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

Loving the latest version. Thanks for your work, Adam. Generated in 10 minutes with Gaia, updated free Speedtrees (1.2), Distingo, Ceto and Time of Day.

 

Absolutely LOVE what you showing here !!!

Distingo makes such a big difference on the ground textures making Rocks on those verticals and not just a sandpaper like texture from afar. It is only $10 now, think the price is going up with first contents update.

Cheers
Cobus

 

Would you use this alongside RTP?

 

I do not own RTP so can not really comment on it.
But for me this is an extremely easy choice as an artist and not a programmer.
You just drag & drop this in, then you have easy to use sliders to adjust as you like and there you go.
Being able to on the fly / live see the results is awesome.
And then $10, that just makes it even better.

Dinsingo was on the main page within hours of launch and there is a reason for that.
Very few assets have been able to achieve that

If you read the reviews you will see what I mean

Cheers
Cobus

 

No. Distingo and RTP are both terrain shaders and cannot be used together. You either use one or the other. You can't use both.

 

I have been trying to get the Desktop Tree Package to show up as installed in Gaia 1.5.1. running Unity 5.2.3f1 (Windows 10). Nothing has worked so far. This is what I tried:
Import Gaia first

• Import Desktop Tree Package (tried it as a subfolder of my imports folder and directly in the root: recreated projects instead of only moving it)
• Tried deleting the 3rd party samplers
• Tried reimporting the package
• Tried renaming it to Desktop Trees Package (since that how it's listed in the compatible tab)
• Tried opening closing Gaia Manager (more than twice)

(I did ensure I run a Windows build, not the webplayer)
Any suggestions?

 

Here's my extensive workflow for getting Distingo up and running to produce that picture:

• Import Distingo Package
• Gaia/GX/Distingo/Add to selected Terrain.
• errr... that's it.

Love it.

 

HAHAHA, and that is the beauty of it, simple, powerful and just works

 

I'm not even close to being an artist, but thought I'd try Gaia and it's really impressive.

 

Is anyone using Easy Scatter? It claims to be the "ideal complement to Gaia" and they even have the Gaia logo in use for their asset. I actually thought it was a product that Adam had made until I looked deeper. It does look like a very nice tool. Is it officially sanctioned or are they just hijacking the Gaia logo?

 

Looking at the many replies like yours, is one of the best things to watch and see happen.
Gaia empowers people and remove obstacles for MANY users and get them going with their game projects because at last, the terrain is not a problem anymore.
And on top of that, not just terrain, but Eyecandy looking terrain at a very fast learning curve for EVERYONE

 

Hi,
The author, think his name is Nicholas if I am not wrong contacted Adam did obtain the actual logo from @AdamGoodrich , so I am 100% sure that Adam has good reason to have given it.

Several people have been waiting for Gaia v1.5.0 release and then some feedback regarding bugs and such with the current already integrated packages to then be able to do further steps to get integration complete.
I bought Easy Scatter as well, it is looking awesome, going to see how it can assist me.

What is great, like Distingo, we all can get our hands on them for a mere $10s

Cheers
Cobus

 

Gaia competition arrived in the asset store on Wednesday. Looking at the feature set it sounds very feature rich and impressive, but none of the sample screenshots even come close to the beauty of Gaia. But you should definitely keep a watch on the new kid on the block.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/55463

 

Great. I'm glad it's official. It is an asset I've been meaning to pick up as well. I'm a little surprised we haven't heard others talking about it here though. Seems like a perfect fit.

 

Hi,

When it arrivied it actually pushed all the way to the main page, it had a very good lunch with the "New Featured" thing from Unity to help new promising packs get a bit extra exposure and not just sink to the bottom.

It is great for it gives as all a longer chance to grab some of the gems that gets released

Cheers
Cobus

 

I took 10 minutes to do some quick compares for you folks that are asking about assets to use WITH Gaia. I used out of the box defaults for all this.

Standard Gaia Screeny (NO Distingo, NO RTP, NO Effects)


"Same" Screenie WITH RTP


Movie with RTP

Movie with RTP and AFS

 

Sigh. I tested that GX thing many times and worked every time. Did you delete old Gaia first? Am wondering if somehow the import failed to update it.

 

I just tested 1.5.1 on a new project. I opened Gaia Manager, selected GX, then Compatible, then closed Gaia Manager. Reopened it, selected GX, let it sit for about 30 seconds and my two assets showed up.

Edit: I just realized I didn't import Distingo into my project. I did that and it immediately was shown in the manager under Installed.

 

Yeah. You need to wait for the compile to complete. Not much I can do about that.

The issue is the injection of a define into the environment. It signals to any extensions that Gaia is present. This then causes a recompile which then exposes them. The define btw is GAIA_PRESENT.

This only happens once in a project. Its all good from then on.

