest a couple demo scenes so simply showoff the product.

Beyond that, I would suggest proper high quality textures, but I saw that you said you will be adding those.

Can't wait for the next release!

 

Hey,

There are a lot of new things that is being added, to mention just a few.
- More FREE grasses from @turboscalpeur
- FREE textures from Gametextures
- Random Gaia scene generation
This will kind of make the included demo scenes obsolete when you see how with like a few clicks you going to have a
new scene.

Cheers
Cobus

 

GameTextures is not free, at 19/month for a NON-commercial licence its hardly worth it either
Anyway, lets not derail this topic by throwing in meaningless 3rd party links

 

Adam has been able to arrange a cross-promotional deal with GameTextures to be include some textures in with Gaia.

 

Hey,

I said " FREE textures from Gametextures " meant textures they donated to Gaia to be included and used by Gaia owners, same as other 3rd party publishers like myself have provided to give an even better out the box user experience.

The Screenshotter, the Lighting presets and other such features that is part of the next update so that you don't have to spend more $'s after getting Gaia and can produce great looking scenes.

Sorry for the confusion, did not try imply that their service is FREE

Cheers
Cobus

 

I was actually using that before I got Ceto, and with a bit of tweaking it doesn't look too bad. Now that I've switched, I've gotta say Ceto looks better though if you can afford it, and if you plan to go swimming, the underwater effects are a nice addition that the current community ocean project doesn't have. Here's one more for ya...

 

Nice! Are you using ToD or Tenkoku?

 

Nope. I'm thinking about getting Tenkoku after seeing all the great screen shots here, but currently I'm just using a HDRI Skybox, global fog, and fixed lighting.

 

Gents,

While I must admit i have not read all 70 previous pages, I have no doubt the following question has been asked before, could somebody be so kind as to link where it has been discussed?

Question : Will GAIA 1.5 support multiple terrains? As far as my last 3-4 hours of playing around has gathered, it does not currently do so. (Unless I am completely blind)

 

Not directly. There's a workaround to deal with this - disable all terrains apart from the one you want to work on, and move this to 0,0,0 before working on it and then move it back.

Multi-tile is post-1.5

 

Curious about this feature. I assume the scenes that can be randomly generated are limited to the number of stamps available and if more stamps are added they become part of the randomisation process. Also, how about textures, does Gaia randomly select textures from texture folders? Also trees. Randomisation can be a complex business, I'm interested to know how it is being done.

 

Hi,

I saw it live with a one 1-on-1 session with Adam via Skype.
It is AWESOME, easy and powerfull, but I will let @AdamGoodrich share as he wants to on this

It is going to make you smile, believe me

Cheers
Cobus

 

Actually I think Cobus probably meant to say Random Gaia terrain generation. Texture and other spawners still work the same way, pretty much. The random terrain generation works with the new session system. If you click the randomizer option, Gaia will randomly pick up to the number of stamps you specify from types you weigh based on importance and create a random terrain based on those settings. Once the terrain is stamped, you would then run your spawners like you do in Gaia 1.0.

You are also able to save entire sessions which includes everything from stamping the terrain through running all the spawners. This is where I'm focusing my testing at the moment so I really don't have a lot to say yet but it looks like this will be an awesome feature as well.

EDIT: Just wanted to add, the stamp randomizer totally rocks and you can even use it to randomize new stamps (add new features) to a non-flat terrain.

 

Alright! I suppose the ultimate would be a completely random terrain world created with the click of the mouse. Different details, lakes (no lakes), trees, ocean (no ocean), randomised heightmaps (or stamps as in Gaia), random skies, weather, objects, caves, etc. a complete random world, just waiting to be explored. (have NPCs in the mix as well?)
I think Gaia is heading in that direction to some extent. We have computers, so why not let them do the work, having a procedural world would become having a random world.. even a 2km by 2km completely random world would be..

 

If only it were that easy. Adam definitely seems to be going in that direction but as easy as it sounds, every single one of those individual pieces you mentioned comes with their own issues. Eventually I definitely think it may be possible, but it is going to take time putting together the pieces to do those steps and actually have results that look believable. I think a lot of that may play into Adam's vision when he created his Procedural Worlds project. I would guess not all of it would be part of Gaia though. Some may be better served in their own assets as Gaia's role is terrain. At any rate, don't want to speculate about things I'm not privy to. What you outlined sounds great but it is probably going to be a while before we see something completely like that come to life. Sure we have computers, but someone still needs to code it all. And that is a lot of coding and testing... heheh

 

Interesting idea, and completely doable given what's there now.

