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

You know i thought about that as a possibility and discarded it as being too obvious

Glad your up and running now.

 

Create a new spawner, add a texture rule to it, and on that texture rule use the flow map as a grey scale image mask. I will be doing video tutorials over the next few days and will do one on that. If you don't see it then remind me - its been a little busy

 

That's because you'll have got distracted creating and exploring your own terrains, or some other shiny thing

 

heheh... I have no idea why I didn't think of that.. I was working with someone testing something else about a year ago and they had similar problems for the same reason.. Glad you figured it out! I was scratching my head trying to figure out what was going on!

 

Looking forward to that myself. I know I bugged you for that during beta and then never got a chance to work with it once you did it. I'll play around with it and adding it to my little project I've been working on...

 

What's up with the Bounds_ColliderCache?

If I was to guess it looks like Gaia generates a capsule collider for each tree to detect collisions while placing them. And that they all should be deleted again after spawning. Because the trees have their own colliders, and seeing hundreds of these capsule colliders slows things down a lot.

Is this working correctly, having them hang around?

 

They are disabled at runtime if they are detected. After spawning, I usually just disable the entire group under each spawner by unchecking it. If you know you are done spawning, you can actually delete the Bounds_ColliderCache groups. They are only needed/used during spawner execution.

 

It's just that, because they appear under the Tree Spawner I have selected to spawn them, they're always visible while spawning. And they seem to slow down the spawning process exponentially as more get created. Grinding things almost to halt.

As soon as I deselect the spawner the rest of the trees spawn in a few seconds. So I can't watch the progress bar because that's inside the spawner, which I'm supposed to deselect in order to spawn trees in a reasonable time. Is this right?

Can the colliders be hidden at all times? Have Gaia make the Bounds_ColliderCache somewhere other than as a child of the spawner.

 

Yep they are there to stop things spawning on top of things, and yes they are disabled at runtime.

It's an interesting point. When you spawn trees via session manager it rips. I will look into this. Simple thing to change.

 

With World Streamer on Sale i'm close to snapping it up... I also already have TerrainComposer which apparently has some kind of streaming in there as well (haven't had a look)... you mention Sectr... is this the best in your opinion and if so I might skip World Streamer... Anyone who has tried either would appreciate your feedback.

@AdamGoodrich Just would like to know if GAIA multi-terrain support will go beyond creation of the tiles and handle streaming as well? (in which case i could hold off until the time comes) - Oh and congrats on dropping v1.5 on the community, I've yet to upgrade and use it yet but am looking forward to using it to get nice details like @jonfinlay is doing as we are working on a similar style of landscapes.

@magique I'm also keen to know more from your experience with World Streamer as well as Real Imposters as I also need this! Does it create a new imposter every time you go out of range? i imagine it must otherwise it would not have the correct aspect, actually it must update as you move around really, right?... , so wonder if there is any option for forcing an update of an Imposter for animation purposes? (like a windmill or in the case of my object-trees - wind animation. My trees are like 187,000 tris with no LOD.. so imposters might just sort me out. I was considering AFS as it too has imposters... have you tried this one? Also the Real Imposters asset has no forum or website if i'm not mistaken which is a little concerning (hard to find any real information on it)

I know this is not all strictly GAIA related.. please forgive. Can PM me if that is more appropriate, Cheers!

 

When there's assets out there that are specifically designed to do this task for you, I fail to see why Adam should go to the trouble of implementing this, especially as Gaia's focus is purely on the creation of terrains and populating them with grasses, trees, etc. Streaming is well outside the scope for what Gaia is there for.

Allowing you to create terrains across multiple terrain tiles? Yes.

 

I would have to agree. @ZenMicro - Streaming solutions are already out there in which that is one of their main focuses. If Adam were to do some type of streaming asset, at the price of Gaia I really doubt it would be in an update. If anything it would be another asset. With that said, I've already put Adam and Nathan (Sectr) in contact with each other. Hopefully Nathan will come up with a Gaia extension for Sectr.

