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

I don't believe Gaia works with multi-terrains yet. You have to wait for it to be released.

 

I don't know what your aiming for but from the pics and description it is making me think of 'No One Lives Forever' and that is still one of the best games ever! If that's the case you can't go far wrong.

 

Hi Teila, thanks for confirming. Perhaps I can ask a different question, or the same question a different way.

If I position a terrain piece at 0,0,0 and use the texture spawner's Fit to Terrain, it isn't painting all the way to the corner. I can manually paint on the problem areas though. Is there anything I can do?

 

Hi Adam,
I bought Gaia today, but hat some problems regarding spawning of GameObjects. When spawning a reasonable number of objects are just empty GameObjects. So the "Small Village 2" rule produces an empty GameObject.Same also with other Objects like Rock Pile or Small Farm.
Interesting is that some objects are generated and some not. So I have Rock Piles and Small Farms, but not all generated contain GameObjects.
Any hints, what I am doing wrong?

Unity3d: 5.2.3f1 Personal
Best
Mic

 

@AdamGoodrich, Is there a writeup anywhere that talks about improving performance or making changes to increase performance? I did a basic scene going through the quick start and I got 1.5FPS. After removing ground details it jumped up to a respectable amount but was still lower than I would like.

 

Yep, read the Unity manual. Also, Packt has a great book on optimizing in Unity. Google it and you will get a nice list. Worth the money.

Gaia is not an optimizing tool but you can find many on the asset store.

Also, lots of hints on this forum thread with regard to using Speedtrees and grasses.

 

You have very bad problems. Run the profiler. I am not sure anything is going to help you if only a terrain is that low. How big is your terrain? If it is HUGE than that is the problem. Otherwise, check your hardware.

 

Hey,

What needs to be understood is that Gaia uses normal standard Unity terrain.
It takes it and does what would take hours/weeks/months in several minutes.
That is it.
Everything that Gaia does can be done by hand, if you have the skill and the time.

There are many good assets that assist with optimization of all aspects of Unity.

The name says what it does.

" Gaia - AAA terrain generator, procedural texturing, planting and scene creation "

It is not like @AdamGoodrich can now take it upon himself to assist each and every unity user how to optimize there project.

Unity 5.4 is looking promising concerning features that assist with better performance for SpeedTree for instance.
So Unity also knows it's own shortcomings and they keep pushing the margin.

@AdamGoodrich task and what people are buying from him is Gaia, not the rest of the engine, and that is rather what I think everyone wants him to build and improve on.

Cheers
Cobus

 

I wasn't blaming Gaia for the low performance. I was just asking if there was any writeups where someone may have specifically addressed performance optimization after using Gaia. I'll keep looking around at Unity optimizations. Thanks.

 

Howdy,
Not saying that at all, just suggesting that the AS must be looked at as a whole to try find solutions
@Teila has some good suggestions regarding the profiler and such that could assist with a process of elimination pinpoint maybe what is actually culprit.
You see if you have a more clear question with more specifics then many users here can give advice for they might all have had the same stumbling blocks

 

A lot depends on your terrain.. If you have a hilly terrain with a lot of slopes, you wont get as many (if any of the spawns for the POI spawners (village, farm, rock piles, etc) because they take up more space and require a smaller slope. There was something Adam suggested a page or two back about spawn distance, maybe cutting in half or something like that. Can't remember the exact field, but someone else was having the same issue in the last couple of days.

Another thing you can do, which I always did in the past, is increase the slope in the fitness settings. Oh and one last thing, when you stamp your terrain, set the height in the stamper to 5 or below. You may not get hills as high as you did previously, but more of the terrain will be fit for spawning and more stuff should spawn.

I ran into the same thing when I was testing the Mountain and Volcano Stamp Pack that I just submitted to the asset store. I ran the spawners, but very few farms and villages spawned because of the slopes. But if I would have taken the same stamps and lowered the height more, then I would more than likely get more of them to spawn.

 

I think what they were trying to say is Gaia doesn't really have anything to do with your performance. It is all in how much you spawn. And that is really no different than if you had spawned it manually, with Terrain Composer, or with any other tool to deal with your terrain.

