GeNa - Sophisticated procedural content spawner

You can still download it if you own it. I'm a bit disappointed it's been depreciated as now the updates are not mandatory for 2018 cycle but at the discretion of PW. It also goes against what was being said for the last week about paid upgrades being made so assets are not depreciated as we now have the joy of both....

That being said there has been some completely unjustified criticism of Adam's decision to charge for an upgrade - something a dev should be behind if it brings features they want and ultimately have choice of whether to pay for it or not. Combined with the negative effect of crowd sourced bad reviews we can understand the decision to depreciate, even if we don't like it.

I hope that going forward things can be more positive and decisions can be made that don't effect good customers because of the churlish reactions by a minority.

 

I think Adam / PW was going to keep both Gena alive and was willing to keep Gena 1
up to date for the Unity2018 cycle. How the way I read it,

It was the people complaining that Unity had to get involved ( I believe ) and BECAUSE of a
few people that could not stop whining.
So the people that have Gena 1 and was going to be good for the Unity 2018 cycle, you
have those people to blame for it being depreciated, not Adam... afaik.

And for what ... 20 bucks ?

How simple is it to see that Unity just has to change the wording of that one paragraph..

It is totally unreasonable to think that a dev will keep giving free updates forever ... that's stupid.

Edit: From Adam's response below, I guess I could say I was 30 % right..
I could edit the original post, but I don't like that idea.
No matter how it went down, it was all the complaining and whining,
that his decision was made. I'd rather he did what he did, then argue over
nothing important as it was a distraction that in the end, was not good for the
majority of his customers or the PW group.

 

If you purchased in the past 90 days, just upgrade, its free.

If you didn't, we released version 1.6 in the past week, so you already have the latest U2018 fixes and can download at any time.

Sorry about the deprecation. We had planned to keep the old version active on the store until the end of the U2018 release cycle, but some users were abusing the review system and using it as a platform to complain about the upgrade instead of offering legitimate reviews about the product, so we took the decision to deprecate it.

In the mean time if Unity does break something with v1.6 in the U2018 release cycle then we will address it manually here via the forums.

All new development is now focused on v2, and in addition to path painting and the other changes we just made, we also hope to have texture painting in the next few weeks. Beyond that we have spline based painting and another very cool major feature planned for the v2 release cycle and will announce them when they are ready to go.

Nobody is under any obligation to upgrade and we would only expect people to do this if they see value in the additional features we add or the ongoing support we offer as Unity evolves the engine.

 

Thanks for the explanation, I purchased it when it was released. Ironically I was interested in trying it to texture my terrain, something v2 doesn't yet do. Did v1 do it, I can't remember?

 

I am not an ungrateful person but I bought Gena on last discounts even I will not use it for a while becuase of rising of the exchange rate of USD/TRY which will make me impossible to buy it in future and now with new version upgrade price is same as discounted price I paid (and Gena2 on sale will have similir price). I am not writing this to demand something. I am little bit disappointed. Thing that wory me is whether the same thing will happen to Gaia and CTS.

 

I would send a ticket in. if you have concerns. Not to be rude or anything, but expect upgrades. All of these tools have had many updates.. for free. So they keep the price down for updates, to make it affordable. for most. Game development, is not cheap in most areas, Unity its really cheap. So I would suggest to keep using, GENA 1, as it works great if you are unable to get, which is understandable. I'm sorry you where unable to use.. and the exchange rates. But also remember Unity takes 30%. So that leaves Adam and team very little to continue giving us updates . GAIA 1, won't get charged. But there will be a GAIA 2, and there will be an upgrade fee. But like I said GAIA 1, will work just fine as Gena 1 does. So no reason for you to buy , unless you want to or can.

I have been buying game development tools for decades, and have over 50k in software I no longer can use, due to it going under, tech changing etc. So in game development, expect this to happen.


Gena 2 is nice and well worth the 20 dollar upgrade. if you want/ and can do it. I have 20 + assets I never used and they are NO longer on the store, one cost me 175 $ dollars and never got any support....One thing with Adam tools, they way to keep it going is for him to charge small fees every once in awhile, to keep him in business. Game development cost money.


anyways, if there is any information you need, I would by all means, email the team for anything else. I'm just a user, and my opinion is my own. This post was not to be rude in any way, it was meant to help if I could. I hope I was able to.

 

I'm trying to download the old version of Gena but it's not listed in my purchased items on the new store.



