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

What does GAIA have in the way of runtime generation? I was planning on procedurally generating terrain for a prototype turn based strategy game along the lines of something like XCOM. Would I be able to use GAIA to specify some rules and resources to generate a variety of terrains at runtime?

 

Hey guys, just wondering if in Gaia you can use "Terrain Masking" ?

The image below is just an example I found on the net, its apparently showing 4 terrains created on a single map. I read the features etc on Gaia and also remember watching a video where Adam mixes together different terrains but this is different terrain types, so wondering if it can be done or is a future feature?



@Shawn67 is this what you meant about combining such to make different style biomes?

Another question is, does anyone know of a decent brush to go with Gaia for creating such things as caves etc? I know of PolyBrush but any alternatives? thanks.

 

Polybrush work on mesh while gaia work on terrain they dont work together, unity terrain use height modification only, you can push up or down but you cannot make Caves or push terrain in other direction than up or down so you are limited to do wells. if you want to do holes with your terrain you need to write your own mask shader and rewrite your character physics to go through terrain when object goes over the "hole" part of your terrain. thats how RTP did it.

 

Its a warning - so its not causing an issue. And yes its fixed Available to you all soon.

 

Ouch... so there is no easier way then? no asset that can work alongside Gaia to actually be able to do caves etc... only by writing my own mask shader etc?

 

Yep - been in there since version 1. I need to update all these videos for v 1.5. I have added a lot more capability - coming soon

Please take a look at:

My approach is different in that I allow you to design your environment so that it is specifically suited to the game play you want to create by scaling, rotating, placing and blending stamps into the environment rather than mask and hope for the best via various directed noise algorithms.

That said, in 1.5 I have added in a bunch of noise masking algorithms as well. Go check the manual if you are interested. The tool you are referring to at its cheapest based on their web site is $150 + - and looks awesome - I especially love their erosion.

At its core however it is still directed noise - which is a fundamentally different approach.

 

Its not actually a bug its a warning.

 

Hi,
I think you missing the point here.
The inability of being able to make caves is a Unity limitation.
It has 0 to do with Gaia at all or any other terrain tool

 

yes there is an other way that does not use terrain and have nothing to do with Gaia

 

Btw - you can use Gaia to design your terrain, then export a mesh for use with tools like blender in the video above. Gaia also exports texture splatmaps, grass splatmaps, terrain normal maps, and even waterflow maps and shoreline masks.

If you really wanted to get creative you could design and spawn your environment, export the terrain as a mesh along with all the various maps. Delete the terrain, add back a mesh version, keep the existing spawned game objects in place, and not use the Unity terrain system at all.

At the end of the day its all about providing a tool that gives you the options to create the game you want, the way you want

 

i think the simplest way for doing caves is doing something like this, prepare a cave mesh in your 3d app like the orange one, dig your terrain an area where you want to put your mesh over.

 

I think it might have worms

 

It is not a limitation as its been done before, even in games released such as Cities: Skylines they have there terraforming and tunneling etc, not only that but on the assets store there are ways to tunnel and make caves with even the asset I linked PolyBrush. Now if you say it has limitations with Gaia ok then I can understand. I wish people would stop saying it has nothing to do with Gaia etc and that I'm off topic when it DOES have everything to do with Gaia else I wouldn't of asked

Thank you, and that's great as I've good experience using Blender

Is it possible for a future tutorial on how to do this? or is it as simple as you say, if I for example just made a terrain now with Gaia then how to export only the mesh? THEN import that back into Unity to once again work with Gaia? mind boggling to me lol

 

Not being able to create caves is a limitation from Unity's terrains, not from Gaia. You can solve this only on shader side if you don't want to convert your terrain to a mesh. RTP can do this.

 

It did it sometime way back in the last 88 pages. There are so many tutorials that would be fun to do

 

Gaia works alongside RTP though?

Looks like I am going to have to go through every page, it's daunting but to find my answer I have no other choice, maybe find some gold along the way

And guys, sorry for all the questions even if they are stupid lol, I am just new to all this and learning gradually but slowly, so do excuse me if I'm somewhat annoying

 

Hope I'm not drifting too much off-topic here, but I'll try a quick explanation:

RTP isn't integrated into Gaia, so your usual workflow would be to use Gaia to first create your terrain. The result you get is a Unity terrain = no caves whatsoever. Then use RTP on the terrain to create caves via shader. In the end RTP is just a shader generator specifically adjusted to terrain objects, so it doesn't really do any modelling like Gaia, it's all just shaders - you can ckeck out Tom's thread for more info on this.

