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GeNa - Sophisticated procedural content spawner

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by AdamGoodrich, Oct 22, 2016.

  1. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Yeap, I have thought about it a lot and there are some other down sides as well, but I think the upside of building a searchable knowledge base, and also getting a ticketed response are probably worth it.

    And case in point - here is one of the key downsides - my message is now on the previous page, and you would be surprised at how many people do not bother to go back even a few pages to look for things.

    Gena now has 11 pages, Gaia has 176 pages of non-threaded forum, and so on - its essentially become untenable.

    Hey everyone,

    I have a bunch of assets and a bunch of different communication channels - youtube, twitter, facebook, email, and multiple unity forums (which don't give me notifications), so I miss questions, and that's not the level of support I want to provide.


    So - if you want a response from me then please go to my website at http://www.procedural-worlds.com/, click on Community and then Support. These request are tracked and won't fall though the cracks. There is also a knowledge base on the support system so chances are your question will already have been answered.

    While you are on my home page please also subscribe to my newsletter. Once a month I will be delivering update news, reviews, tips & tricks and any cool freebies I come across, and some that I create specifically for my subscribers.

    I will be using the unity forums now more for showing off cool stuff or making announcements.
     
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  2. TeagansDad

    TeagansDad

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    I'm always surprised by how many people don't even bother to scroll half a dozen posts back on the same page. Sometimes the answer to the question they just posted is literally just off the screen.
     
  3. Shadowing

    Shadowing

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    @TeagansDad a forum is super bad for feeding information. Its unorganized information. Why would anyone want to do that.

    Just curious when the next Gena patch is coming out to fix the warning message.
    I haven't even tried Gena yet. I'll be working on my worlds here pretty soon. So hopefully I'll get a good use out of Gena on building my worlds to look realistic.
     
  4. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    Warning messages aren't going to cause any issues. They are usually simply just that, warnings to let you know that certain classes are being deprecated or changed in a future version. I'm sure any fixes for warning messages will be put into a combined update. The way Unity changes S*** in releases, if publishers released a new version every time warning messages popped up, we'd be downloading assets all the time. Critical error fixes or new features are usually when warning messages get patched as well.
     
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  5. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Its harmless, I have fixed it in dev and will put a patch out soon!
     
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  6. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Made with... ZERO coding!

    Environment created with Gaia & GeNa and making great use of the CTS weather capability!!



    Don't forget Gaia and GeNa are 25% off until the end of the month.

    Tomorrow I will do a "how it was made" video for those that would like to learn :)
     
  7. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Here is the how to video for the previous post - GeNa was used to embellish the environment, but the post itself is more about the range of assets that were used.

     
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  8. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    I am very pleased to announce that very shortly I will be introducing 3rd Party spawner and tutorial packs for GeNa.

    These packs, which I am not sure how I will price yet (they will be cheap), will be set up for some of the more popular content packages on the asset store - and will be pre-configured to allow you to take full advantage of those assets with GeNa. Its all very well to have great rocks or great buildings - but filling out your world with them is a whole new level of challenge.

    So for example, in some of my GeNa videos I show off some cool cliff building. The pack for that asset will have a whole range of different setups to create different types of rock formations as well as a video tutorial and the relevant education to get environments like these for yourself.

    Rock Walls 3.jpg

    Who wouldn't like to create environments like this in just a few clicks?

    Sure you could do it yourself - and I encourage you to - but for those people who want the convenience of having it done for you - these packs will help you to get up and running super quickly.

    I would be very interested in hearing from the community about any packs you would like me to focus on - and in the mean time am in the process of putting together the first sample.

    Will show off some of these in the next week or so!
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2017
  9. docsavage

    docsavage

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    This sounds really positive. This combined with 3dForge blueprints could be a winner.

    BTW not to pester - alright maybe a bit as I've mentioned this before but I really think an 'add explosive force' to the physics settings could make some real nice scenes and be a great feature. Instant debris even asteroid fields etc (if the gravity not permanent for asteroid fields etc).