At this point, nobody has written any kind of guides. But even if they did, someone who didn't use Gaia at all could use the same guide and take advantage of whatever is instructed in their terrain as well.

I think right now Adam had his hands pretty full just trying to support the things that Gaia does do which makes it a little bit difficult to field some of the non-Gaia stuff and with the thread getting huge, probably good to keep things as close to Gaia related as possible.

With that being said, I would be happy to host any tutorials that anyone wants to put together on doing different things to get the most out of your Gaia experience at BackwoodsGaming.com or even a page of useful links if you find something that would be useful to the Gaia community. Just send me a private message and I'll check out whatever you want me to share there. It might be something Adam may want to do as well once he can get some time to dedicate to the Procedural Worlds site.

At any rate, good luck with the optimization search. I think a lot of us can relate that to a Neverending Story.. Just tell me where I can pick up a dream dragon to speed through the journey! rofl

 

I'm currently doing an app for Android phones (with google cardboard) using the Gaia terrain creator. I tried it on the phone with the randomly generated terrain. My current project's content's is very minimal. When testing it out without the terrain, it's not as laggy. But when I try it out with the terrain, it lags so much. Any suggestions on how I can optimize it? Thanks!

I am new to Unity and to Gaia so apologies if this is kind of a stupid question.

 

Some things I learned while trying to optimize my game are as follows:

• Lots of grass is a killer. Reduce detail density and detail distance to improve this
• Shadows are a killer. Reduce shadow distance, shadow quality, and other shadow settings. This can give a huge boost
• If your terrain doesn't have to be super high-resolution, you can gain some performance by dropping terrain resolution down to 513. Warning: You will have to re-generate your terrain though as this wipes it out.
• If you have your terrain hemmed in by mountains at the extremes be sure to reduce your spawning distance otherwise you will get thousands of things spawning on the other sides of those mountains that you'll never see.
• Extra SpeedTree colliders can be removed and LODs can be tweaked for better performance. You can also tell SpeedTree not to cast/receive shadows on higher LODs.
• Lots of high-resolution textures could be a performance hit as well. The rock samples in the Gaia package are 4096x4096, which to me is major overkill for a rock.
• Unity Player resolution is a factor as well. 1080p is often not that big of a deal compared to 720p so reducing to 720p can help
• Also, your camera field of view and camera clipping distance is also a factor and can affect performance. Lowering FOV and clipping range will improve things.

Another thing I learned is that the current terrain tree system is flawed, especially with SpeedTree. I can get better performance with more SpeedTrees in my scene if I manually place them as game objects rather than spawn them as terrain trees. Hope these suggestions help. If I remember anything else, I'll update this post.

 

Hmmm... Most unusual. Are you sure they aren't just getting culled ? Try zooming up close to them.

Which version of Gaia are you using ? There are some upload issues with 1.5.2. I am wondering if this is somehow related.

 

This is very unusual. Even my mid 2012 retina mac does 20-30fps+ on the default setups provided by Gaia.

Its indicative that something else is wrong - duplicated cameras - multiple waters or something else. It could also be that you are just developing on really low end hardware.

Please try the quick start guide on a fresh project. Let me know how you go. Am happy to dig deeper with you if necessary.

 

It is not a stupid question but it is in the wrong place. If the terrain is laggy, it is not due to Gaia, it is due to your mobile device not being able to handle such a complex terrain. Remember, terrain made with Gaia is going to have a lot of vertices, lots of bumps. If you put grass on there and trees, then even worse.

I suggest you read the Unity manual about optimizing for mobile, and ask in a forum category more applicable. Your question is about general optimization on a mobile phone, not with Gaia.

I don't make mobile phone games but the only suggestion I can give you is to use a simple terrain. Gaia might not be right for mobile phones unless you are extremely careful about what you create.

Reducing terrain resolution is a fabulous idea. My guess is you are using way too much for an android phone.

 

This is a lot of great info. I appreciate you taking the time to outline this. Exactly the type of feedback I was looking for.

 

There is a lot more further up in the forum as well.