 

Nope.. I suggested deselecting them when you Import Gaia. If you let Gaia install them, they overwrite what is in standard assets. If you look at the file list in the import window, Unity finds the Speedtrees in Standard Assets folder. If you de them after import, you wont have any trees.

 

The extension code has not yet been placed in the relevant SpeedTree packages as this is a process that SpeedTree needs to manage themselves... and they will probably want to take it for a spin before considering this.

However I can provide it for you.

Desktop Tree Package Extension - For the the Desktop Trees Package
Desktop Ground Cover Package Extension - For the Desktop Ground Cover Package

First import the SpeedTree packages - then import these scripts. You will see them show up in GX - INSTALLED. Click on the About button and follow your nose.

Let me know how you go - this is a shiny new and very cool feature.

@Dannyoakes

 

What exactly is this extension package for SpeedTree?

 

If you own either of those packages, the extension file as ready to use resources file and spawners you can use with it.

 

I spent a huge amount of time writing an extension system for this release of Gaia. This makes adding new asset packs a really simple thing - no messing around with resource or spawner configuration if you don't want to.



Content of extension...



A few clicks to set up.

 

So added Distingo "DestingoTerrainScipt" to the Gaia Environment/Terrain
Not seeing any difference, what should I do?

 

First of all you should post your question not here, but on the Distingo forum thread.

 

Your right, sorry. Its just the Gaia is becoming the foundation on which everything else is being built. But I"ll post there, thanks.

 

Seems many people are now wanting to get on the band wagon and drive on from Gaia's success, another one is in approval now on the asset store: http://www.world-creator.com/

@kerrmedia try enabling "Use global texture blend" within the "Global Settings" and then putting the "Splatting Distance" all the way to 2000. You can also have a camera set-up and slide from 0 - 2000 while in the camera looking at your terrain and you will notice the change then. PM me of you still have any problems, I've got it working nicely so

@AdamGoodrich where it says "defaults" and "resources" in the gaia manager, which are both set up as "GaiaDefaults" and "GaiaResources" I see the new button, but is it possible to use more than one resources so that it uses a mix if you get what I mean?

 

I highly doubt that they were bandwagoning. A tool that extensive would take a long time to develop and Gaia hasn't been out that long. They might have been trying to make a better terrain composer though. World Creator looks quite amazing.

 

I know I'm not Adam, but I can field this one.. Short answer is Yes. In fact, if you are going to change the GaiaDefaults or GaiaResources, I would highly recommend duplicating both files, rename the duplicates whatever you want, and then drag those into the Gaia Manager. That way you will always have the default files to go back to and if you update Gaia, you wont have to worry about maybe losing the changes.

Just make sure you duplicate and change/rename the new ones. Unity serializes files and it seems even if you change the name, Unity recognizes it as the original file.

 

I can agree
Having seen the development of Gaia I fully understand that these extensive tools does not fall out the sky over night.
There are many terrain tools, each addressing certain areas better than others and users will at the end decide what they buy according what shortcoming they feel each individual package addresses mostly what they feel they need it for.

Gaia in my opinion is very good for both beginner, mid and high end users.
It is in fact an extremely good balance to give complete new users the capability that almost 100% of new users do not have

I quote the latest review
"I just started using Unity a couple of weeks ago and terrain had me extremely worried. There is so much to it that it is a bit overwhelming, but with Gaia you can create a mid-sized open-world in a few minutes and it's easy enough that I was able to get it working while barely knowing Unity's basic functions. The 1.5 update that just released is also such a massive improvement over 1.0 that it feels like a completely new tool. There are features I haven't even tried out yet, but with barely scratching the surface of what this asset is capable of, I'm still able to create new, interesting, and absolutely beautiful worlds every single day."

So it really bridges the gap and places capability into the hands of new users.

Then you have replies from old time Unity users that Terrain was really a huge obstacle that has now bought and tried Gaia and they all smiling ear to ear and they feel and am now empowered to do terrain.

With the new features that the surface has not even been scratched yet, and @AdamGoodrich will be doing tutorial vids of to show those, the high end users are going to smile even more and see what power has been put in their hands.

So I personally think Gaia has really hit where there was a HUGE gap to be filled and made terrain FUN at the same time.

 

I agree and I would say the timing couldn't have been better. Any longer and another tool would have filled the gap sooner. It's hard to come in at this stage and dethrone the king.

 

Thanks Shawn, and by the way - waiting on that part2

 

lol.. Yeah... I know.. I know.. I've been swamped past couple of weeks. I promise, it is coming though.. I just need to get a couple things out first. I'm hoping to get part 2 out this weekend. But no promises at this point. That is definitely my goal though.

I'm hoping to make an announcement this weekend if all goes well.