    :)
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2017
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  10. docsavage

    docsavage

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    Can't believe Gena is only 25 euros at the moment. Real bargain for a mega useful tool.
     
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  11. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Yep its a bit crazy.

    I took another AAA studio who is working on a MMO through it yesterday. This same game was put on stage with Unity at one of their keynote's as an example of what you can do with Unity.

    They loved it. The biggest benefit they see is the speed it will bring to their level design process.

    Sounds very cool :)

    You know - I had this chat with this amazing guy who calls himself "Cobus" earlier today ... ;)
     
  12. docsavage

    docsavage

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    With this and blueprints levels will almost build themselves.
     
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  13. S4G4N

    S4G4N

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    Thanks for the compliments;)

    I really believe there is HUGE unlocked potential with the simple to use BLUEPRINT system.
    It expands the package value huge and way beyond packages that does not do this.
    selling themed village/house packages that the user can just drag and drop, maybe include a few village layouts with the package to either use as is or to learn from to see how to make your own.

    Cheers
    Cobus
     
  14. Barritico

    Barritico

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    Hi.

    I am a user of Gaia, Pegasus, Gena and CTS. With Gena I started very recently and the first "problem" has arisen, which is surely mine.

    When I perform a local spawn of trees, they are "floating". They are not "nailed" to the land nor even on the flat lands. Same is some parameter that I'm not using well.

    On the other hand, and as a suggestion, it would be great if it could be used with people. I might as well be able to and do not know how to do it myself.

    Thank you very much.
     
  15. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Support is here : https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home

    And if you take a little browse through the knowledge base you will see the answer to your question ;)

    Btw, GeNa can spawn any prefab - so you can also use it to place people / npc's, animals etc. I have even used it to place particle effects.
     
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  16. Barritico

    Barritico

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    Surely my time to look for it is much broader than the author's in answering it. But there's no problem. I look for it. And if I do not find it ... I'll ask again. ;)

    Thank you.
     
  17. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Am honored to have Jon O'Neal, Lead Environmental Artist from Crowfall talking about his experience Crowdfunding Crowfall, and with the Procedural Worlds toolset. In the environment section in the video below I was amazed by how deeply Gaia, GeNa, CTS and Pegasus were used in bringing the scene to life.



    And if you have not voted for CTS yet, please wander on over to the Unity Awards web site below and vote for us on in the "Best Tool" section - was an total blast to even be nominated :)

    https://awards.unity.com/2017
     
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  18. username132323232

    username132323232

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    Regarding the undo/redo request.

    Perhaps it would work better with the latest Unity version?
     
  19. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Hmm... I wish that were the case. Actually undo / redo is quite a difficult thing... i suppose let me explain.

    To have an undo you need to maintain a before and after state - and that inherently consumes memory.

    Prefabs - Undo is there already - it wont work after you press play though as it is non persistent (imagine how much of an unnecessary memory overhead would be if it were persistent!!).

    Terrain Grass / Trees - You need to backup all the underlying unity data structures and cache them - this slows things down - and on large environments can even crash machines due to the memory overhead.

    Perhaps an intermediate approach might be a good idea for future releases - i.e. leave it up to the user to decide if they want to incur the speed and memory overhead.
     
  20. username132323232

    username132323232

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    Thanks Adam. I hear you. Undo/redo is a pain and probably one of the most boring things to code :) But since you mentioned that you already had a working version, I thought that maybe it could be enabled for people who are not afraid to use it at their own risk :)

    BTW, does Unity crash consistently, or only with a huge number of new objects? For me, undo would be most important when I place 1-10 objects, so that's probably not a lot for Unity to handle. Perhaps enabling undo/redo for a small number of new objects would be good compromise?

    Even one undo level is much better than zero :)
     
  21. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    It's not about the coding aspect - it was more a limitation of unity itself - ie how unstable it was.

    If you are spawning prefab based object - you are ready have it. Again with prefabs, you can also choose to not merge them on spawn - which means you will get a new cluster under a new parent on every spawn - when you are done you can choose which ones you want to keep.
     