As for the statement of me thinking Sectr is better, I wouldn't know. Sectr is the only streaming solution I own. Tony Li has a free one, but I haven't looked at it. (Tony is author of Love/Hate, Dialogue System, and something else I think). For me, Sectr is best and what I'm doing tutoriial on because that is the only one I own. heheh Others may be just as good. Would be great if they made Gaia extensions for theirs too. The one thing I do love about Sectr that I don't know if the others have is the terrain slicing and automatic creation and linking of the sliced terrains into scenes. That is pretty nifty.

I think a lot of us would be interested in experiences with World Streamer, Tony's streaming system, and Sectr as it pertains to dealing with multiple Gaia terrains. I don't think Adam would mind a post here or there, especially if it showcases how you are using it with Gaia. It is helpful to Gaia users as a whole.

 

That rigged noise is excellent, could easily make WWI trenches using that, or even a river or bush network.

 

#madewithgaia

 

#madewithgaia

 

Hello Adam, I wondered why this error.

 

There's something comforting about an older version windows/unity, you know, with the major bugs known or removed.

My operating system is Windows7 64 SP1, and NOT authenticated. That's right, no patches except the service pack on the install disk. Has it given me any problems? Not one. Am I crazy? Well, that goes beyond the scope of this forum. I do protect my computer with Malware Bytes (paid license with real time checking). Love it!

I won't touch a Unity upgrade until there are no more complaints on the forums. That's an easy one.
I'm going to use whatever @Shawn67 is using,(Unity 5.3.1f1). That way I will hear about GAIA compatibility issues long before I run into them on my own.

 

Adam is most likely sleeping right now as he is in Australia. I am not sure on that error, but one thing that would probably help him when he logs in is to have information on your setup. Version of Unity you are running, what operating system you are running Unity on, and what build target your project is set for.

 

Don't use Web build. Switch to standalone. Maybe Adam should put that part into Editor folder in future? Or is that script running in Runtime?

 

People have had issues with 5.3 in general. I was forced to upgrade since I use ORK. A lot of others on the beta team are still using different versions of 5.2. Before I was forced to upgrade, I was still running 5.1.3. I kind of skipped 5.2 all together.

I think I may just be lucky with 5.3.1. Most of what I'm doing lately is with Gaia. My game project is kind of stalled atm, so I'm not doing any heavy development/asset usage like someone who is actively developing their game. So some version of 5.2 might be a better bet.

 

I'm guessing you're in Unity 5.3

Switch the development platform to Standalone and not Web - the latter doesn't support those functions, hence the error.

 

That was my thought too but not sure. That was why I basically asked for more info so Adam could address it directly. Unfortunately just a screenshot of an error leaves a LOT of room for speculation. Hopefully when he is able to address it, all of the info he needs will be there..

 

I was just wondering is all as best ask and get a straight answer than find i wasted $20 on an asset that was planned all along to be added to the next GAIA update... That said I guess Tile Streaming is a pretty big task and as you say out of scope for GAIA, but with all the amazing features and additions Adam has been including in GAIA you never know!

I think I asked and did not make a statement that you thought Sectr was better, Having had a bit of look at it, it appears to focus more on interiors.. but that may just be it's main focus or origins, I do see it says outdoors as well.

WorldStreamer mentions in the text it supports GAIA (and all the others).. but that no doubt is because it is all based on Unity terrain at the core of it. It mentions it is compatible with Terrain Stitcher, so i'll warrant a guess it does not handle this itself.

As an additional thought about multi-tile terrain and stitching and streaming, I also have Easyroads3D Pro... Wondering how that will go with lining up a highway so it matches perfectly etc.. perhaps a Q for Raoul... again any experience anyone has had with this I'd love to hear it!

EDIT: Come to think of it, that is likely just a design time thing when we can work on adjacent tiles at the same time you'd just join them.. again more EasyRoads research for me as i've really only done a basic road so far.

 

With Gaia's new extension system, assets such as EasyRoads and WorldStreamer would be perfect candidates for that. As far as being compatible with Gaia, almost everything should be. I think Adam mentioned earlier that he was looking at cracking down on people using the Gaia Ready logo without having proper extensions built. Stuff that is Gaia Ready should have a Gaia extension that shows up when you press the GX button. Right now there is just a small handful that are actually Gaia Ready. And while we are talking about development cycles, is Raoul ever going to release 3.0? heheh I have that in my toolbox as well but haven't really dug into it yet.