I can see it in the old store, but it takes me to a link in the new store and it's not there.

Any ideas please?

 

Open it in the Asset Store window within Unity. Click the link to open the old store in the upper right hand corner of the new store page that opens by default. At that point you'll have your old store buttons at the top. Click the little download manager button, find GeNa, and download it.

I don't think we ever were able to download from outside of the Unity editor (ie: on the Unity website in a browser)...

 

To answer your questions about paid upgrades, we will be moving all our products to a paid upgrade model over the next year.

We spoke to the community and asked if a subscription model would work, and by and large they said no. So after much thinking we decided to introduce an annual upgrade model in sync with the annual Unity release cycle. This will be a nominal fee that covers support and provides the revenue we need to develop new and cool features & products.

There will be some confusion and angst while we transition to this model, so we want to be transparent about what we are doing and why. We are doing this to scale the company and to offer more and better products and service.

The yearly upgrades will be optional, and we would only expect people to upgrade if they feel they are getting value for money.

 

I am not against paid updates but if I encounter problem in future after v2018 there will be no support if broken and thats the thing I am actually worried about.

 

I hear you. I have put a so much money into deprecated assets.. most recently it was into a water system that changed owners and then completely failed to live up to the promises made by the new owners. I looked again the other day and saw that the new system was deprecated. I paid something like $150 for something that never worked! Not happy!

We are not like that. We have a road-map a mile long, and our plan is to deliver pro products and service at a price that works for everyone. All our products have an average of 5*'s and at 3 1/2 years in we are more excited about the future than ever!

If anyone wants advice on publishing their own assets - we would love to help them - free as... because we can

 

Andy, I think you're hammering Adam pretty hard. I've read what he wrote and I don't see any rudeness coming from him at all. There are competitors to Adam that have some great products on the store. I would look into those as options if Adam's products are not a good fit for you.

I normally wouldn't recommend other products in someone else's thread but I think in this case it's warranted.

 

Hey @AndyNeoman, my comment was out of line and I apologise. Sometimes the multitude of stuff that comes at us gets a bit much. I am over tired after months on end without time off and have bronchitis as a result. I will be taking some time out this weekend.

 

Get some rest and put this stuff behind you for a couple days. Things will cool down and eventually it'll be business as usual. I hope you feel better soon.

 

Thanks Adam I appreciate that, As I said in private message I wish you a speedy and full recovery.

 

I don't get it; GeNa 1 is over but what's new in GeNa 2 ?

 

Lifted directly from release notes.

1. New paintbrush painting mode
2. New layer based spawning system & improvements
3. Vastly improved bounds based collision checking
4. Vastly improved rotation algorithm when doing fences
5. New Min and Max spawn height capability & visualizations
6. Height offset modification for collisions
7. Seamless support for SECTR
8. Preliminary Vegetation Studio support
9. Improved help system
10. Fully 2018.x compatible
11. Better defaults

Plus a roadmap showing future improvements.

1. -Texture support - paints terrain
2. -Spline support - spawn along splines
3. -And a BIG suprise - announced when ready!

 

Yup, Rowlan that has always been my concerned as I worked with an investor, we bought a tool that we relied on, and because the developer of that tool went under, we couldn't update anything nor maintain anything, our game went under, the investor lost thousands, and I lost a good friend, so I hate DLL's due to that reason, I had talk to Adam before about this as it scares me, but a tool like Path Painter isn't going to break a game, because its more of a design tool, if it was more of a mechanic or using run time, mechanics, then I wouldn't use. I personally don't use any tools that have DLL's for mechanics anymore, I make my own. and NO LONGER will rely on them due to this.,

So I have shared your fears from this. I understand why Adam does this. but at the same time, I been burnt in the past.. and had to remove tools from my last game due to DLL and asset dev disappearing. I don't see that happening from Adam, so I continue to support him, but as far as run time, stuff if I don't have total control over my game, I don't use that tool no matter who the developer is.. or how good of friends we are, business is business . So I would look at it that way Rowlan, and if you fear this as I do, just use the tools for design work, and not runtime, related things you won't have access to, incase, someone ever goes under one day...and just don't allow your game to rely on a tool. That can solve a DLL issue. Just a thought. Design work, ,like tools like say Path Painter, GAIA, GENA really shouldn't hurt you.