  22. username132323232

    username132323232

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    Yes, I've been doing that. If I delete the unwanted clusters manually, the Spawner seems to be unaware of that. The Instances Spawned counters don't update. You can still hit "Delete Instances" even though there are no instances in the scene.
     
  23. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Yes - they are separate objects and GeNa does not track every other thing that could happen in your scene.
     
  24. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Hey Adam! I have some bushes.. that are big as trees somehow (they are scaled to 1)... and the gena min size is 1... how can I make my bushes smaller? =)
     
  25. StevenPicard

    StevenPicard

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    When are those Gena spawners you mentioned awhile ago coming to the Asset Store? :)
     
  26. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Uuhmm Gena is in the asset store...?
     
  27. StevenPicard

    StevenPicard

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    That's not what I am referring to. Adam mentioned about premade spawners for Gena. I already own Gena.
     
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  28. Jakub_Machowski

    Jakub_Machowski

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    Hello I would buy gena And I have one important question, If I prepare my scene with gena then copy that scene could I in that second scene replace prefabs I spawned, for example I spawned grass in level 1, in level 2 I would to have grass in the same place but other prefab for eexample burned grass. Is that possible by few click? thi is very important for us we have to replace prefabs for eample grass on winter grass on summer etc. the same with other prefabs.
     
  29. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Gena is awesome! The only problem I have atm is that I have to google what plants and trees grows where xD Im gonna post a picture soon of a p.o.i from my game!
     
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  30. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    As mentioned via support forum - but for the benefit of other people here - this is not something that GeNa can do.

    Can't wait to see it :)
     
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  31. recon0303

    recon0303

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    Gena is a great tool for WORLD, level design, but what do you mean you have to google where trees plants? go.. as a artist myself, you should always use reference, when doing any sort of art. concept art, reference, google what ever.

    Looking forward as well to Screens of your work. /cheers.
     
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  32. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Okay
     
  33. Arkade

    Arkade

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    Hi, enjoying playing with GeNa during #ProcJam! Figured out several of my problems (searching forum, website, etc) but still seem to have 2. Sorry if I'm being blind.

    1. Can one constrain to only spawn on certain physics layers? (e.g. stop trees spawning on trees!)

    2. Scale range for individual spawnable prefabs doesn't seem to be working for me.
    I set Placement Criteria scale 1->1 (so no variation) and 1 spawnable prefab with range 1->2 and disable Advanced scale nearest int. However, they only spawn at 1. If I change Placement Criteria, I get scale variation within that range. The one in the individual thing doesn't seem to affect -- which is a shame since I'm trying to spawn a range of mesh trees (from various asset packs) onto a mesh floor and they need individual tuning.

    Next, grass! Thanks, Rupert.
     
  34. mattis89

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    What kind of rock packs? --- I want to create mountains or this kind of rock wall as i see here...
     
  35. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    No - but have been thinking about doing that. GeNa wont spawn trees on trees unless you are doing something wrong. If they are terrain trees GeNa maintains a data structure that knows where they are and will avoid collisions based on the bounds you select. If you have however spawned them as GameObjects instead of terrain trees, then you will need to add colliders so that GeNa can detect them.

    This works fine as far as I know - drop me a message to https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home and some screen shots - will take a look and see if i can help to you to configure properly.
     
  36. Arkade

    Arkade

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    Option 3: I'm spawning GameObjects (with Colliders) onto non-Terrain (a mesh)!

    Obviously both answers are valid (boulders on boulders = desired behaviour vs. trees on trees = not so much).
    Obviously it needs something to say which are allowed. I have my mesh floor in a "SnowFloor" physics layer and anticipated putting my trees into a ScenaryStatic physics layer then excluding the latter from being targeted (what I've previously done with QuickBrush). To paint boulders, I'd allow painting to this layer (and either avoid trees or do it in the other order!).

    I can see other potential solutions (e.g. some flag in GeNa's prefabs to indicate what can be spawned on what) but think they might (a) get complicated quickly and (b) would be hard to make as artist friendly as much of the rest of your work strives to be. (Despite being a coder, I can still appreciate a tool being easy to approach and iterate with ;-) ) Still, I have hope you might contrive something that could work!

