GeNa - Sophisticated procedural content spawner

Adam, I've got sick and tired of waiting for this video. I heard about GeNa about half an hour ago, then came to this thread; reading every message from page 1 to here, where I'm now reading my own message as I type. STILL there's no video! Stop slacking and get on with it already.

I've got my flight from Auckland booked already. I'll be in Melbourne in about 3 hours. Make sure the video is done by then, so I can see it in person there before I spend any of my hard earned cash on it.

(PS. Don't hit me. I bought it as soon as I saw it on the Asset Store... )

 

Hehe. If you are coming then why don't you come by the TAFE NSW stand #3920 at PAX. I will be there from Fri - Sun and can go one better than any video by giving you a personal guided tour !!

 

I wish I could actually. Alas, I'm flying to S***ty old England this weekend.

A couple of my clients actually met you at PAX (I think it was PAX) last year, and told me about this guy called 'Adam' who had this amazing 'terrain creator thing' (they couldn't pronounce 'Gaia'), and told me to get in touch with him to see if we could license it... Little did they know.. hehe

 

If I understood correctly, it use an image map (that can be oriented?) to define spawn parameters (what I call teh stamp, sorry). The question is can I create image at run time and use that to spawn things (think user generated image), basically setting it up at runtime completely instead than in editor, imagine a game where you paint something and it affect the environement around you ... A bit like environment death note without the death

 

...grumble....vid...eo...lol

J/k

 

I'm pretty sure this is an age thing. I'm older, and find that videos can certainly clarify things, but a well written manual is generally preferable... maybe because I don't need to keep pausing it, and squinting to see the settings. My 16 year old nephew, on the other hand, won't read anything to save his life. If it weren't for YouTube, he'd be lost.

 

Just wanted to point out that Adam's comment about "Not really sure why people have such an issue reading the forum" has to do with the fact that he has stated several times in this thread the last couple days that a video is forthcoming after he gets back from being away from his home computer. And yet, despite those posts, people are still asking about a video without bothering to check this (rather short, for now) thread to see why videos are not yet available.

So yes, I too prefer video tutorials, but I'm happy to read the forum thread to see that those will come when Adam has the equipment to make them--which is obviously not soon enough.

 

@FargleBargle Also videos take too long. A 30 min tutorial video would often take me 10 minutes if I had a written version .

 

Simple answer: The sale is running out and nobody knows what it does or how it works. And Unity has no refund or trial policy. And speaking from personal experience I wasted a lot of money on assets I can't use.

I took a leap of feaith and bought GeNa. I hope it's worth it. Still waiting on a tutoiral though before I try it myself.

 

I read, for pleasure(I know a lost art, right), but in all fairness in the world we live in, when it comes to having options like video, and written reference available, I usually just chalk it up that some people are hands on, visual learners.

I personally think that adam's videos are entertaining, and well done, and see requests at this stage as a compliment to his ability to comprehensively explain his thoughts, motivations, and hope revolving his products, Adam, and Tim from Ootii, are extremely gifted in this.

So just find the glass half full outlook.

 

So it is an image-based prefab painter or an image-based spawning system, or maybe both. I guess I don't understand what is so unique about it. I have prefab painters and spawning systems already. I've never used Gaia, maybe then I would get it? I don't need a video. Is there a manual somewhere? It's not that important I guess.

 

Posts by @AdamGoodrich and @S4G4N on the first page of this thread explain exactly what GeNa does. And there are only three pages in the thread.

Sure, a video showing GeNa in action would be helpful, but I just don't get the confusion some people have over what GeNa does. It literally requires about two or three minutes of reading on the first page of the thread. This isn't like the Gaia thread which nobody would expect anyone curious about the asset to read in its entirety.

 

That's a great asset.
@AdamGoodrich excellent work, One question. Can I use GeNa in runtime and pooling objects like rocks or other POI ?

 

Yes. Works now. Set em up first before calling spawn at runtime. In the next release I will move spawning to a co-routine to minimise frame rate impacts on larger spawns and document runtime usage.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

This a joke????

 

Is global spawn supposed to actually spawn objects? If I Ctrl + Click, I get items instantiated. If I Ctrl + Shift + Click, I just see green orbs, but nothing is instantiated.

 

Sure, I fully concede that the timing is not stellar. I would've preferred Adam delay the launch until he had videos as well, but it was obviously his choice, and his pristine reputation and garnered goodwill with Gaia allow him to "get away" with it, as it were.

 

Hello

Can I create the spawner mask design at runtime?

 

It seems like GeNa is just an upgraded version of Gaia to me. I have sent email to Adam GoodRich but still no response about it. Can anyone confirm that or are there any distinct differences?

