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

You can absolutely add new stuff to the spawner. I was talking about packs coming with extensions which would make it easier to do that in the future. As I said, I wasn't 100% sure what you were asking so I kind of winged it with my answer. Sorry for the confusion.

Adam has videos for the spawner stuff. I believe the last two in this link should help. These were done with the original Gaia 1.0, but offhand I can't think of what has changed. For the most part they should be the same..

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLckEMv5tz0E71DDPQZTWxYVPvhqSGrAOQ

 

Thanks as always! I thought that's what you were saying. Sorry if my post wasn't clear got about three hours sleep and no coffee yet. Gotta love post production!!!

 

Right now I'm just doing performance and feature testing in a test scene and only have a single camera. Eventually, I'll have additional cameras for cut scenes, but I don't think I'll need multiple cameras for game play.

 

Is this where I should ask for help with Gaia?

I'm not a graphics person at all so don't be afraid to over-simplify answers. I'd like to use Gaia to generate scenery for a 3D sidescroller. I'm trying to start with a snow scene that would look almost exactly like this. What would be the best approach to using Gaia for a scene like this? Would I need more assets and if so which kinds? Is there a quick way to make everything that's normally green in a gaia landscape into white? Is there a way to make the trees gaia generates be leafless and dead looking like these trees? What should be taken into account when generating scenes for a sidescroller?

Any general tips on approaching this for a beginner in graphics would be awesome! Thanks =]

 

Gaia is a terrain creator and spawner. You would need other assets to add to Gaia to do something like the scene you posted. You would want to look for some type of winter pack that has good ground textures. You might be able to find a good system to do snow and snow accumulation, depending on how it is done, you might be able to use the evergreen type trees that come with Gaia and have the accumulation build up on them. At any rate, things I would look for would be:

A winter environment pack that has a good selection of ground textures, rocks, and trees with snow.
Some type of snow asset that shows an accumulate snow on objects.
If you can't find an accumulation object, you would want to find buildings or anything other game objects you would need in your scenes that have snow accumulation on them.
If you will have streams, you might want to find some type of water/ice shader asset that will allow both flowing water and ice packs/frozen water surfaces. (I haven't looked for any winter type assets so not really sure what is available.

Once you have good ground textures, winter trees, winter rocks, winter grasses you would then take them and create a new Gaia resources file and you could at that point use the Gaia spawners to populate your scenes.

 

Thanks, that seems straightforward enough. Is there a tutorial or reference available for making a resources file?

 

I'm not sure about making from scratch, but Adam has video tutorials that might help. I think he is planning to do some new ones for 1.5 but these 1.0 ones should be enough to get you started. What I usually do is duplicate the default one and delete any/all things in it that I don't want/need. The add new items following the instructions from the videos.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLckEMv5tz0E71DDPQZTWxYVPvhqSGrAOQ

 

agreed 100% BUT 32% is still part of our customer base and not a small base at that.. It is the 2nd most complaint for open world games for mobile today... You know what the first is?? No support... Not everyone posts there complaint, they just give you a 1 star rating.. This is not our games this is alot of large world games, or games that should , could be... They are games with tiny islands.. When making a game, you need to see what your playbase wants, dislike etc... So I spend money on this, so we do it right, since I feel many companies fail at this, and could do way better if they pay more attention, mobile I feel its worse.. with some developers make a game, and they are gone..

 

I hate to reply to other assets but it has to do with Gaia, so yes it works fine with World Streamer, and Horizon On.. I for one have used all 3 together in the past, they work fine..

 

This can still be made with Gaia, because your using a 3D terrain, trees spawning etc.. side scroller is just the camera position and view. So everything else depends on mechanic's as Shawn has pointed out..

 

Some good winter ground textures..
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/54301

 

After stitching 4 Gaia built terrains together here's what the edges look like:


I know I can hand paint the edges of the terrain but it won't be as smooth as the gaia texture spawners.
Just food for though Adam when working with multiple terrains

 

Wow after changing these settings my above 4 scenes with terrains stitched together my fps is the same as just running 1 scene with Gaia terrain. Well above 60fps.

This is without World streamer so can't wait to chop the scenes up and see the performance gains.

 

I played around with version 1 of World Creator a bit. It is not really like Gaia. It more like World Machine but built into Unity. While it does have landscaping, I don't see it as a true competitor to Gaia.