The only tool that scares me is CTS, as we do have run time changes. But the rest don't matter...at all, and if God for bit Adam left Unity, your game wouldn't be hurt by it....so I would look at it that way.. since they are design tools. and most can be removed once your game is made.. So really your safe, but no tool last for ever....that is the way software works.

 

I am in complete agreement on the DLL issue. My issue isn't with fair upgrade costs but with DLLs rather than source code. You mention GENA but that is now officially designed to be used during runtime (a use of mine) so this could be an issue for some. Fortunately, it isn't a make or break component of my game and I could just write my own custom spawner if needed but I don't think that will need to be done. Fortunately, I have some sense of security with Adam's products.

 

Ya, I hear you, but at the same time Adam sells them cheap. So I get why he does the whole DLL's. So I don't have an issue with him doing it, its his company. even if I did. but I'm confident, he will be around for years to come. So I wouldn't worry about the whole Run time, thing...for Adam stuff, mine was more an example for DLL's in general. and passed experience. as far as Adam tool, I wouldn't worry about it. to much. also if you did some sort of run time, and your game is successful, you could always contact Adam and ask to buy the source. no idea if he would or not. but that is an option. but like I said I don't see him going anywhere. So I wouldn't worry about it. I do this for a living, and I work with others. partners, investors so others have a say as well in the company of what we do, so anyways, bottom line, if you have run time with GENA I wouldn't worry about it to much. if you do, that aspect, just make a script for it. if you are concerned. or have others to answer to as I do..

I still support PW, and Adam regardless, and respect, what ever he does. as I respect him. anyways I don't want to make this an issue I just wanted to comment on what others, worry about. cheers.

 

Just tried out Gena 2 on a mesh terrain. It has a mesh collider. Can't get it to paint at all with the assets added to the spawner. Any suggestions on what to try to solve this issue?

 

I have seen a few assets on the store that have 2 versions one with DLL the other with source code.
I can not remember what the assets were but they had both on the store...

The DLL version were cheap .. like 20 % of what the separate same asset with out the dll, but source code
at 10 - 20 X the price of DLL .. so I think that companies that have to reply on the fact that they can
change the source code. if the asset gets deprecated. This I think is fair, since as i have said before,
company's can write off expenses, where as us wana be's can not.

 

Did you make sure that the layer was set properly? GeNa 2 now allows you to set layers when doing the collision checking.

Yep this is the intention. All of our assets are crazy cheap compared to the commercial value of what it would cost a pro to come in and create them for you, or even the time you would need to replicate them yourself if you had the skills to do so. For some people paying a small upgrade fee will make sense, and for others, most likely the pro's, buying the source will make sense.

 

Yes. Sorry for not updating here. I had mentioned in discord that it was the layers.

 

I have version 1 of Gena and have two questions - I am spawning zombies around the player at run time - but want to ensure that they always are a certain distance away from the player when they spawn - is there a value I can change to do this? Also - using the run-time spawner, is it possible to set a limit on the total number of instances a spawner can have active - I tried a few different values for this but none seem to work. I would like to have a limit - that if it goes below it will resume spawning but not go above.

 

When Spawning with GeNa - there is is a minimum and maximum x & z setting on your Prototype for prefabs. If you set your throw distance to zero then GeNa will base your offset from the spawn location. Easy to test in the editor before saving as a prefab.

There is no maximum instance control. We will add the idea to our roadmap.

 

You know dlls can be decompiled, right?

 

You know that's called reverse engineering and is a violation of the licensing agreement and therefore illegal? And do you realize you posted your criminal intent in a public forum?

 

We have had to do that a couple times at companies I worked for when the third party developers went out of business (for both C# and Java.)

 

Check the EULA. It's not allowed.

 

These weren't assets from the Unity Store, they were for back-end business processes. I should have been more clear in my post.

In the US reverse engineering is not illegal unless explicitly mentioned in the EULA (which you state is in the Unity EULA, and I believe you.) However, the DMCA is more lenient if the purpose is for creating interoperability, etc.

 

No, I actually didn't know it was illegal. Thanks for the heads up. Also, it is not my intent to decompile Gena or any other asset, I am just aware it is possible.

Rereading what I posted, I see I came off as condescending. I apologize, that was not intentional.

 

Sorry for asking a silly question:

I have GeNa 2, but I was curious if it does the same as "Vegetation Studio Pro", or if they are different things?

 

They are different things but have overlapping feature sets.