 

Thanks for the explanation

And for anyone else that is wondering how to make caves, holes etc in Gaia then I just found this great tutorial on how to do so by using a mix of RTP, Blender, and then exporting your mesh into Gaia. Plus the info within the posts above

 

No problem man, glad you didn't keep on not getting it. I know, shading and modelling can be so hard to... confuse.

 

lol n00bs have to start off somewhere

 

Guys thanks for touch on the platform, else my machine is carrying the refletion Probe is not out of it
Does anyone know this problem

 

It is Unity's Lighting system rebuilding lightmaps. By default Unity sets this to Auto. I always go into Window -> Lighting to open the lighting window and at the bottom I uncheck Auto. Before I started using Time of Day which manages all that for me, once I was ready to do the lighting, I would go in and click Build button manually.

This isn't Gaia but is an internal part of Unity itself.

 

Gaia 1.5.1 should be live

 

Hey @AdamGoodrich , I've been playing around with Gaia and loving it. I made some initial integration with Dungeon Architect. Heres a quick procedural level created using Gaia and DA

Awesome art assets by 3DForge (@S4G4N)

 

Damn one more thing to add to the list!

 

Finally got around to trying out V1.5, wow so much has changed from initial version.
So simple to use and so powerful to boot. Terrain has become the easiest part of Unity now.

My first test scene using Gaia 1.5 after an hour of messing around - most of which was setting up the other assets.
Using:
Gaia 1.5
Distingo 1.0
Ceto 1.1.0
Truesky 5.4.0.3.314

 

Thank you mate

lol tell me about it, its not easy too but do-able

 

@AdamGoodrich

FYI, in case you didn't know, SpeedTrees version 1.2 is in the asset store and it solves the issue with needing to regenerate materials. Figure I mention it since Gaia 1.5.1 still has version 1.1 trees.

 

Using Unity v 5.3.3p1 and Gaia v 1.5.1

In the Quick Start I am at step 10.

There is nothing under installed.


There is some stuff under Compatible, but no Procedural Worlds.


[UPDATE]
It looks like the necessary script is in place.

 

@Tinjaw did you open Gaia Manager then close it, and then open again? it works after that

 

Quick question:

Someone, perhaps Magique (?), mentioned that World Streamer is not compatible with HorizonON?? Any experiences anyone.... I have SECTR already which is great but cannot make floating origin corrections... hard to get it all

Any experiences?? Was asked in World Streamer forum but developer didn't give a straight answer

 

I hadn't tried. I did now and it fixed it. Thanks.

 

Great post Adam, yup many engines do have issues with this, I have worked with over 20 different game engines in my career. and I personally been working with large world's professional for years.. The reason many do not work with large worlds, is one there game does not need it... Two, many do have issues with performance.. Many people lack the experience when it comes to large worlds. If you notice some games with survival games the reason they fail or do poorly is due to small islands. yes many other reasons, but I have a team who deal with marketing and reviews, and over 32% are people who hate games that are tiny, when it comes to those type of games..also.where you can run around in 10 mins.. I for one, been working on a large terrain for mobile and with a cave system and yes open world, ,many people thought I was nuts... But guess what I spent a decade learning and working with large terrains to understand what is needed .

To Adam's point, another reason, some don't do large worlds right, most are well empty... There are so many easy things you can do to not make it look empty and look good.. But sad to say, many games fail at this as well, its nothing but rocks, trees, bushes...and well animals... Lame..

Steaming is very important, Polycount, memory, Textures size using atlas's properly, LOD, etc,no matter if its PC, XB1, mobile etc, with out going into to much detail to make someones head explode, I would be happy to explain more through a Pm..


PS I personally love large scale sand box games that are done right, and large worlds if they are done properly, I can't stand tiny games.. unless its a fun old school platformer or something else 2D .. So really depends.

Thanks Adam, for asking, about this!!!