It will cost a lot more and will require a lot more skill. I have used World Machine for a while and I love the looks of World Creator because I have more control over my landscape and the erosion. I am making my terrain from already created drawn maps so randomness and stamps don't always work best for me. But..most folks make their game around the terrain rather than the terrain around the game...smart people that you all are! LOL I wish I had been able to do it that way.

That said, Gaia is best for quick and relatively simple methods of making beautiful terrain. The stamps are amazing and they allow you to make fabulous terrain, even if you are relatively new to Unity. And it is easily combine with other tools to make the terrain even more awesome. Plus all the other awesome stuff, like integration, masks, perlin features, etc.

I really think the users of Gaia are going to have no desire to spend the money to switch to something else and the cost will be such that new users will pick Gaia. That said, I feel one can never have too many tools in the toolbox as long as you can afford to pay the price.

 

Time to show something worthy from my side also




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Loving the images coming though !!!

I am starting on video tutorials today - the first set of tutorials is still largely applicable to 1.5 - the next set will incorporate the new features in 1.5.

 

WHOOHOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I like the lighting and the colours in these. Maybe some of the hills could benefit from Distingo.

 

There's an asset called Snowify on the Unity Asset store that might assist your project. It generates snow meshes for your assets. I can't get specific because I haven't used it yet, though I purchased it on sale a while ago. Good Luck.

 

Awesome asset; Got it few weeks ago and I really like it.

Are there any plans to enhance Gaia with some sort of support for roads? I see that it is possible to generate almost anything needed for a map; including buildings, but I was hoping that there was a way to add also roads; since the textures that I may use are not really matching the overall "look and feel" of the Gaia map.

Something like painting of simple tracks, paths and some sort of paved road; would really be a nice extra; to further customize the maps. I was thinking something like what you can see in Skyrim.

Great work BTW, it is really awesome!

 

I know multi-tile support is on it's way, but specifically does that mean we can generate big maps made up of multiple (seamless) tiles?

I am making a flight simulator and this would be preferable (instead of fiddling with World Machine).

 

Yep.

 

Happen to know of any other terrain texture packs that come with normal maps like that? Like sand, rock, jungle, forest, etc? It seems that shaders like Distingo work best with normal maps.

I know there are some on gametextures.com, but I'm only playing around with terrain stuff. Not really into signing up for a subscription service at this point.

 

seems on gametexture.com the first week is a trial you can download 100 + texture then next week for 20 $ you can download more, there is nothing that beat this price on the asset store with the same quality/quantity and the ability to select each texture you want.

 

Many purchased texture assets come with Normal, Displacement, Specular, AO, and other maps already. If they don't, you can always make your own. Allegorithmic makes a Unity Asset called Bitmap2Material, that supposedly creates any additional maps you want from a standard image. I say "supposedly" because at $150.00 it's a bit pricey for me. There's also Shadermap, which is quite a bit cheaper, but if you want the best price (FREE) check out NormalMap-Online. I'm not sure how it stacks up to the other two in terms of quality, but it seems worth a look at least.

 

Another alternative may be Map Lab. I've been working a little bit with it and although still beta the normal and AO maps (latter important for Distingo too) are easy to create. Haven't been able to get tiling to work 100% but the results are promising.

And for normal maps there's also a nice plugin for the Gimp, all for free.

 

Hi Adam, sorry for resurrecting an older post but I had an issue all weekend which I now know is linked to changing the shadow bias. My solution may help others with similar issues. It doesn't look like it's the Gaia extension presets (so it's probably a default setting in the newest version of Tenkoku) but I can't be 100% sure at this stage. Enough about that, this is the issue:

After setting up my project (Gaia, Distingo, Tenkoku, Morph3d character and a lot of other stuff and my own code) my character seems to float:



I had a thought it was a character or controller issue but found out (through @Tryz ' excellent support) it had to be something else. Google found a hint here.

Checked the LIGHT_World in the scene and found:


When you reduce Shadow Bias from 0.5 to 0.1, problem solved:


So far the flickering hasn't returned. (All details in this document).