Perhaps at some point I will extend the directed creation concept as this has always been an interest

When I say directed, I mean something along the lines of "tell me what type of world you want, and then let me make it for you".

As previously commented by Shawn though, this isn't trivial to achieve as everything needs to be matched in order to get believable results.

 

Right, I remember that I posted a similar idea on another forum (the comment section of a newspaper) and was barraged by a lot of hard core coders who said I was lazy, expecting too much and taking the skill out of world making. But when you think about it, yes there is masses of skill, forethought and effort necessary in the coding but sometimes it feels like I am re-inventing the wheel every time I create a world.
I posted a character further back in the thread, 'Klinn' a Humanoid female. It would probably take a lifetime of trying for me to achieve that in a 3D modelling program, but instead I achieved in one night (animated), a unique clothed character by using a morphing package (Morph3D). So you can perhaps see my point of view.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Gaia fan and am hanging out for 1.5 like the rest of us, please feel supported but sometimes I like to regroup and get a grasp of the big picture.
I remember having a manual gearbox car for years and then trading it in for an automatic, what a difference.

 

I just bought this asset. I'm making a cheesy modern missile command style game currently, and this asset won't get used to its fullest, but it should still speed up a few things, and I'll have it for future projects as well.

And FYI, I was led here by GameTextures. They are indeed doing what they agreed to with cross-promotion. I got a newsletter in my e-mail today with Gaia being advertised, and I was needing something like this anyway, so here you go.

 

Kia ora

I just watched a lot of there series of tutorials and got to thinking Gaia has filtering by colour channels as we as other filering systems so it could be possible to creat a substance drop it into the material slot and have it applied, masked by the colour channels just like a splatmap would do

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB0wXHrWAmCwkRKPc2YQvsaeF8akDrM86

World is opening up to some create creations, some of us <points at self) just need to learn what we doing <smile> and stop doing to many things at once. BTW if for no other reason that tut series ahs some great hints for terrain and texturing in general even if your not using Substance and has ALL the assets free for download with the coruse.

Sorry don't mean to hijack the thread but I felt if could be great useful info for some Gaia users.

 

I can DEFINITELY relate.. Focus seems to be something I'm lacking these days... Too many shiny things.. heheh

 

Welcome - and thanks GameTextures.com - I hope to be driving some traffic their way as well - the latest (almost) released version has their textures - and they are so much better than the free ones in the first package

 

Kia ora

I replaced my 32bit 2048x2048 taga terrain textures with 16bit 2048x2048 png files with no alpha now I get a nasty shiney, to the point of being glossey look,. my setting are "forward / linaer" with no antialising at the moment so to use HDR at this point it's the default lighting and camera with Gaia in the scene only

 

I would use deferred linear - prefer the look - and i would also put your spec in the alpha channel - makes a world of difference to unity terrain. I have done this with PSD files, have not tried with PNG's so not sure how to do it.

 

Correct, I am waiting to see which ones are included before going over to their website to make a purchase.

Adam I couldn't find a reply to my last question, so will pose again as such if any of the beta testers know the answer feel free to save Adam's time and fingers!

Will the next version of Gaia include the flora growth scripting as discussed in December?

 

I can convert all my terrian files to PSD and put alpha channels back in them, thats why I was using taga, but 32 bit was bit over the top I thought and they where dark as in explorer (wonder if that was the alpha channel, they looked ok in Unity, it was just hard to see what I was choosing

 

Sorry - got lost in the noise - its there already and been there all along - its called Growth in scripts / valueadds. Add it to a prefab and spawn the prefab

Its quite simplistic - and not what Gaia is all about - but its still rather cool and I left it in there as I thought someone might like it.

Here's a video of it:

 

To create the textures for the new release from gametextures.com I opened their albedo image, added a new alpha channel in photoshop, and then copied their spec into it. I also made the spec quite dark - but suspect the brightness of the spec will be material dependent. Finally i just saved it all as a new PSD. The standard unity terrain shader just uses it.