 

Hey Adam,
Thank you so much for Gaia, it is definitely the best terrain generation tool out there. But I have one question.

Gaia supports to run functions like stamping/spawning etc. on runtime.
My target was to create randomized terrains completely on runtime, so I wrote a script that used the Gaia functions step by step in Coroutines to build up randomized terrains from scratch. after some hours of work I managed to achieve my goal: When I press play in my empty scene, the Gaia functions are called (Session Manager and Stamper are created, the random terrain generator randomizes it's values, stamps the terrain and finally spaws all textures and details). after some loading time a completely new terrain is generated with randomized features etc. which is totally cool

I tried to create a Standalone version and got the error message "Can't load feature - texture not set" and realized that the stamping jpegs (and probably other spawning stuff) are, of course, loaded from AssetDatabase paths to be used in Unity Editor.

So my question is - is there any way to load them on runtime, like putting them and everything else required in the Resources folder of Unity and let Gaia load them from there to make the random terrain be built in a standalone (/editor independent build) version without the editor?

 

Adam thank you very much! Proof that it works, here's the European White Birch making its appearance:



Just follow Adam's instructions in the About button: I created a new resource file, added the birch tree to it (probably should have added fall and winter models too), copied the DNA and spawn criteria rules from the broadleaf resource file, fiddled with the spawner rules (probably not necessary if you add the other two -winter and fall- models instead of just one) and push spawn button!

It would be great if the extension became part of the Speedtree packages soon... I assume the DNA rules need to be tailor made and I have no clue what the proper rules for the ground coverage need to look like. But let's be patient.

The Tenkoku and Distingo extensions did show up in the installed part. I've only run the Distingo one and it worked like a charm too. Just add the occlusion maps to the textures for a really great effect!


p.s. Since the Speedtrees showed up in the manual (p.128) I really thought they should show up automagically. I misinterpreted the "integration script included" part of that sentence. This work around is great, waiting anxiously on the integration... but we can be patient....

 

I too have received a reply and we are discussing the issues and possibilities with his asset. Not too sure yet if it's for me, be he seems sure the night shading is an easy fix. Glad you got your issue sorted, he didn't mention that issue to me as i am getting simply getting full bright shading at night.

Do you only use the one camera and light in you game? I found the 'Use MainCamera' feature does not work for me and when i then select a camera it obviously get changed (at least i switch between cameras as a rule) and then the billboards are present when i walk up to them I'm going to look into InfiniTree as there was mention of auto-LOD and then there is always AFS which has other features worth noting, it sounds like a must really.

I still cannot seem to get the nice grass appearance like all the Screenshots i see on this forum, even with HQ grass textures, I think default Unity grass is not really that great, no shadows, uses I think some random wind variable that doesn't tie into a real windzone if i'm not mistaken.. I also think a mixture of grass models and billboards are probably required to get more depth. Would be awesome if the prominent grass texture asset artists make a bunch of models that their texture could be applied to.

Like this... Now that is a dense bush (taken from a YouTube video of a map from the game 'The Hunter')

 

I have used it - nice asset

Yes - i added some support for this in 1.5 and one of my users has done it. I will post some information about this in the next few days.

 

thanks very much, I am excited in what you will post!

 

Runtime generation is a very exciting feature for me, It does bring the multi-tile/streaming consideration to the front of my mind though, I guess you'd have a terrain that say... WorldStreamer loads in advance, and then GAIA can do it's random generation on it. Big question i guess is how long does it take to generate (i know.. how long is a piece of string) I guess what i mean is is it possible/practical to do not just at initial scene load, but as you move around... if you get what i mean.

WorldStreamer + GAIA Random Generation = Gold!

Very Keen to hear more, Cheers @marauderkr for bringing it up.. go Adam you good thing... this stuff is Gold!

Using Gaia to craft terrain Biomes/or POI's in themselves and having random terrain in between sounds like a great way to create an endless world, Or not even random/endless.. but planned like biomes on a grid with all the grid sections around being random tying it all together.

 

Interesting thing you say there with WorldStreamer!

What I found out so far is that (using the setup in Unity 5.3.1f with a 1 year old PC) creating the terrain, stamping it and adding the spawners takes only a very short time, around 5-10 seconds. same goes for the water/windzone addition. Trees and other game objects come up in only a few seconds, too.
What takes the most time is texturing and adding details (grass, etc). Texturing takes around 20-30 seconds and details around 15-20. That's all in Unity Editor itself with basic Gaia Default values, so I was curious about how things would look like in a standalone build or even a mobile android build. Sure, stuff will have to be heavily reduced for mobile, but waiting let's say 1 minute on a loading screen and having a completely new generated terrain as result on a mobile game would be awesome!

