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

No clue how you did it, but when you add your Gaia Manager from the unity menu Window -> Gaia -> Show Gaia Manager ( I think that is how the menus are worded. Unity rebuilding project after power to the house went out for a few minutes.. ) I'm pretty sure it defaults to the default GaiaDefaults and GaiaManager. So they should have been there. Unless you added Gaia Manager some other way.

I would really recommend going through the tutorials. Even the 1.0 ones. Adam is still working to get all the 1.5 ones done. But it sounds like you are trying to do some things out of order and that is probably why not everything is making sense to you.

Honestly, I don't mean to sound like I'm just pushing you to Adam's videos. But they really really are helpful if you go through them all. Everything is really easy once you get used to working with everything.

 

Open the Gaia resources file. You can put your textures in there.

 

Apologies for coming across unappreciative for your help. 5:30am here in South Aus and I should have been in bed 7 hours ago. Tomorrow night (tonight) I'll follow the videos in full. Cheers!

 

Hehe - I am from Sth Oz from the Adelaide Hills. You need to tuffen up Also - take a look at the tutorials - they will help a lot

 

Good day everyone, I am having some difficulties from changing those textures from GaiaResources before but after watching adam's video tutorials, I made it. But there are questions that I need to be answered, Why is it that sometimes that my gameobject (houses, villages, farm) aren't appearing when I hit the spawn button? - tress and textures are there but no houses to be found. Another thing is the river, I can't make one even though I cut some area in the mountains where I can place it. A little advice or help is much appreciated. Thank you.

 

Still awake. Out on the Murray, here. Loving these rains

Will do, and cheers.

 

All spawning is controlled by Spawn Criteria. Use the visualiser to view and tweak this. There are now multiple videos that demonstrate this, and more coming. The cool thing is - once you work out how it works once - the rest all work in much the same way.

Please check the video on stamp blend modes. You can take a river stamp, invert it, and select subtract height to embed it into the terrain.

 

Adam, not sure if you saw my last post with images. I was asking about your screenshotter. Any way to make it capture the whole play window? I use ultra wide screen and use maximize on play (primarily to prevent a bug of unity slowing to a crawl when in play mode)

 

I see, so the river should be same level as the water outside ? what if i wanted a calm river flowing from the top of the mountain with a 40-50 degree, will this be applicable to create one ?

 

Hey guys, do you know how to fix these problems:
- There is a dark spot near the sun (idk if that is a moon or a shadow of it)
- See those trees far away from me, i know that there is a grass there but why isn't it appearing ?

 

If I understand your question correctly, you want to select the terrain in the heirarchy, then in the inspector select the configuration section (a little gear symbol on the terrain inspector window). Raise the detail distance there. I think it's at 150 by default.

 

Just set it to the resolution you intend to screen shot at ie and it should be fine. The default settings just happen to match my development environment

I will look into this however - it seems like a simple thing to implement. Intend to do a 1.5.3 patch release in the next few days. Will see if i can get it in.

 

Gaia provides river stamps that you can use - and it you want to explore stencil based stamping you can have these river stamps conform to the terrain.

Gaia does not however provide a full river system. I am considering making one at a future date - and if I do it will be a separate asset as there is quite a lot of work involved to do it to a level that I would consider good.

 

Oh. I must not have seen a setting somewhere for changing that. I will look around for it when I am in there again.

 

Go spline based. It's the only way man!

 

I have a cunning plan

 

Go to terrain settings and check detail distance...

 

Normally I doubt people when they say that. But Gaia is an example of your cunning plans. So I have great faith in that statement.

 

How can i fix the dark spot opposite to the sun in my previous post ?

 

Alright guys, i dnt know if this is the place to ask question but, i used Gaia and easyroads3d to make terrain and used sectr to slice and stream terrain...
M using cartoon town and farm asset of Manufactua K4 for trees and terrain textures.
Terrain is 2048x2048 size sliced it to 4x4.
before slicing my FPS on mobile device was around 35-40 after slicing and using stream it fell to 20-23 fps.
I read post of @Shaen67 of slicing terrain with stream was helpfull.
M i missing something here...?
Btw Gaia is the best asset....

 

I'm not sure, but it certainly isn't a Gaia issue, so this might not be the best place to keep asking about it. You're in a better position to examine your scene for possible causes than we are, so try hiding or disabling things until it goes away. You might also try using a clean camera, with no added effects, just to see if it's caused by an image effect.

Have you tried slicing to 2x2? There's bound to be some overhead managing multiple terrains. If it's higher than what you're gaining by having smaller terrains, you'll see a net FPS drop. Look for a sweet spot. If there isn't one, maybe slicing the terrain isn't the solution you need for your situation.