 

I was considering WorldStreamer, but there seems to be conflicts with Horizon[ON], which is my preferred asset because it works so well savannas. I think it really depends on the type of game you want to make. I bought EasyRoadsPro too, it's excellent in itself but found I really don't have any use for it. So the best advice is wait until you find that you definitely do need something, rather than buy something as a precaution, even if it's in a sale. I wasted a lot of money on assets on promotion which I thought I would need, then realised I had no need for.

Also I believe something like WorldStreamer would cause conflicts with other external AI tools, such as ICE. But again it really does depend on the kind of game you are making. Assets also seem to reappear throughtout the year in different sales, so if Gaia doesn't implement there might still be another chance to buy it, or sectr in the future on sale.

 

EasyRoads3DPro +1 from me @raoul
I really want to stop you there and say... EasyRoads3D(Pro) is more dynamic than you may think! I purchased it recently after discussing it's possible uses and if you check out the forum posts I inquired about dirt tracks that are not just a flat road with a different texture but with the ruts that the wheels of vehicles have worn into the surface... Raoul was quick to show an example of it and i was sold If you already have it (or do you mean just the vanilla free one-go-at-it-no-further-editing-possible version?) it does rivers, it does side objects.. so i guess unless you are only going to do pure wild untouched by man scenes EasyRoadsPro v3 can do a lot of funky stuff... you could even make worn in paths that animals have made from their trampling i think, using cross-section tool (forgot what it's called) Anyway that's my thoughts on it, very impressed and I've yet to really sink my teeth into it but i already added road side posts with ease.. I couldn't imagine trying to do any of that by hand and it terraforms the terrain to meet the road either terrain->Road or Road->Terrain, Come think of it, it already is a good tool to use on top of GAIA as you could use it for the terraforming and then just delete the road altogether for example.

I agree that having it Work with GAIA with whatever might be helpful would be nice, but I've yet to really see the need of the extensions stuff personally so far - If like i questioned the edge of a terrain tile was to be automagically split with a perfectly lined up 'joiner' marker from EasyRoads3D then sure

If WorldStreamer or any other streamer causes AI issues then that sounds more like an AI side of things issue, or at least a consideration that both types of assets need to consider to work with... The whole idea is for it to be seamless both visually an dfunctionality.. hmm something to think about... I plan to look at RAIN for AI as it's free... heard it's like a weeks work to setup though - eek!

EDIT: I agree with you on purchasing bulk assets just because they are on sale.. but a lot of these are things i know i will require... just if you buy them now and can't get around to using them things can change with newer better assets etc and the flip side of that is you can get side tracked by all the new 'toys' and spend far too much time working them out and lose focus on the main core of what you were doing... or maybe that's just me

WorldStreamer simple says it works with GAIA it in the text.. there is no Logo... but perhaps there's not much difference... I guess it's the usual industry thing, you don't use something without official permission, so the default should be ask first at the very least if there is no clear licencing policy. Still piggy backing off a successful product i guess.

 

Really tempted to get World Streamer. I have Horizon[ON] but have not been able to make it work with Gaia 1.0.
Anyone tried World Streamer with Gaia yet?

 

Have you used Horizon[ON] with Gaia? I was not able to get it to work, just got a flat horizon?

 

Is that sunset purely GAIA? I use Tenkoku and the last update made some awesome sunsets very similar... but still is that purely GAIA inclusions? again great work by Adam to get some Unity standard stuff configured and with one-click drop-in implementation... Is this using horizon[on] as well out of interest?

 

Fyi, the Unity standard stuff was configured and drop-in implementation was added using the Gaia extension system.