 

Can i also just point out that there is a complex and powerful shader asset that with the latest release adding snow support including Glitter effect that looks great... this can essentially make any texture look like snow... as it did this to my desert scene out of the box... worth a look, I will mention RTP is not the simplest or easy to use asset so you have been warned

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/5664

Further to this image, you'll be wanting fog, I use Tenkoku sky system which has these features and can't quite recall what's in vanilla Unity... but there is fog (RTP has fog settings as well - thought i haven't used it)

I just found this as well.. it's a little costly but seems to have everything you might need, umm but read the reviews, it a bit old and has some issues.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/13316

 

Yep, Distingo already applied. I'll tweak the settings a bit more.
Scion does all the instant pretty stuff. Simple skybox is used for now.
I dont like speedtrees, so unity trees are used. As well as AQUAS lite and Turbo's full grass packs.

 

Gaia quickstart guide.

 

not sure if you quoted the wrong person, but I was replying to someone else.. I'm actually a texture artist as well, so I make my own, but thanks anyways.

 

Was just trying to help out with the winter scene yep wrong quote

 

Don't need Gaia, RTP and AFS for current project (but will for next or the one after) but do need HerdSim and Birdflock bundle. Thought I'd put them together for a bit of a test. I can really recommend all the packages. The herdsim is on sale at the moment and not hard to use. BTW if anyone has herdsim or birdflock bundle and has any problems getting them to run then change the editor settings to mix mode before importing and it seems to sort any possible problems out.

Just a few shots focusing mainly on the cattle and birds. They really make a difference.

You can see sparrows, sheep, seagulls, crows, chickens and butterfly's. Didn't add the cows. There are also rats in the scene wandering around as well.

A lot easier to set up everything than I thought.

Edit: uploaded but realise the shots are a bit far away. Hope you see the benefit though.

 

Hi, very nice update.

Just one thing, when I click create camera effects after my player is in the scene it then all goes black.

 

Try reducing or disabling the vignette effect on the FirstPersonCharacter object - its parented to the Player object.

They changed it one of the unity versions - but was never sure which one. On older versions it was set at 3.5. In 5.3.x i set it to 0.32. That would describe what you are seeing.

Can you let me know which version of unity you are using ?

 

Many purchased textures assets come with normal maps etc, but it seems the asset store is surprisingly thin on terrain textures that include those. That $5 snow one comes with 15 textures that all work together. It's kind of a shame there aren't more like that.

I do own Bitmap2Material, but I assume that's not going to yield ideal results and of course that's more work and tweaking that's required. But I can play with it.

I did do the free trial of gametextures.com a year and a half ago and luckily did grab a few terrain textures, so I at least have a few to play with.

It would seem that putting more terrain texture packs on the asset store with all the goodies for Distingo, etc. could be an opportunity for somebody, especially with the popularity of Gaia now.

 

I disable the vignette effect and it stays black. I am using version

Version 5.3.2f1 (e87ab445ead0) Personal

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 15:21:35 GMT

Branch: 5.3/release


Another thing is how can I improve the speed of the editor, I tried doing what you did in static, disabled the lighting but the blue progress bar was still at the bottom.

 

Open the Lighting window (Window > Lighting), scroll to the bottom, and and uncheck "Auto". Then just to be safe select the drop-down arrow on the "Build" button next to it, and select "Clear Baked Data", just in case you've got some lightmaps already baked. They can cause a lot of weird lighting issues if you bake them before finalizing the rest of your scene lighting.

 

I've just asked a question on the Distingo forum, and want to broaden it here...

Is it worth trying to keep your Windows Standalone game DX9 compliant? Have we moved far enough towards DX11 that it can be assumed the vast majority of our audience will have DX11?

It seems since the new consoles came out pretty much every PC game has been DX11 only. Which is a good thing. Like the shackles of an aging console generation have been thrown off the PC platform which shouldn't have had to be forced to be so downgraded in the first place, sorry that's a rant for another place.

Sorry if this seems off topic, but it's to do with using assets that are DX11 only (Post effects, water, sky, etc.). Since using Gaia you either make you environment look as good as it can (DX11), or cater to a lesser (wider) audience (DX9).

 

Thanks, that was a very handy piece of information.
It makes a big difference.

 

Hello Adam,

i happy for you when i see all customers with smiles but no rest for the warriors.

when is plan the next version and what ?

+++

 

LOL,

There are tons of new features that @AdamGoodrich has added.