 

When doing VR you are doing double the work, and mobile phones can already tend to struggle.

Hints:

* Make the terrain smaller
* Make it flatter and run a smooth on it - this will reduce the number of polys
* Shrink the textures provided by Gaia (this is a simple config change on your textures) - perhaps 256k - they are currently 2mb
* No grass or very minimal grass
* No water
* No camera post FX
* Not sure about which lighting is best
* Use mobile oriented assets - the assets provided with Gaia are desktop oriented assets

Start with something bare - just a terrain with light weight textures and then build it up from there.

Most semi modern mobiles are more than capable of running a Unity terrain - but you really need to think about how to optimise it.

As others have said - also read up and mobile optimisation.

Gaia doesn't care what type of assets you throw at it - whether they are mobile oriented or desktop oriented - it place them regardless.

 

I will look into this today - looks like its not texturing all way to edge for some reason.

 

Hello ,today i have buy Gaia and install it on a new Project i have create a littel TestIsland.I must say that is a very nice asset and save me a lot Time.But i have a Problem,i have create via Spawner the Island with the normal 4 ground Textures they are included.So i have add 2 new Ground textures on the Terrain and on the GaiaResource,so when i will painting manual my Unity crash.Have any one a Idea?

 

Here is the video tutorial on resource management in Gaia :

That and the documentation should be a good starting point.

I will be doing more video tutorials in the coming days and weeks.

 

Thx for your fast answer i will take a look on it

 

Here the first in a lovely series of images from the upcoming stamp packs from Backwoods Gaming.



Check the rest out at the Backwoods Gaming forum

 

I asked the Prism author about the fog ranges.. turns out there was a bug and he suggested a patch.. just lovely

 

Just found a bug in game object scaling. It allows you control the minimum and maximum scale a game object instance can be scaled at

1.5.3 will have the fix - in the mean time if its bothering you

Replace this on line 771 in SpawnRule.cs

Code (CSharp):

1. localScale = gpi.m_minScale + (gpi.m_scaleByDistance.Evaluate(localDist / boundsRadius) * (gpi.m_maxScale - gpi.m_minScale));

with this:

Code (CSharp):

1. localScale = gpi.m_minScale + (gpi.m_scaleByDistance.Evaluate(localDist / boundsRadius) * spawnInfo.m_spawner.GetRandomFloat(0f, gpi.m_maxScale - gpi.m_minScale));

 

Here is a link with advice from someone who seems to know about mobile optimization:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/the-secret-to-great-terrain-on-mobile.305899/

Jesper.

 

At least you've caught it

 

Hey. I just bought Gaia after watching your Youtube videos. Trying to get a basic terrain working. For some reason, the progress bar is always stuck on 0.0%. Any clue why this would happen?

 

Have you tried removing the existing spawners and recreating them through the Gaia Manager?

 

No I haven't. I created a new project though and it worked (blown away by how cool this tool is). Now I need to figure out why it doesn't work for my older project.

Update: I re-imported Gaia into my project and now it is working!

 

@AdamGoodrich

Hello,

Is it possible to turn off Bounds_ColliderCache spawing for GameObject spawner?

I'm spawning a lot of objects like leaves, rocks, small branches, debris etc. on the ground.
I can't use terrain detail for that (which is super fast when it comes to spawning) because it can't (as far as I know) use standard shader/custom shader.

Spawning a lot of standard GameObjects takes time (while terrain detail spawning is super fast) and I'm wondering if collider spawning makes this process longer. Is it possible to turn it off? I can change the script but I need to know what to change inside it. Would it make the spawn process faster?

Is it even possible to spawn/keep few milions of GameObjects in a single scene? GPU instancing and LOD would help with rendering but I'm wondering about general scene and editor performance with that numbers.