 

I didn't pick up World Streamer yet, but will be doing it soon. As far as Real Imposters, it creates a new imposter on an as-needed basis. So, if the camera changes position to invalidate the imposter then it re-gens it. I would have thought the process would cause stops and stutters in frame rate, but the demo scene didn't stutter even once when running on the Wii U and I walked around the whole thing and looked everywhere. There is a public UpdateImposter function that you could call to force it to update for an animated object, but I have no idea how that would impact performance. I have AFS and played with it a little bit, but not enough to decide if it's a better tree solution. I've pretty much committed to SpeedTree, but it might not be an exclusive solution for me. I might throw in some AFS as well. I'm not sure about Real Imposter support. It just worked fine for me and it was so easy to use it didn't really need any help. You just drag the Imposter script onto what you want to use it on and it works. There are some settings, but they seem self explanatory. There is a PDF document that comes with it as well.

 

Cool, that sounds very promising, I wish it was on sale right now as i haven't used GAIA to spawn any trees yet as they're horribly expensive.. like a hero tree usage only and then still not made for a game engine, Xfrog promised me they were working an a Unity set of trees but that seems to have vaporized (no further correspondence from them for a couple of months!) so a billboard is the answer really... I'd be interested to see what else the author of Real Imposters comes up with either as new assets or improvements with new features if any are to come.

EDIT: I just grabbed a copy of Real Imposters LOD System 1.0 - can;t wait to see if i can finally spawn many a tree and reduce 100,000+ tris or whatever they are down to... TWO and interested how it'll look, currently without any LOD they actually look terrible as you move away as the leaves disappear and you get just twinkling.. something i am sure a 'snap shot' will resolve

AFS has a feature of plants being moved as the player walks into them.. something that is highly desirable for immersion so i too will likely grab a copy one day.

If you do get WorldStreamer soon I'd love to hear your experience with it.

Ah, well there you go... it's just so far i see some presets for Tenkoku in there but not sure I want to manually change things (by the extension preset), also not sure just what settings it's changing which i assume are permanently changed once you click. (permanently as in no undo) Handy presets i guess... but really I'm waiting on natural changes to take place as the clock ticks over.

 

New to Gaia (which i was eyeing for a while), I've followed the start-up documentation, but on the last step, Procedural Worlds does not appear under GX.
Anyone has had this happening?

 

Will Adam's reply in this post help? -> #4079

 

GAIA page on asset store says "5.1.0 or higher" so unless that changed with GAIA 1.5, I won't be going up anytime soon. As for ORK, I usually don't upgrade that asset unless there is an additional feature I need, so no hurry there either. Once you programming ninja get things sorted out, I will happily upgrade.

 

Hi,

Gaia was submitted with Unity v1.5.0 on release ans still the same

Copy & paste from product description on product page "Package has been submitted using Unity 5.1.0."

Hope this helps

 

Gaia is a wonderful tool!

http://imgur.com/a/6VlS1

 

Everything was pure Gaia except I used Amplify Colour to create a LUT in PhotoShop, which brought out the orange tones. I had the unedited version open in PhotoShop and I could see exactly the effect I wanted in real-time by moving the colour balance sliders and curves. I was even able to create a nice distortion just under the sun, and above it only by mixing the colour channels. Yeah Horizon[ON] is used in the backgrounds, which looks even better after the global fog was added. With Horizon[ON] to get best results you should set the camera clipping distance far, something like 59,000, which is fine on flat savannas with little vegetation and no mountains or buildings, but will be taxing on more complex scenes. I do agree 100% about EasyRoads. I bought the full-version with the Beta v.3 it has many uses besides roads (I originally bought it for the river tool) and the support Raul gives, in addition to his own enthusiasm on the product, is excellent, hopefully I will have more time to look into in the future. My only concern was that in the future Gaia may be able to stamp the terrain plus spawn the vegetation at run-time, including the AI animals, which are automatically spawned at run-time anyway. In this case, I can't see how EasyRoads could be used. But until then I definitely plan to use it and would recommend it to others. The point I was trying to make about EasyRoads Pro was that, while being useful, it wasn't as essential as a night-day system (which I still don't have but I'm holding off for Time of Day) and other assets such as the SpeedTree's African trees, which are $39 each. Ultimately, the end product will cost me much more than it needed to have, mostly because I get tempted by the 'sales'!

 

It worked! Thank you smada luap!