 

Your welcome, I thought it was something Adam was planning on fixing in the next patch (1.5.1) but obviously its planned but not fixed just yet then, the way I told you was just a work around and is explained in the QuickStart Guide

 

Well, World Streamer is on sale, is that a good idea? Especially for Gaia based worlds?

 

I would just point out that 32%, while not being a particularly small number, is still a minority. And just because your game isn't ginormous doesn't necessarily mean it's tiny either. So there's a balance between making it sufficiently large, but not too large.

 

Not me. I just purchased World Streamer, but haven't even tried it yet and I don't have HorizonON. I'm also getting SECTR Complete so I'll have both streaming solutions that I can use together.

 

Wow, do you not use the rest of the Unity forum?

It is a limitation with Unity. Unless you use Voxel, this is a limitation with almost all available indie engines. The way to get around it is with a shader. RTP is a shader. Gaia is NOT a shader.

I am getting so many questions all over the forums, often directed to me, about Gaia. People are under the assumption that Gaia can do almost anything, that it is a "push a button and create a game" like those Asset flipping stuff you find in the Complete Projects forum category.

Gaia is a height map altering tools, using stamps and masks, and other stuff. It is a landscaper for terrains as well, allowing you to place grass, trees, and objects. It is integrated with a few other assets so you can easily add those to your game. It is a brilliant tool that helps us make stunning terrains.

It is NOT a shader. It is NOT a particle system. It is NOT a camera effect.

Any asset that will work with Unity terrain without Gaia will work with Unity terrain with Gaia.

Any special effect, such as a hole in the terrain, that will NOT work with Unity terrain without a special shader will NOT work with Gaia.

Really, it is time for you to stop being a Noob and start being a game developer. Grow up and look for stuff yourself on the forums. Stop spamming Gaia's thread with questions that belong elsewhere. And stop being disrespectful to the people who know more than you do.

One thing I learned as a Noob was to listen to others with more experience. Respect them because they can help you be a better developer. Saying stuff that just isn't true like..holes are not a Unity limitation, just makes you sound really clueless. You don't want that if you want people to help you.

 

Great example. Use the Unity forums and do a search for this. You will find your answer. Good place for you to start being a real developer.

 

I've got the same trouble, nothing in the GX Tab

I've tried by opening and closing the manager twice , reimport the whole Gaia Directory,
créating a brand new project... nothing...

 

I got an answer back from the author. He was on vacation and apologized for the long wait time. To solve the white outline issue in darkness, you just need to change the background color of the camera under the ImposterManager and make the color black. This color works fine for both daytime and nighttime and the outline goes away.

 

@cfloutier

Please check the Console tab. Are there any (red) errors?

 

nope no error

 

Could it be a 5.3 issue? I know there are lots of bugs in 5.3. Might be better to go back.

Unity really needs to get this fixed. 5.4 is due out in a couple of weeks but 5.3 isn't working correctly yet. More and more asset developers are not releasing for anything less than 5.3 now, forcing us to upgrade even when many assets won't work and 5.3 is generally buggy. I am having to choose right now on what assets I can upgrade or even purchase due to this.

It is a pain. I suspect that is the problem here although maybe a bug was introduced to Gaia. I know Adam is working his day job but will probably be back later to help out.

 

Are you importing just the Gaia and nothing else? Start a new project, import the latest 1.5.1 version of Gaia, don't know if it matters but fix the SpeedTree errors first, to do that you can see how on the QuickStart Guide, then open the Gaia Manager and see if that works.

 

FYI I am using 5.3.3p1. Closing and reopening the Gaia Manager tab worked for me.

@cfloutier
Is CameraAndLight.cs in your Assets\Gaia\Scripts\ExtensionSystem folder?

 

Might be an import error. Did anyone try re-importing Gaia and the other assets that should be showing up? Also, Shawn suggested deleting the Speedtrees since they are also in the standard assets..make sure you don't have them in two places. Not sure if this matters, but who knows.

 

reading the source code (thanks it's fully open sourced) I figured that Standard Special FX are necessary for the example GX.
I was following the Quick guide provided in the package not the inline one, and this one was missing the line realted to the needed FX package .
It's working perfectly now.

Thanks you.

 

@cfloutier
It sounds like you are using version 1.5.0 in that case. You should update to 1.5.1.

 

Thanks man