GeNa is all about giving you control... and has a lot more capability in terms of what it can do from a spawning perspective.

Veg Studio is a very powerful automated placement and texturing tool - and you can get more control if you are prepared to do more work - and it also has an awesome instancing system built in - so you can get some real perf boosts.

However I like complete artistic control - so I prefer GeNa - but I love what Veg Studio can do from an instancing performance perspective... so there is value in using them together.

Next version of GeNa 2 will have a biome painting feature... literally paint it in and get everything from texturing to rocks, plants etc all in one intuitive interface.

I already use the painting feature to add in forests... and far prefer as it is simple, fast, and exact.

 

We are proud to had Gaia, GeNa and CTS used in the creation of the demo content for Unity AirSim environment by @NatureManufacture As per usual the team at @NatureManufacture went the extra mile in bring this all together!

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/11/14/airsim-on-unity-experiment-with-autonomous-vehicle-simulation/



Fun Fact : Gaia gets used quite a lot in the creation of educational and simulation and defense related content - and has even had interest from the Navy SEALS!

 

OUR BIGGEST VISUAL UPDATE FOR GAIA EVER!!!

Gaia 1.9 has landed and it is one of our biggest visual and performance overhauls ever - and yes its FREE!

Get a 2x fps boost (when compared with unity and some other water systems) with our new FAST Water system including underwater sounds and effects, and give your environments a face lift with our new HDRI skies, audio, and totally re-vamped Post FX - all perfectly tuned for brilliant visuals and performance in the morning, day, evening and night!

New Features:

• Ambient Skies Sample GX (Gaia Extension).
• Fast water system (2x frame rate improvement for scenes with water).
• Underwater effects (Fog, Post Processing, Sound FX)
• HDRI Skyboxes (morning, day, evening, night).
• Post Processing V2 FX matched to time of day.
• Gaia Dependencies package
• Step 0 in standard tab to set Linear deferred.
• Updated Step 3 to use the new Ambient Skies setup process.
• Step 4 in the standard tab to bake your scene lighting.
• Gaia resources data icons to define resource files.
• New UX framework with support for localization.
• Time of day audio.

Enhancements:

• Gaia character controller spawning is improved.
• Updated and much improved new Gaia Manger window interface.
• Gaia dependencies install upon Gaia manager start up.
• Lightweight and HD Pipeline support (Unity HD Pipeline is still in development so you may run into issues)
• Generation and run-time performance improvements.

Changes & Fixes:

• Fixed Controller spawning as it would null reference and not spawn controllers when one was present.
• Deprecated code in the Unity Std Asset character controllers remove warning errors in Unity 2018.
• In Unity 2018 upon step 0 on Gaia standard tab the lighting is switches the lighting from enlighten to progressive.
• Prefab for 3rd party setup has been edited to give users better performance and quality.
• All materials have been switched to GPU instancing.
• Screen-shotter will always find a camera by name or by component.
• Rollerball removed.
• Static flag fixes on the terrain.
• Camera distance setup now based and calculated on your terrain size.
• Sessions fixed for Unity 2018.
• Safety checks added to terrain explorer.
• General null references fixes to Gaia functions and processes.
• In 2018.3 terrain instancing is enabled on by default.
• Shadow distances configured to give you the best experience.

(Proper) Video coming in next few days.

In the mean time here is a quick and dirty introduction!!

Side note: This release of Gaia is significant on a whole lot of levels. There is only a one liner there - but we also introduced a new UX & localization framework and are super proud of it. The main benefit is that we can significantly accelerate the development and enhancement of both our existing products and new products as well. This update probably a month more time and resource to create than we expected... but the results speak for themselves!

And for our helpful friend @Rowlan, now that the team has been freed up again, work on our promised BIOME painting update for GeNa, which was already well advanced will now advance again, and we will get it out hopefully in the next few weeks

 

Here is the long overdue tutorial showing the painting features in GeNa 2 and it was made with the version of GeNa 2 that is on the asset store.

Interestingly I was unable to repeat the painting issues that @Rowlan has been experiencing. This could be due to a configuration issue, or perhaps even an issue being caused by Mac as I am developing on a PC. As commented in my previous post - now that we have freed the team up again we will look into the issues that have been reported as well as the suggestions for improvement that have been made.

 

Quick followup question... when would you use say GeNa 2 and/or Gaia and when is the best use-case to use Veg Studio Pro? They seem like it's a good idea to own all of those.. I do own GeNa 2 and Gaia and CTS but haven't used it yet. All of these assets seem to be great assets from what I have read and the videos I watched... just wondering which tool is best for which situation.