 

Hmm... so i made an innocuous change to the default stamp width and height values in 1.5.2 - and totally broke the random terrain generator. Fix will be coming through tomorrow... just as soon as I work my way backwards thru the calculations and work out how to do it... argh. While I am there I will play with it a little bit more - there was more I wanted to do but never did due to the push the get 1.5.0 out. EDIT: Found the bug - fix and some nice improvements coming tomorrow

To fix make the following change to line 691 in GaiaSessionManager.cs:

Code (CSharp):

1. float fullHeight = stamper.m_height * 4f;

Also I have been busy doing more tutorials - there are still plenty more to do and some more will be delivered tomorrow as well.

What I want to do is run through the entire system end to end. What I found is that if I try to describe every thing I tend to forget stuff - or miss features - so just follow the videos through as you will see me do the same thing multiple times in different videos.

Also, I tend to chop and change a bit. Because the system works basically the same way for all resources and all spawner types - there are things that you might see in the tree spawner video that are just as applicable to texture, detail and game object spawning.

Here are the new ones:

QuickStart Guide:

Spawner Overview:

Texture Spawning:

Detail Spawning:

Tree Spawning:

 

Ok... so there were some questions about rivers... and i was playing with the random terrain generator.. and the question about rivers made me think... check this...

The actual process was - generate a random terrain - then choose a river stamp - normalise it - invert it - make the operation a stencil - set it to -90m (or however deep you want it to be etched into the terrain at its deepest) - make a distance mask to blend it into the terrain - then stamp.

You can do this yourself and have full control... or you can have the random terrain generator do it for you and roll the dice - update coming in 1.5.3











River stamp config:



Made entirely with the assets that come with Gaia

 

Hi Adam,

Been a while since i did much testing etc, Just wondering from the before mentioned river blending, you say one step is Invert it (Invert the river?, wouldn't a river stamp already be the right way?) and then make a stencil... I see the option you've selected Stencil Height.. just wondering what that mode does that different to a normal stamping process?

Hey also have you had any questions or feedback about people using EasyRoads3D and how they can get the road to continue seamlessly between tiles/Streaming? Streaming and EasyRoads are probably my biggest concern going forward as i'm thinking big

FYI i made my riverbed in my gorge level also by getting a river stamp (A piece of the amazon from terrain.party i think it was) and blending it in photoshop with the exported Heightmap from GAIA so was not a true GAIA created terrain unfortunately, still seemed the easiest at the time (all in one texture/stamp i could see roughly the results) Oh and EasyRoads does rivers and any spline based paths you want actually and conforms the terrain or the terrain to it so almost no need to include something yourself!

 

Hi @SerdeeneilNakpilMerin,

That black spot normally is because the camera far clipping plane is too near. Increase and decrease this to see what I mean. If you decrease it the spot just gets bigger. Re the grass and scenery I agree with the advice of @jpeltola a few posts back.

Hope this helps.

 

@ZenMicro I made the terrain with Gaia populated it with trees and objects... then made roads with easyroads and then sliced them.. had to try easyroads with already sliced terrains.. playing and exploring both tools so far

 

I'd be appreciative to hear how you go with it, Just wondering as with a single terrain I have the road end quite roughly near the edge, so no idea if with two adjacent terrains loaded at once (and then stitched with whatever tool I have at the time) weather the road objects can be then be easily connected within EasyRoads3D to be seamless and even allow for moving the joined area around a bit, like make a crest in the road at the terrain seam for example.

So you are using Sectr... Did you use it to slice your terrain and did it cut the road at that point and easyroads can handle this? or maybe you finalized the road already?

 

Thank you everyone, I will play with the settings then.

 

There is no culling. The parent GameObjects (i.e. with name "Rock Pile 1", "Small Farm 1" are created but there are no children below them. Some objects are spawned and you can see the children in the Hierarchy.
Plases have a look at the screenshot.

When you look into the Hierarchy in "Spawned_GameObjects" you see a list of spawned items. All of them are "empty" (no childs) except "Rock Pile 2", which is also visible in the terrain. The others are "empty" and (very interesting) seem to have a position below the surface (as you see with "Medium Farm 1") .

I am using Gaia 1.5.2, which is the latest downloadable in the asset store.

 

It is mysterius that the parent gameObjects (like Rock Pile 1, Small Village 2 etc) are created, but they have no children. So if there is not enough space for a spawn, would Gaia create the empty Parent GameObject anyways?

 

Testing 25 terrains 5x5, with TerrainComposer, Relief Terrain Pack and Gaia

 

I wanted to chime in and talk about a new plugin I'm making for Gaia called Leaf System Pro.
I call it a "Smarticle" system, as it acts like a particle system in some ways, but it's a full on physics simulation.