I hope that Unity will add a pipeline for handling large numbers of standard objects on terrain/other surfaces soon (maybe some arrays instead of keeping them in the hierarhy as standard GameObjects?). AFAIK They are working on something already. A solution to have milions of different objects placed on terrain/other meshes" and instancing them (management, culling, lod).
Here is the video where Joachim Ante is talking about that at 57:37 :

 

playing with Gaia and Distingo

 

Your work is AAA TOP class man

 

Hello everybody,

I find Gaia is a great tool , every day I learn more. anyone of you know this project ?

http://madewith.unity.com/games/eastshade

I wonder if such a really beautiful landscapes with Gaia and other programs are also possible what do you think ?
I see many beautiful and good screenshots but I think that should be an incentive for all

 

Yeah i have seen it - its really beautiful - and possible for us all - its just about getting the skills to do it

 

Hi There,

First off, wow! What an awesome asset! Thank you for your time an effort.

Second, I saw you mentioned a release coming up where Gaia will be handling multiple terrains. I am wondering what that will look like. Right now I am trying to do multiple terrains with Gaia as it is and I'd like to stick as close as possible to the workflow I will have once you release. So far, I am attempting to do a new session for each terrain (still getting there). Is there a best practices way to go? Is there a way I can work now without having to duplicate my work too much?

Again, thanks for such a wonderful product. While using it I feel like I have a whole design team working for me.

Boysenberry Payne

 

Your images blow me away as usual - your work is incredible

 

Thanks - the reward is truly in the community and the amazing things I see being done with it

The next major feature release of Gaia will support multi tiles. If you peak closely under the covers you will see that some of it is there and implemented already.

I am open to suggestions here - as have not started in earnest yet - still need to get tutorials for current release done - plus there is GDC in a few weeks.

Two approaches I think - one is create from scratch and also create all the tiles - and the other is to ingest existing multi tiled terrains - I already have the code for that - so should be no issues there. Someone suggested yesterday that I also create an ability to take larger terrain tiles and split them into smaller tiles.

So from a work flow perspective - if I add support for all that then you should be good.

I don't anticipate that any of the other flows would change much - spawners are and have always been area based - will just allow them to support larger areas.

 

Not currently - that was my cunning and elegantly simple way of detecting collisions between things. You can delete them after spawning.

I will look at re-homing where are parented when they spawn - this is definately slowing spawning down.

Not really - don't believe unity is going to handle this at all well. The issue here is unity. The next issue is performance - each one will make a draw call i think - and this will slow your performance down to a crawl. There are tools that allow you to combine meshes etc to improve this.

 

That's great insight, thank you.
Good luck at the GDC, I hope you get tons of recognition.
I am excited about the tutorials as well, you do a great job with them.

I will be using the SECTR suite to break up the terrains and stream them runtime. I also use Terrain Stitcher for matching the terrains to each other. For me being able to automate the process of building and saving the session info for each terrain would be nice, e.g. a way to keep track of different terrains in a session or to keep track different sessions that are related together.
Right now I am using naming, etc to keep track, which is fine for 4 tiles, but when you starting talking a 19x19 grid it gets a little much.

Thanks again, truly great work!

Boysenberry Payne

 

Maybe in the near term, but if they stick to their plan, as stated in the Unite video, they'll eventually separate tree/detail/object instancing from the terrain. They want everything from spawning and storing instances, to LOD, culling, and rendering, to be handled independently from the terrain engine, and off the main processing thread, decreasing the impact of massive numbers of spawned terrain objects, and allowing you to use the same workflows on mesh terrains for instance. It sounds like they're going for something like World Streamer as well, where assets get loaded and unloaded on demand, rather than all at once. Of course how well they'll accomplish this and when is anyone's guess, but I'm betting it won't happen until the Unity 6 release cycle at the earliest.

 

Kia ora

Has anybody gotten away with using Ceto and Aqua in the same project, Ceto is great for open oceans but not so for lakes and rivers nor does it have a visible plane to see the correct height for lakes above sea level that form the source for waterfalls, or a way to use more than one instance at different heights

 

love Gaia

 

Having fun with Gaia as well. It's come along nicely Adam =) Keep up the great work!

 

Bump

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ga...nd-scene-creation.327342/page-91#post-2534241
Nobody knows how to spawn GO's in a dungeon?

 

That first picture looks like you have a tree house... or a house tree... fun

 

WOW, so nice to come here and every time just seeing such GREAT results.
Very inspirational for everyone I am sure