 

Pic or it never happened!

 

I purchased this asset a few days ago. I´m using Unity 2018.2.17 (last version). When trying to spawn my trees prototypes over my terrain, and after finishing the process not any trees are spawned and I get this error in editor console:

InvalidOperationException: Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object
System.Collections.Generic.Stack`1[System.Boolean].Pop ()
UnityEditor.EditorGUI.EndChangeCheck () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/EditorGUI.cs:315)
UnityEditor.SceneView.CallOnSceneGUI () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:2607)
UnityEditor.SceneView.HandleSelectionAndOnSceneGUI () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:1910)
UnityEditor.SceneView.OnGUI () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:1757)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)
Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:232)
System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MethodBase.cs:115)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object obj) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/HostView.cs:295)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/HostView.cs:288)
UnityEditor.HostView.InvokeOnGUI (Rect onGUIPosition) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/HostView.cs:255)


I sent a support ticket but I haven´t received any answer yet.

 

Please provide more information and lodge a support ticket. We have not done anything with VS pro yet.

If it is in the queue we will get to it. Please be patient.

 

THis is the error

 

Hi, is there some documentation on how to use GeNa with Vegetation Studio? I don't see anything in the included PDF. Just a note indicating that it now works with Vegetation Studio. Thanks!

 

I would like to clarify my doubts:
The PDF documentation says about "adding structures" (I assume this refers to POI creation although it is not said) first you have to create a plane and set its Y value to -0.05. Logically I assume it is in transform position (not scale or rotation).
I have a question: because it is not clarified in docs, how do the options in Overview panel affect to Global (all scene) spawned instances?
The shift + left click method to select the texture in Check Texture spawning criteria is not specified in the corresponding docs section and I think it shoud because the procedure is not very intuitive. The manual says this is the chosen method to select the terrain point where instances will be spawned but is not explained this other function.

Thanks

 

Setting the Y value to -0.05 is something we adopted pre-GeNa for building POIs in Gaia. What this does is ensure the objects are nudged slightly into the terrain to hopefully offset the chance of floating items within your POI. Not always 100% effective, but we have found it to be a good practice not only for POIs but standalone game objects as well. Although with standalone game objects, you don't really need to go about creating the plane to set them up.

When you shift+left click or ctrl+shift+left click, GeNa will look at your overall spawn criteria and then evaluate your current spot, if necessary, before starting the spawn. By "if necessary", I'm referring to things that you may have checked such as Check Texture where GeNa looks at the texture that you clicked and applies that to the spawn criteria filtering. When you do a normal spawn, it takes the values configured within your spawner and just spawns within the circle (or square) outlined with visualizer. In a global spawn, the click samples the height, texture, and any other spawn criteria that are checked in the spawner configuration, and then spawns across the whole scene based on the click sampling and spawner configuration.

For the overview panel specifically, the values within the overview pertain to each spawn location. So if for instance you have min/max instances at 5/15, it will spawn 5-15 of the objects within the spawn range of each spawn location that matches the combination of the spawner's placement/spawn criteria and similar values of the location clicked for any factors specified in the spawn criteria.

We'll take a look at the documentation and see if we can make all of this a bit clearer in the next GeNa 2 update.

 

It would have been nice for Gena 1 supporters to have an upgrade option for Gena 2 instead of buying it all over again.

I understand Red Dead Redemption players didn’t get an upgrade to Red Dead 2. But, Gena 1 wasn’t on the market all that long before it was deprecated. This is more noteworthy if you purchased it at the tail end of the cycle.

 

I'm sure i got a reduction when upgrading however the upgrade cost was the same as the gena2 introductory sale price. As it's now 50% off it would probably be cheaper to buy new rather than upgrade anyway (quirk of the asset store) as the current sale price is less than I paid to upgrade.

 

Yeah. Your probably right. I'm likely overly griping.

 

GeNa 1 was on the market and received free updates for 2 years, and beyond that, the upgrade price is a substantial reduction off the full price.

We are progressing nicely on the next version in the GeNa 2 series. Terrain texture painting is working, and this opens us up for BIOME painting, which I am really looking forward to.

We have some other substantial improvements we want to make as well so the next release will be pretty epic i think.

 

When are the new updates coming out?