Map Magic World Generator - a node based procedural and infinite game map tool

What is the simplest way to make the map slope from height A to B at the edges? Like a big square island basically.

 

No it doesn't. The end result is a standard Unity terrain. This is the case for all Unity based world building packages as far as I know. HorizonOn uses meshes, but that is designed for distant scenery, not stuff you walk on.

 

Figured it out.

 

well kind of. using simple shapes I can create edges, but I really want a uniform height at the edge. How can I get that?

 

Use a height map?

 

I'd rather not. I can do that with any tool, or rather some can I don't have the right tools for that not being an artist, and in my experience raw images need to be tailored for the terrain size and resolution or they look like crap.

 

Thank you for your answer.

Does finalised terrains created by map magic has special scripts, shaders, any other things ? I mean is it %100 identical to normal unity terrain ?

I asked this, because I plan to use this plugin ( below Terrain to Mesh ) to convert to mesh ? However it has limitations such as specific shaders etc..
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/47276

 

The terrains generated are 100% standard Unity terrains, so it should work 99.9%.
Be aware, that if you create mesh from your terrain, any further modifications and chages will not be synchronized.

 

Thank you.

I plan to keep terrains and meshes separated, so I can work on terrains later to create new meshes.

 

MoribitoMT, you can always try evaluation version to see if MapMagic will be compatible with the assets you use.

So pyramid simple form does not suit you? You can adjust it by curve to modify it's min and max values or make it "cut" in the center. Could you post a scheme of what you are trying to achieve?

Sent you link via PM.

Are you using RTP Output in a graph? Theoretically it should not change a thing when you assign RTP component to terrain itself.

 

Is anyone using Unity 2017.1 yet? The mapmagic graph editor doesn't show, it's just an empty tab.

 

I'm using Unity 2017. Odd thing, that should not happen. Do you have MapMagic object selected? Is there any error in the console? Is your graph saved as an .asset file?

 

It would if I could find out how to get noise applied afterwards to not change the height at the edges. although the pyramid/cone shapes also impact the overall terrain not just edges, which isn't really ideal but I can make it work.

The final maps will be hand painted. Right now I just need something close. Which is basically 2-3 continents (I can define each one in a separate map magic scene) with edges that are of the same height or at least close enough I can surround the entire terrain with water and still have a lot of terrain above ground. But applying noise after the form almost always results in more water then ground, if I set the water height to the highest point on the edge + say 20.

 

Yeah the graph just wasn't selected, data was set to none. I have been using the same graph asset for so long I forgot it worked this way.

 

So how can you control textures/trees/object by a height range?

 

So it seems like the base texture layer is always there. Like if I define another texture and give it a slope, it's just layering over the base texture that is still showing through. Rather then replacing and then blending as I would expect.

 

snacktime, I would gladly give an advice or a graph example, but I don't get it what are you trying to achieve. Could you post a scheme, a draft, anything? I just can say that to control textures/trees/object by a height range you've got to use Curve Generator with a curve like this one:

And say that the texture layers are blended the way layers blend in popular image editors like Photoshop. But I guess it will not resolve everything. I just need to know your goal to help.

 

I haven't successfully gotten that to work.

However, I just got CTS and it looks awesome. As soon as you release the supporting MM version I'll be switching to CTS.

 

What I'm seeing is textures having weights in the splatmap where they shouldn't by any logical definition. It could be a quirk of how the system works but if I define texture A at slope 0-10, and texture B at 45-90, A should not be where B is unless it's close to a slope division and being blended. But that's what I'm seeing. And it appears to only do that when A is the base texture.

What I'm used to from most other tools is having a normalized height range I can define, and a blending value. That's the simplest/easiest to understand really. Curves I really have no idea how you apply those, and imo just make a simple problem more complicated then it needs to be.

On that note, your system would be a lot easier to use if you made specific inputs rather then use curves for everything. Because it's not always obvious what a curve will do in a specific context. It could logically do one of 2-4 things, but I have to experiment to find out. Even at the cost of duplication, having named curves would make it easier to reason about overall.

 

I am using Unity 2017.1.0f3 with Map Magic 1.8.2, RTP 3.3 3.3h and the RTP Plugin and have two issues first is this error.