 

Well it won't shape your terrain for starters...

 

Just tested again in case I broke it b4 launch and this is working fine. You can see how many spawned by looking at the instance count. Is LOD causing what you spawned to just be invisible? Also check your spawn criteria, perhaps there are no other good matching areas on your terrain.

One comment to those who have Gena - take a look at the manual - i provide some quite detailed walk throughs.

 

I think Gena will do better than Gaia. It works on terrain and on mesh. Supports single tile and multi tile terrains, and is terrain tool agnostic, so it doesn't care which tool you used to create your environment.

It's super simple and quick to set up - is very fast - and offers more spawning options than Gaia. One of the interesting thing that it does - and imho the killer feature - is that it interprets the terrain where you click, and then spawns on similar areas. When you actually start using this - you wonder how you you ever did without it.

For example... you want to spawn on a hill... shift click on the hill... you want to spawn just in a 5 meter height range to create a nice row of rock ledges... change the height range and then select just for that height range. If you like that and want it over your entire terrain... just hit Shift - Ctrl - Click to get the same thing over entire terrain. Once you wrap your head around this its awesome.

I look at Gaia as my broad roller brush to create and texture the terrain, and then I use Gena as my fine brush for everything else. That's a metaphor btw... its not a brush based tool. You click to do things.

 

Thanks. The instance count isn't going up when I try and do a global spawn, so I guess I"ll continue tweaking the spawn criteria. I've looked through the global spawn section of the manual, but I guess I must just be missing something.

 

Yeah the documentation really helps a lot. Can't wait to see a video about the fence usage. I tried it with a palisade out of logs but it seems that either I haven't found out the proper usage or my meshcolliders/pivot need some improvement with this.

 

If you are still stuck after the weekend let me know and we can do a Skype session after I am back home.

 

Thanks for replying. I hope there will be some showcase videos soon.

 

Sure thing Adam, I appreciate it.

 

Hi Adam. I'm looking at buying this in the next few days. Does GeNa accommodate spawning of certain items in certain areas? For example only spawning seashells within a beach area and only spawning mushrooms within a forest also doing this at run-time so the results differ every time? Is there a way to cordon off areas to only spawn said items in these areas.
Hope this is clear. Thanks for you time.

 

Thanks for the question...

Yes. There are many ways to accomplish this.

Yes. Works now but not documented. Will push out an update next week to the documentation that shows how to do this.

Yes. Using masks.

 

That was exactly the explanation I was waiting for. Now I have other questions.

What are the limitations? Is it only for painting meshes randomly? Could I for example spawn cubes on top of cubes and have them line up or in any specific variation? Will it work on vertical planes? Will it work on every plane of a mesh? Can I spawn paintings on multiple walls all at once at a height and orientation that one would normally find paintings? Could it spawn cubes on top of cubes it spawns all at once or would it only spawn one cube layer at a time? Can it be used to (just as an example) spawn a beard on a character at run time?

Thank you for the explanation.

 

That is a lot of questions!!

No. terrain grass and trees as well. Randomly or not - your choice.

Yes.

Um yes... masks, last spawned, clicked there etc.

No - everywhere else tho. Perhaps will make that an option if its important.

Yes - if it has a collider and is not vertical.

Not really - relates back to the vertical spawn answer. Is there and interest in this ?

Cubes on cubes .. yeah .. who does this ? Is this hypothetical ?

All at once.. multi layers simultaneously not really.. Suspect i don't actually understand the question.. If you used gravity option then stuff could end up on top of stuff all at once. Cant see a valid use case otherwise.

Erm no... and can not see any reason why it would even try to... surely there would be many better ways to show or hide a beard.

 

EvilGremlin said: ↑

Could it spawn cubes on top of cubes it spawns all at once or would it only spawn one cube layer at a time?

Cubes on cubes .. yeah .. who does this ? Is this hypothetical ?

Hmm, Jenga in VR maybe? now there's an idea....

 

Okay, thanks for those answers. I think I understand it now. All of those questions were hypothetical. I just wanted to know.

 

@AdamGoodrich any chance for documentation on your website for GeNa?

 

I will do this after I get home in a few days - will also start on the tutorial videos.

 

Are there any tutorial videos yet? *runs and hides from Adam*

Congrats on another great launch of another invaluable tool for every game dev's tool box!

For all of those asking questions about what's the difference between Gaia spawning and GeNa, here is how I used GeNa during testing. I would create my environment with Gaia and let Gaia's resources take care of all of the basic spawning and then I'd go in with GeNa for finer detail spawning. Thickening forested areas, scattering rocks and logs around water edges, etc.