 

Yeah they worked fine together. Gaia just shapes the terrain, so couldn't see how they wouldn't work together. The only issue I did have was because I was experimenting with flat terrains, in order to get them flat but allow for rivers to be dug I had raised the terrain slightly in Gaia, by deselecting the base terrain option in the stamper menu. I think this caused the terrain to raise too much, which meant it wasn't aligned with the horizon anymore. Horizon does have an issue around the edges, but I think this applies to any terrain not just Gaia built ones. In any case, it still looks fine if it rests just below the terrain provided the player is kept from going too near the edge. It's not necessary to have the terrain exactly at the same level of the horizon. Horizon[ON] really grew on me, at first I was less than impressed, but when I deactivate it now I can instantly see the difference, the terrain just looks empty without it.

 

Thank you for replying jonfinlay, wish I knew what settings you are using.

 

Streaming itself is actually very simple, it's nothing more then async loading. I was just redoing mine to use asset bundles I'll post it here in the next day or two. A whole lot of what those streaming solutions do is all kinds of other stuff that is often useful or not depending on the game. My core logic for handling async loading of asset bundles and then async load additive of the scenes inside those bundles, including logic to enable/disable terrains based on range comes in at under 150 lines of code.

The other part I'll also post I put together for my gaia workflow. I create one terrain per scene, then I have a 'layout' scene where I drag in the same terrains and lay them out where they should all be in the world. Simple editor gui so I can click to build an asset bundle for each one. The layout information is stored in a scriptable object that is used by the runtime loader to load and enable/disable terrains in range of the player. I've found asset bundles to be good here because it saves a lot of time when you want to iterate and need to build a player. Building with say 20 scenes in the build list is not fun. This way everything heavy is out in asset bundles and granular so you only rebuild what has changed.

Some tweaking required of course depending on your structure. I use a floating origin so I have just one main scene and everything is then loaded additively.

 

I'm just using the default at the moment, as set up in the manual. I remember having an issue with clipping, to fix it's just a case of minimising the clipping panel and activating the script. But the developer Pete gives great support, have a word with him about it on his thread or email, may be it's unconnected to Gaia and another issue. He does Skype as well. Sure you'll get it fixed. Pity however there isn't a Gaia integration button for Horizon, the one asset which could really benefit from one.

 

I just want to give a big shout out for Opsive's Third Person Controller, which is part of the madness sale and now has Gaia integration.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/27438

This is the best 3rd person controller on the store and it gets better every release. I've tried just about every other 3rd person controller solution, and Opsive's is still king. Support from Justin is amazing. He usually responds within an hour for any issues and can often have a fix almost as quick. He listens to his users and is constantly improving the asset based on feedback. And they now own UFPS as well.

 

Terrain Stitcher is another asset developed by the same author of World Streamer. They also make Multiple Terrain Brush.

 

Kia ora

Could my issue be the fact I'm using 2048x2048 16Bit TGA files, I notice the alpha in mine is a bit lighter than Adam's but could it be the 16Bits is causing that weird silky look thats almost like a haze

 

Have you looked at "The Third Person Controller Template" at all?

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/released-third-person-controller-template-by-invector.349124/

Just wondered if you had any thoughts vs each tho it might be the model I'm trying to use, I'm really new to animation. Maybe I need to find an animator to look at the model, it has 86 animations (which is why I brought it, thought it'd give me a great pool to start out) but non load on import

 

Yes, I own that controller as well. Invector has a pretty good start on a nice controller. They have a couple of small features that are not yet in Opsive's controller as well, but it is way behind the curve on overall features. Opsive's ability system alone is a huge benefit. You've also got the ability to make an AI character that can be controlled using Behavior Designer. And now they even have Inventory Pro integration. At this point, I think the only thing I like more about Invector's controller is they have a nice character fade when you get too close to the character. But I wouldn't use a different controller just for that one feature. I'll just request it from Opsive and I'm sure he'll add it.

Regarding your model and animations, are you trying to use them with Opsive's controller or Invector's and what kind of issues are you having?

 

I brought https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/46366 but it does not import the animations, I get a lot of this

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/zi7hga1tvglovqf/Screenshot 2016-01-13 09.54.33.png?dl=0

I maybe should take this to a whisper if we go on rather than highjack the thread do you think