Assets/MapMagic/Generators/RTPOutputGenerator.cs(11,15): error CS0260: Missing partial modifier on declaration of type `MapMagic.RTPOutput'. Another partial declaration of this type exists.

And second after this error I no longer get the map magic menu even if I remove MM, RTP and the RTPPlugin
and reinstall MM.

 

The entirety of ObjectPool's interface is public with the exception of Instantiate(). Is it possible for you to make this public, or at least protected (in which case I could derive a custom ObjectPool and have access)? It just makes it difficult to write a custom version of RepositionCoroutine() or similar without changing the source.

 

Hello everyone

It's been a while since I've been trying to create a map for my game and I can not. It is not a negative criticism but I find that it lacks video tutorials and documentation. I do not understand any module (noise, noise legacy etc ...)

I would like to create a map without using .raw file and unfortunately the only example in video uses a .raw file Another problem is that everything is in English. In fact is not insurmountable but the software is very technical ... And in France we have a hard time sharing our knowledge then there is absolutely no video tutorial nor written in French.

Is it possible to have some help? It's been 1 month that I search everywhere on the internet without finding help and it becomes complicated. I thank you in advance

 

So Upgraded to 1.8.3 and everything works fine except the snow/rain effects, which again I m saying, that is in the snow settings in CTS profile editor, and when I import my cts profile in mapmagic, doesnt seem to have it anywhere. It is a critical feature of CTS and I would beg you to make it work with MapMagic

 

Could you list some of the features you want in your map? That might help others suggest a combination of nodes and settings that might help you get the results you're looking for.

Also, while it is in English, the manual does a pretty good job of describing many of the built-in nodes and how they work. http://www.denispahunov.ru/MapMagic/Manual.html

 

so happy for mass pin/lock

dose any one know how to get these nodes to work
https://github.com/alastaira/MapMagicExtensions/

and is there a any help / tutorial with getting mega splat to work map magic nodes
i can get it to work but all i see is tiny textures with squares all over the map.

 

Hi Wright. I've been trying to use your Map Magic but can't seem to get it work as my expectations. I know very well How amazing is your Map Magic. I was hypnotize the way you created a infinite terrain in your tutorial. I wanted it to do the same but still not getting success. I even tried to follow every individual step to achieve same results as yours but not able to. Also I think in my editor node graph isn't moveable. i mean I can scroll zoom in zoom out but when I zoom in and out again so I lose my other nodes. they just got lost somewhere so this makes my graph really messy. and more important thing is when I tried to get the part where you generated terrain at high scale of 100 and -5000 offset so sometime my editor got crashed. I tried to practice several days and watch your tutorial many times. well I'm only practicing and learning game development since July so maybe I'm not experienced enough to use Map Magic efficiently. But yesterday when I watch a tutorial for World Creator then soon after I got very beautiful result. I'm not saying that map magic is bad or else. I'm just curious how a 60mb unity assest (Map Magic ) can crash my editor when a 1.6GB of World Creator is working flawlessly. thank you very much. hope you help me with some tips to use Map Magic

 

It's released. v. 1.8.3 is available at the Asset Store. Here is the changelog:

• CTS Output Generator (CTS compatibility)
• OnPrepareStart event that is called before generate in main thread
• Mass pinning feature to ease the work with streaming plugins. Note that pinning losts of terrains will greatly affect the performance.
• MegaSplat seams fix
• Duplicating biome fix
• Noise generator offset fix

I really don't get it. What texture should be at the range 10-45? What if the user really assign only two textures with two maps, what color will be the pixel that is not affected by both maps?
I do agree with Raydon_RLane, it will be much easier to give an advice if you could explain what exactly you are trying to achieve.

Thanks for the feedback. I think I will really need to make some sort of built-in presets like Invert, Contrast, Select Range, etc.
BTW more preset ideas are welcome!

Yep, Instantiate is explicitly marked as private. I can't remember the reason now, but I should have a motive to write a "private" keyword, it's not "just forgot to set it public". Maybe I was going to change the method call or something, and since it's still has not changed I think I can try making it public in next version. But I've got to look through the code first

Candac59, the main purpose of the tutorial is to teach users all (or at least most useful) features. In this case - generators. I can't make a tutorial that will result in what each user wants exactly, I've got to make individual tutorials then. I'm just describing the way each generator works, and give it's usage example. I assume that once you watch this video you will be more or less familiar with the MapMagic. Creating the map you like is the second stage after you will watch the tutorial and will find out how each generator works.