To me, both of them are equally important. Gaia gives me a base spawn (ie: does all the heavy lifting) and then GeNa gives me the ability to tweak specific areas... Around a forest pond, give a good scattering of beach items on island shores, distribute coral, shells, and sea life off shore. Comparing the two is kind of like comparing an apple to an orange. GeNa spawning is basically the same as Gaia spawning on a quadruple dose of steroids.. (So when compared, Gaia is more of a basic spawner and GeNa is a super duper uber spawner... heheh)

Even without videos. I can almost guarantee if you are looking for something to help make your environment spawning easier, you wont be unhappy with GeNa.

 

WOW! Loving your environment @Dannyoakes! Awesome job! Great showcase of something done with GeNa!!

 

I'm having some difficulty with colliders.

The system spawns prefabs well enough. I can highlight the spot I want to spawn and then spawn the prefab, no problems. They won't spawn on top of my mesh collider, however. They spawn below the surface, about half the height of the prefab I'm spawning onto below.

I use a tile system (Tile Ed, which I suspect is the reason) and I place box colliders on each part of the tile. Even if I combine all my Tile Ed tiles and place a Mesh collider on the new mesh, it still spawns below the surface or attaching only to the side.

Anyway, it's not urgent and I can post screenshots. I was hoping before needing to, someone might suggest a reason or a workaround.

Has anyone else run into this?

 

It looks very interesting, but I have a question cause it seems that it is heavily related to terrain spawning.
So is it also useful when i only have indoor levels?
Let's say i have a room where i want to randomly spawn some loot stuff, for instance a ring.
Is it possible that i can mask some spots for it, like in the shelf, on the table, in the locker, in the safe, in the drawer and then it could spawn randomly in one of this spots?
Is this also possible with GeNa, or is it more related to terrain and outdoor environments or other usecases?

 

@AdamGoodrich I am interested in vertical spawning...so you know

 

Wouldn't it be easier to set some empty GameObjects to those places and let a script spawn e.g. the ring randomly on awake to one of those places?

 

Well, my problem seems to be on the Mac. On Windows, the asset works as advertised.

 

Yes, thank you there are always more possibilities for such tasks, but i want to know if this asset is also useful for indoor actions and which type of actions.

 

I just used it indoor for a fireplace because I couldn't be arsed to place every stone for it by hand. So I used the "fence" placement like it's described in the docs.

Later when I am nearly done, I will put some stuff for my tables in the spawner and let it spawn objects like baskets with fruit, dishes etc randomly on the table. Saves me a lot of time not to place everything by hand.

 

I am an absolute newbie at this game design stuff (and programming in general, really) and this is my first time visiting the Asset Store. I'm not really understanding what the difference is between Gaia and GeNa; I could have read things wrong, but it seemed to me that you were saying, Adam, that GeNa does all the terrain generation that Gaia does, as well as the ability to do more fine tuned placement? Is GeNa a partner for Gaia or a replacement for/upgrade from it? With my newbie status, I don't understand most lingo, so if everything could be said in as close to layman terms as possible I would greatly appreciate it.

I would love to support your efforts, but I'm a strapped-on-cash-college student and would rather not buy two assets if one does the same things as all the others.

Thank you for your patience!

 

[QUOTE="Malkenon, post: 2843113, member: 1198216"]I am an absolute newbie at this game design stuff (and programming in general, really) and this is my first time visiting the Asset Store. I'm not really understanding what the difference is between Gaia and GeNa; I could have read things wrong, but it seemed to me that you were saying, Adam, that GeNa does all the terrain generation that Gaia does, as well as the ability to do more fine tuned placement? Is GeNa a partner for Gaia or a replacement for/upgrade from it? With my newbie status, I don't understand most lingo, so if everything could be said in as close to layman terms as possible I would greatly appreciate it.

I would love to support your efforts, but I'm a strapped-on-cash-college student and would rather not buy two assets if one does the same things as all the others.

Thank you for your patience![/QUOTE

Gaia is the one you need to create your terrains,
Gena is a clever spawning asset but does not create Terrains, nice to have but not essential, that might change once I get the hang of it though!

 

Not to ask a loaded question but will this work with MapMagic with infinite terrain generation?

 

Finally someone asked the same question as mine and another one replied it.

 

As newbie, you need to start with Gaia. You can create your full landscape from terrain shape to spawn objects ( texture, grass, tree, etc). It is an amazing experience. With GeNa you can do more sophisticated spanner than those you can do with the spawner included in Gaia. I would consider GeNa an advanced spawner for terrain maker.