• He is busy with tutorial videos for those
• He is keeping an eye on the current release to pick up from user feedback any major and minor bugs
• He has invited by Unity Technologies to be at the Unity Stand for GDC which will require lots of preparation
• He has several 3dparty packages that with his guidance is getting integrated
  
• and that is just what I know off

So I seriously doubt pumping out the next version is what is on his plate right at this moment
Check back on the forums regularly and I am sure he will let everyone here know the moment ha has anything to show regarding the next version.

Sure he still has lots of other things including being a human being with a family, so just chill, enjoy the current release

Relax, enjoy the current version and just be patient like all the rest of us

Cheers
Cobus

 

Agreed about never having to many tools... Lol, I have friends who rag on me for using TC, World Machine and Gaia , plus some tools I made .. to get the terrain that I want... I'm a picky SOB.. Love my tools. Now there are times, I just used TC, or just GAIA, and World Machine for non Unity games..

 

Yeah, I am picky too, especially with terrain...and especially about erosion and water flow, and all that. One reason i like WM and WC even more. Your friends can rag on you like but my guess is your results will show the care you took to get something acceptable to your standards.

 

I had this issue as well. I am also using UFPS in my project and I found out the issue was that HDR wasn't checked on the 2nd camera (it's a camera just for the weapons. Might take a look at HDR on your camera(s).

 

Gaia Fans and Adam,

I just thought I would share a link for a solution for doing keyword searches within a specific Unity forum thread. Unity's lack of a dedicated search function to allow you to search for keywords within a specific forum thread is just plain crazy....and there is no reason for it. I found this solution somewhere along my travels through the Unity forums and thought this Gaia thread is the perfect place to share this because it's now 90 pages and growing rapidly. Happy searching.

So here is the link:
http://forum.unity3d.com/search/1971443/?searchform=1&q=export&t=post&o=date&c[thread]=327342

Here is how it works:
- The first thing you'll note when you click the above link and go to the page is that you have the option to do a keyword search within the Gaia thread. See "Search Only in Thread:".....
- Type in your keywords and press Search
- The search results are a beautiful list of postings only within the Gaia thread specifically related to your search. And even better, when you click on one of the results, it takes you to the location of the post within the page.

Now here's the best part:
- Save the above link as a bookmark in your favorite browser and use it for any Unity forum thread you want to search.
- Note the last 6 digits in the URL, "327342" That is the ID number for the Gaia forum thread. You will find the specific 6 digit thread ID number on the 1st page of every Unity forum thread at the end of it's URL.
- Just copy the ID number from the thread you want, replace the Gaia ID number with your newly acquired ID and refresh the page. Now you can search within any Unity forum thread.
For example: 227497 is the ID number for Behavior Designer

Allan

PS: Adam, you may want to consider putting this link on your Gaia thread home page.

 

Thank you chaneya, works great.

 

I'm wondering, have you tried Motion Controller? Is Opsive better?

 

I seem to recall trying the web demo for this, but can't remember my exact impressions of it at the moment. But since I didn't buy it, I can only guess that it didn't meet my expectations. Although the feature list looks quite impressive. Controllers I actually own and have tried more extensively include the following:

Third Person Controller by Opsive (currently using)
Third Person Controller Template by Invector
Essential RPG/MMO Controller by Stand Off Software
3rd Person Controller + Fly Mode by Vinicius Marque
Complete Physics Platformer Kit by Icarus Studio
Action RPG-Starter Kit by Hitbear Studio
KAM3RA by Regress Software
Sword and Shield Animset Pro by Kubold (includes Playmaker 3rd person controller system)

So, I haven't tried them all technically, but quite a few.

 

Just to show you how powerful Gaia is I wrote a simple script that you can change the time of day lighting effects by dragging a slider




So just drop these files into your assets folder somewhere.

Then just add the TimeManager.cs to any game object.

You then have a slider that you can move from 0 -100
if the TimeOfDay is 0-30 it sets it to the Morning light
if the TimeOfDay is 31-60 it sets it to the Afternoon light
if the TimeOfDay is 61-80 it sets it to the EveningLight
if the TimeOfDay is 100 it sets it to the NightLight

This just goes to show you how much Adam really put into the new 1.5 and what you can do to extend the fun.

Now time to find a way to make cool transitions between the different lighting

Just wanted to share some fun I'm having with Gaia

Edited the TimeOfDayManager had some non working code but should work perfectly now