Sorry, I can't do anything with it. However, I will support any Freanch-speaking enthusiast that will dare to translate all the documentation to French and maintain it.

dlevel, I can clearly see the snow both in editor and in playmode.

Could you please send me your CTS profile with the snow textures you use (guess I will not need other terrain textures).

Vortavasail, try contacting the author. I will do it too after a while - I'm going to gather all of the custom generators in one place (guess it will be gitlab wiki) and update them to make them compatible with the latest version.
Could you post a screen of those textures and squares?

mukki014, obviously Unity crash isn't an expected behavior. It would be nice if you could report this bug here, but since you've post it on forums I'd ask if this crash happens every time you do some particular thing (pin a terrain at certain coordinate I guess) or happened just once?
And about scroll/zoom: are you using mousewheel or Alt-right mouse button? Could you record a video of what is happening with the nodes?

 

this is what comes out when i try to use mega Splat.

 

this is what it should look like i mean close to i know i'm changing textures.

i wanted to try the default to get the hang of using it.

 

Maybe I didn't explain it that well. I didn't give a specific 'here is what I'm trying to do' on purpose, because I'm not interested in that I want to know how the implementation works.

In a nutshell, I should be able to specify that I want exactly one texture at a specific slope range. Of course there will be blending at the bottom and top, but I should not see two textures over that entire range. Which is what I'm seeing. What's at other slopes/locations/whatever is completely orthogonal to the issue I'm addressing.

Your implementation works differently then other tools that use splat weights to blend. They don't blend unless specifically asked to. Which is the right thing to do IMO.

As to what is at 10-45. It should be either nothing or some sensible default like the texture at the first index. While nothing doesn't look good, it's the better choice because then it's obvious. If you just fill the terrain with the first texture, then it becomes impossible to debug whether that first texture is working by the rules you think it is once you have more then one texture. Unfortunately most tools fill with the first texture because it looks better and causes fewer noob questions. But I find it really annoying, I want to see an accurate representation.

 

Thanks for very fast response. I'm using a mouse wheel. No, sometime it's crash but not often. I just don't know why it's not work for me. I see in the tutorial you easily move around your graph. You just click and drag. And I will try to do a video. I'm using an Asus laptop so could it be an issue ?
Maybe it need more than 15inches of screen ?
I have a kind of request. Is it possible , if you can implement GPU generation of terrain in your next updates ? So our terrain will generate more fast by GPU

 

Using the latest MapMagic and CTS. Is there any way to reduce the excessive loading every time a new terrain chunk is generated with CTS applied? Using only 4 materials and the Basic CTS shader the load times of each tile are not usable in a game where terrain is generated on the fly. Maybe I am doing something wrong? Thanks.

 

Vortavasail, I've just re-created your graph but could not reproduce that error from the console. Does it happens in playmode or in editor too? If in editor - does it happens when you are pinning any chunk or only some particular chunks?

I'm not nagging - just want to know the alternative way because for now I still can't imagine how blending could be implemented other that it's already done.

What do you mean by "nothing"? Should the terrain be invisible here? Or should it be black? Note that the terrain shader requires that the sum of all channels should be 1, otherwise it shows artifacts - especially if you try to paint something on that terrain by brush.

BTW in case if you have a bug and get a different result other than I get: here is a 3-layers blend - the background is using the black texture, Grass layer uses the slope range 0-10, and Cliffs - 35-90. There is no cliff on the grass or vice versa, and the range 10-35 is filled with background black texture:

I doubt that it's related with the screen size. I had a similar issue once, but it was caused by my mouse - it broken down and stopped reading mousewheel clicks. Other than that I've never heard about issues with dragging graph.