It has:
Built in object pooling
Built in frustum based occlusion culling
Built in re-spawning
PBR dual sided leaves
Realtime shadows
Custom Wind system which integrates with Unity Wind Zones
3D spatial sound effects per leaf
Custom integrated into Gaia

Here are a few videos:
Gaia demo

Setting up in Gaia

I have a thread in the forums about this:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wip-leaf-system-pro.390360/

Thanks!

 

OMG

@AdamGoodrich

And you were worried about the noises from cats and dogs ruining your video? How am I supposed to get through these ones you made with that God awful accent?!?!

 

If the children are empty then it means that none were spawned. As part of the spawn pre-initialisation I create all these objects so that the spawn rule has somewhere to parent them. As they are just invisible placeholders I don't position them in any way.

I think I mentioned before - use your visualiser on the terrain - it will show you how each of the game objects view that terrain - the slope limitations are relatively strict - less that 10 or so degrees from memory - as you don't want buildings placed in a way that looks unnatural. You can easily change this by changing the slopes in the spawn criteria - either in the visualiser (where you will get immediate visual feedback), or in the associated resource file itself.

 

Hehe - yeah - coming to ya all the way from Straya mate I listen back to them and think strewth - another mistake - but I just chuck another shrimp on the barby, chug back on my beer, and hope that some people might find them useful

 

The stencil stamp operation is a rather interesting one. It allows you to very precisely change the height of the terrain (+/-) X meters where ever it is applied. I have supplied a 'For Masked Stencil' stamp in the adhoc stamp directory. When used in conjunction with a mask it is a great way to etch paths for example.

So what I do is invert the river so that its lowest point is now the highest point - then I normalise it - as otherwise we will never get the exact height modification we want applied because stamps often don't use the full 0..1 strength range, and then I stamp it.

The stencil modifies the height of the terrain based on the strength of the stamp at that point multiplied by the height differential you chose to apply.

By setting a negative differential then what you are essentially doing is etching that river channel into the terrain.

Whats interesting about stencils is that they preserve the detail underneath them.

Another use for them is to raise or lower the overall terrain by a specific height.

 

how do you get your textures to go to the very edge of the terrain?

 

I never have issues with them going to the edge..That almost looks like some type of fitness issue or something.. Looks like you have sand going all the way to the edge and the cliff is blending. Is it that way all around your tile? Hard to get a good feel for what is going on when all we can see is that tiny section. Also, what size is your terrain tile? Wonder if there is some sort of size issue or something.

 

Thanks for the hints. Now I managed to control the spawning. I played around with the terrain parameters and the spawn rules. And I also managed to add other objects to the process as well. Very good!

 

Same problem for me

 

I have seen this a few times - will check my algorithm - could be missing the last step.

 

I'm just creating a new scene.
Then with Gaia Manager clicking create terrain and show stamper.
Stamp a few stamps
Then with Gaia manager click create spawners
Then click spawn on the Coverage Texture spawner

Not changing anything from GAIA defaults.

And yes this happens for the entire tile on each border.

I am not changing any fitness settings etc.

Another view of a freshly create terrain:

 

I just reproduced it - it happens on two of the borders - will focus on a priority fix for this today.

 

Thanks Adam

 

The afternoon lighting adds such nice realism to the scenes
Well done

 

@AdamGoodrich, what version do we get then ? and will this be released on the end of this month ? is the stamper volumes coming this end of the month too ?

 

Thanks Adam!

 

The stamp pack volumes are not part of Gaia. They are separate assets that plug into Gaia. Two are already available on my website and are still waiting for Asset Store approval. A third will be on my website this weekend and at that time it too will be submitted to the asset store. Links are in my signature to the forum thread for the packs and my website.

 

Not really sure what you are asking.

Additional stamp packs based on real world locations are being developed by Backwoods Gaming - you can buy them now direct on his site - or later when they are approved by Unity. They are cheap and when I did some scenes with them I absolutely loved them

With 150 stamps already in Gaia, plus the ability to further shape them with perlin, billow and ridged noise based masks, plus scale, rotate, and blend them in an unlimited number of ways, plus randomly combine them to create entirely new and interesting scenes with the the random terrain generator I think I have made a decent contribution to what you can do already. You are limited only by your creativity.

With respect to the little fixes mentioned in the past few pages - I have posted the code changes needed to patch your copy of Gaia manually.

I plan to push a new version in the next day or so - when I am happy with the latest set of fixes. They are minor but well worth having.

 

I know multi tiling will be done when it is ready, not rushing that at all, could I please put a request in for consideration though?

Would it be possible to have a tool to make the north and south edges match height wise and the same with east and west, so if a large multi tile terrain were to be wrapped around the northern piece would match height wise to the south?

This would really help with making earth-like worlds