 

Hmm, Personally I am only interested in PC and current high-end (to a certain degree) - maybe By the time i release something it will already be out of date making new hardware easily manage it . I was thinking more about seamless generation, like it being calculated on a separate thread or what ever is required, I guess however WorldStreamer does it... would tie in closely how GAIA should do it's part to seamless and uninterrupted.

Again maybe hoping for too much, not sure, but what i described is actually what i had in mind before i even installed Unity for the first time. Texturing and object placement does take a while...

EDIT: You say Trees and Objects are fast, it's grass details in particular. Not sure what system exactly is spawning these elements, grass as in Unity standard (as mentioned before getting pretty long in the tooth), but is this mostly due to the number of grass details compared to trees? may only be 10% or less of the grass count compared to trees? or is it due to another reason? Personally i think the grass spawner of Unities needs to be completely replaced, I mean you cannot even select some grass and delete it if i'm not mistaken?, no shadows, random sway based on it's own wind thing...

I wonder if there is another solution for that, such as something like InfiniTree and how it - I think batches and reuses objects... Texturing is something i haven't heard of being done anyway but the traditional way (pre-calculate and texture the entire terrain).

Perhaps if it starts the process early enough and with enough memory to not just trash itself if you change direction or trigger another tile... I could see that working... But alas i am no expert on these things... you could also keep these random terrains simple and/or just load one of a set of prefab tiles and just randomize the objects already on it, could work for general flat/generic terrains.

This makes me think of say how Battlefield has much larger terrains than you are allowed to play in (unless you are flying).. but if you get out of the zone it threatens to kill you if you don't turn around.... my thinking is if you have perhaps somewhat obvious repeating endlessness in a direction like sand dunes you could get the same effect as say ocean or mountains that are impassible - It's a dead end.. learn the hard way perhaps by going past the point of no return that in the case of a survival game you will find no resources and you'll end up toast

 

Good Morning,

I just updated Gaia (the update is awesome!) and the trees seem to have artifacts in them. I guess its not realy a Gaia issue but maybe someone here has experienced that before ?

Thanks a lot !

 

There's a "Regenerate SpeedTree Materials" option somewhere - that'll solve this one.

 

Thanks a lot that did the trick.

 

Hey Adam!
I noticed latest Gaia is 933mb. We can get rid of at least free Speedtree samples with this system, as i assume everybody had that already and they also come with standard assets. And perhaps some other assets.
Noticed that Speedtrees come also with Distingo. So Speedtrees alone laying in 4 places on my limited hard disc on my laptop.
I would als vote for separate Gaia core from additional assets, as updating Gaia with slow internet is a real pain.

Cheers
Michael

 

I doubt this is possible since the assets are samples that have been provided to be distributed with the purchase of Gaia.

I wouldn't mind seeing the SpeedTree stuff removed though since they are just a duplicate of the Standard Assets. Any way you can check for those like you do the Effects, @AdamGoodrich? There might be a reason they are included but I can't remember why. I guess I never really paid attention since I always uncheck and never install them from the Gaia import.

I'm on a slow connection too. I always set my assets to update/download and then go work on other stuff. I throw the Asset Store tab in same window as my Game view. So I start downloads and switch tabs. Go back later and do my Import.

As far as having Speedtrees in 4 different places, you should always go through assets and remove any of the Unity Standard Assets. This is especially true of those which include code because if you install them and they were from a different version of Unity, it can really screw your project up. I've lost hours and hours of time by mistakenly just pressing Import without going through the list first.

 

I made my first gaia terrain yesterday. it's really an excellent job.

But the creation of resource pack can be tricky. can we find this kind of package on the asset store ?

 

I'm not 100% sure what you are asking. One of the reasons behind the Gaia eXtenstion (GX) system is to come up with a system where asset publishers can create and share resources files with their packages. I know @turboscalpeur is working to get one done for his grass packs, Adam worked with the folks at SpeedTree to do samples of the Destop Trees and Desktop Ground Cover packs so they could see how they were done and replicate for other packs, and during beta of 1.5 I was able to create one for ManufacturaK4's Asian Environment Pack and successfully share with Adam. What we would all like to see eventually is all environment pack publishers creating Gaia eXtensions for their packs that will allow folks like you and me easily integrate their packs into our Gaia spawners. So for right now, we are kind of in a holding pattern until other publishers embrace Gaia and create extensions.

I have a couple of projects I'm working on and one of them may be useful in these kinds of situations. Keep your eyes open here in this thread for the announcements. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to unveil them both at once or wait until towards the end of next week for the second one, closer to when it is ready to be submitted to asset store. The second might be something you are interested in.. Well, hopefully you are interested in both.. lol

 

So we can't add new packs to the spawner? Or are you talking about packs being imported and automatically working with the spawner?

Sorry not around my machine since I'm away for work until tomorrow, so I can't even try, and I was planning on adding new trees/grass/rocks to the spawner