I'd like to mention that not everything that run on GPU is automatically fast. I've made some experiments with the compute shaders and found out that it could be accelerated only with a flexibility loss - for instance, have to give up using multiple output connections. The reason I prefer multithreading to GPU calculations is that it fits dynamically generated infinite terrain better. GPU generating usually looks great in the editor, but in playmode, when GPU load is usually 100% it can squeeze graphics calculations and produce a some lag. While in most cases the processor cores are not so loaded (maybe except the main unity thread), which allows to use them almost unnoticeable.

MapMagic uses multithreading instead, calculating all of the generators asynchronously in a several separate threads, and just applies final the result in a main thread. Calculating terrain is mostly fast (dozens milliseconds per generator per thread) except some generators like erosion, which can take up to several seconds. All the generating runs in a background and creates no lag in game.

I guess this happens because CTS creates a material asset each time new chunk appears. I've talked to Adam about that, he said that in the next CTS version will no longer save materials while the scene is running. This should fix the issue.

 

Hello everyone,

Excuse me for my previous message I may have been a bit nasty unintentionally.

I spent two full days creating a field and here is the result:



I encounter several problems. The first is that I am not sure that my structure is correct.

I managed to create a kind of river with lakes but the edges are not pretty and I can not manage to change the texture of the edges.

I wish that the mountains appear only on the plains but at some place it cuts the river the effect is not superb!

I also have some rare trees that appear on the bottom of the rivers while they are supposed to spawn only on the texture "grass" and the rock also appear anywhere on the map.

I share my MapMagic table:
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=48292111376161289156

Thank you for your patience

 

The best way to handle static heights is to access the heights directly. If you know that your river edges are always lower than your grass, but always higher than your riverbeds you can make a curve to pick out only that part of you height data and texture it.
Likewise with rare trees/grass spawning you want to use a curve to make sure that it's set to 0 before 0,0 more like 0.5,0 because Unity creates splatmaps by layering textures together. There is often a 0.01% amount of grass everywhere even though it looks like 0. If you tell your trees to go only where there is at least 50% grass or more it should work better.
For keeping mountains out of river, I would use a blend node to make sure that the river is always applied after the mountains.

 

Hi dears
I'm Begginer in unity3d and mapmagic .
please upload this project
Blending 3 biomes together

 

Thanks you, i test it in the day.

I have a bug but i don't understand :/

 

I'm newer to Map Magic, anyways, I'm used to using Raw files for many years, but when using Biomes, its asking for an asset file.. What is a way to make an asset file, I seem to make one from my Raw Input, but no matter where I add this asset file, it won't accept it in the biome node...

So is there something special here, I need to do any help would be great. I'm making biomes by the way.. I know how to make them, just having issues with making these asset files and putting them in the right place. Not sure what the deal is, Thanks.

 

Biomes in MapMagic are actually graphs, just like the graph you're putting biome generators onto. If you think of your graph as a "world" a biome is sort of a world within a world. If you save your "Data" in the MapMagic inspector you'll create an asset that should fit in the biome slot. I don't actually use them, though some users on here get pretty advanced with them.

 

When using CTS with MapMagic, if I save or build the project I get black terrain textures. Seen a similar report here:

https://gitlab.com/denispahunov/mapmagic/issues/121

 

Good day, i read most manuals, but didn`t find any way to acess mapmagic nodes via external C# scripts.
Is there a way i can change some generator node dureing runtime?
Thanks

 

@Silvermurk You can program a generator to look at runtime variables. Is that what you mean? If you change the variable in runtime you can change the behaviour of the graph. The graph isn't necessary always moving though. You might need to tell it to regenerate a terrain to see the effects... not sure what you're looking to do though.

 

Yeah, was looking for that
Just thought there might be a way to GetComponent from MapMagic and set it`s value. Thou your way might work too

 

still looking for info on this.. I was able to make one, but I want to be clear on this. Thanks.

 

ya I know but you can't make one, per say, with out a asset file....I have Raw Files I made out side of Map ,Magic , so this is confusing me how to handle this, I know I can use Raw files., with a raw input Node.. but how can I use my Raw Files as I make each of my biomes, in another program, import to MM...So now I WANT to be able to blend my biomes inside of MM.. issue is the biome node is wanting this asset file...so this is what is confusing.... So any help from the Developer would be great anyone else I talk to dont seem to know how for sure..

basically i'm trying to use my own raw files, that I made in another program, and I want to use them with MM, biomes nodes.. so I can blend my raw files. Thanks.