    Thanks, will do (later).
     
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  37. MoribitoMT

    MoribitoMT

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    Hi,

    I work on meshes. Texture masking / Color masking works on meshes ?
    For example, imagine a city roads and I want to add objects to all roads ( like garbage beans, etc... )
     
  38. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    No. I do not know how to get the color at some location on a mesh... so i cant support it. If anyone can show me how would be happy to add the capability.
     
  39. MoribitoMT

    MoribitoMT

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    Thanks for response.

    I play with Image Mask Settings, however it freezes unity every time. ( No errors or something, Unity just does freeze when try to spawn or visualize with gena if I use image mask, Unity 5.4.6 p1 )
     
  40. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Hmm.. i will test.. it works fine on terrain... but maybe on mesh it has an issue.
     
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  41. jeromeWork

    jeromeWork

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    Not had much love from the Procedural Worlds forum... is it not being used? Seems a shame as a real dedicated forum with different threads is so much better than Unity's single tread stream of consciousness...

    Anyways, I need help with spawning a structured array of materials e.g. a wall, in a single click.
    See: http://www.procedural-worlds.com/topic/spawning-a-wall-in-one-click/

    Any help would be much appreciated :)
     
  42. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Yeah - i saw your post - sorry for slow response - been super busy - and I tend prioritize people who use my ticketed support system first.

    I will answer this for you later today.
     
  43. mattis89

    mattis89

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    Hello! Is gena or gaia consuming alot of ram when they are in the hierachy? I dont think so myself but.. have to ask... cyz somewhere its disapparing..
     
  44. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    GeNa won't i don't think.

    Gaia's stamper can - it needs to back up the terrain so that you can undo it - but only happens if you are using stamper. After finishing with stamp just delete if a concern.

    Gaia's spawners can as it does in memory caching of the terrain, but this only happens during a spawn, and the memory is released immediately afterwards. Again, when finished with spawn just delete.
     
  45. jeromeWork

    jeromeWork

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    Thanks Adam, no huge rush but just bumping this in case it gets forgotten in your busy schedule. :)
     
  46. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    To be honest, the best thing you could do is open a support ticket on his website. As he is stated several times, this is how he prefers support requests because things tend to get lost here. Here's the direct link: https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home

    To the right of the search box, there is a link for creating a new ticket.

    While the forum there may or may not be super active, he checks the tickets from the support page regularly.
     
  47. jeromeWork

    jeromeWork

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    Thanks Shawn, guess I will go for the ticket option. I just wasn't thinking of my query as being that important (not really a bug or anything serious) and I kind of thought that other people would benefit from the response.
     
  48. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    No problem. If you take a look at his Gaia thread it is kind of crazy to try to find anything in there. I think that is what he is trying to solve with the ticket system and knowledgebase system. I have no clue what he is using to run the systems but I would guess using the ticket system makes it easier for him to turn support issues into knowledgebase articles. Or something along those lines. I think the big problem is probably going to get people to get on board with submitting their issues there because they are so used to doing it here on the forums with Gaia. While not nearly as big as the Gaia thread, the GeNa one is already 11 pages and even with a search, some people can't find issues that have already been posted. Me for instance. I totally suck at figuring out what to use for search parameters to find what I need. lol

    And I didn't mean to come off harsh or pushy if I did. My first thought when reading the reminder was that if it had been done with a ticket, it probably would have been answered by now. So was just trying to help you out by giving a gentle nudge. :)
     
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  49. jeromeWork

    jeromeWork

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    Not in the least, no offence caused :) I totally agree about how rubbish these Unity3D forum threads are for asset support. It's why I headed for the Procedural Worlds forum first. Every serious asset dev should have a dedicated forum with multiple, searchable threads.
     
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  50. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Yep.... am in a crazy busy patch and have a bunch of things I want to do - and the fence concept is a confusing feature to set up - so I will do that video for you!
     
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