 

Hi,

Could you please integrate the warp generator ? The cowtrix version is not updated and doesn't work anymore.

Thank you very much for MapMagic, it is really an amazing asset.

 

Not sure if it's a Unity bug (Most likely) or MapMagic bug, or if it's even fixable on the mapmagic side, but in the Unity Linux Graph editor for MapMagic you cannot enter values in the boxes, such as height or safe borders/etc. You can only change the values using the drag functionality.

 

Dennis, how would you go about forcing MapMagic to generate a terrain where the player is on game load?

In a scene loaded method, I want to retrieve the position of a character, then force mapmagic to generate at least the terrain chunks that would be in view of that character at that position (the same chunks that mapmagic would normally have loaded with a character at that position) and then start play.

At the moment, when a character loads, the terrain is not yet loaded and the character falls through where the terrain would be before it's loaded.

Is there an API call or something I can call to force generate terrain, not asynchrounously, so that it ensures the terrain is generated before the character can move? I could probably solve this with polling to see if the terrain is generated or not yet.. but that feels really inelegant.

 

Candac59, I couldn't download the file you've linked, so it's hard to say why the stones are spawned in the river and why it crosses the mountains. Could you post a screenshot of your graph?
But the the seams on the last screen - I guess they were caused by erosion or blur generator - happen because of the way MapMagic works. Chunks are absolutely independent and do not exchange any data - for instance, when blurring one chunk it cannot get pixels from the neighbor one to perform a perfect blur. That's why some generators have "Safe Borders" value - it masks the generator effect closer to chunk edges. Many generators have this value set to 2 by the default, you can try increasing it to minimize the seam effect.

That's an issue Adam is aware of, guess it will be fixed in the next CTS release. As a quick fix you can comment out lines 211-213, 258-260 and 305-307 of the CompleteTerrainShader.cs (i.e. all Directory.CreateDirectory and AssetDatabase.CreateAsset calls inside #if UNITY_EDITOR blocks). This will greatly speed up CTS Output apply too, but I can't guarantee that CTS will work fine in non-MapMagic mode then.

Here is a f.a.q. section about changing the global seed in runtime with scripts. It mentions the way to change some generator properties too. You might also have a look at the Input Switch Generator.

You've got to assign a whole graph as the biome data, not the saved RAW file. To save the graph use General Settings -> Data -> Store to assets button. RAW files and saved RAW assets could not be assigned as biome data, it's an absolutely different asset type. Guess you can create several short graphs with RAW Input and Height Output only for your biomes.

It's planned, and I'm going to look into it soon.

I don't really know why it behaves differently on Linux since the editor code is absolutely the same for all of the platforms. Guess some Unity method does not work or work differently on Linux, and it is hard to say what method it is exactly. I wonder if any of the other MapMagic Linux users have encountered the same problem and were they able to overcome it?

Here is a method to generate some particular area. If it will be called from the main thread it will work in main thread. However it will just store generated data in "Result" class instance as 2D array for height, 3D array for splats, etc. It will not apply it all to terrain.
I'd really like to recommend you locking your character until the terrain is generated. Generating it in main thread will not give you any time advantage. You can display an animated splash screen or something while it is generated. And you can use OnApplyCompleted(Terrain terrain) event to know that terrain is ready.

 

I figured the asset file issue out, but I wanted to be sure what the proper way was WITH MY OWN RAW FILES as I made in another program...

So far WHAT I did , was edit the BIOME node, asset data file is made and added already .I made a raw input node added my raw to it, and added a height .. This seems to work, I want to be sure that is the proper way to use Raw files that are not made inside of MM. .. as I'm making biomes in another program and using the raw files inside MM, I'm mainly just using MM to blend my biomes I made .

Is that the correct way or is there another way? Thanks. PS, I KNOW RAW FILES cant be saved as biome data that was why I asked the question about how to make the asset files, which I figured out earlier by trying to learn more of the program, the DOCS should have this.... if it does, I didn't see it.

"Guess you can create several short graphs with RAW Input and Height Output only for your biomes." This is the part I been doing, so I guess this is the correct way .