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

Using the Custom Shader output (Custom mode) you can create the control maps and assign them to the selected material template using the given "Control textures" property name.

Warp generator is in my to do list, but I have not started working on it yet.

 

Denis do you know what issue I might be having, from page 45? Thanks-

 

No, I have not encountered it. So I need more information to reproduce it using your OS (hope it's not Linux) and build target.

 

I am running Unity 2017.2.0f3 Personal (64bit), Windows 10.0.16299.64, Visual Studio Community 2017 Version 15.2 (26430.121) Release.

Once I add the package and wait for things to compile I can run in playmode and everything appears to work, however if I build the project's EXE I get the shader compile issue with the tree shader. If I delete the tree shader I am able to build the EXE but the tree's show the missing asset pink in place of color, shading, or any vertex lighting - like a cut out since its the overall material shader that is missing. I can get you more details on the build error if needed. Thanks for your help!

 

For being able to customize terrain with manual corrections, I was thinking a good possible approach is a generator that takes a mesh instance in the scene and does a simple add or subtract operation against the heightmap. After some noise/blur later in the chain even a lot of basic shapes become useful to create rivers/ramps/lakes. And converting terrains to meshes and then using those lets you get that variety in geography that is nearly impossible with pure procedural generation.

Kind of like a blend of some of the techniques Gaia uses with it's masks. Heightmap masks though like Gaia uses or Raw files are just a pain to work with. Unless you want to use real world terrain, the shapes are going to come from some artificial source. So given that, why not just let people use the simplest and easiest source available? Things you can easily create in Unity itself.

 

The ability to generate roads/paths and rivers using splines would be a huge feature in my opinion and a real selling point. I am assuming splines will work with Voxeland too?

 

How can I stop grass and trees from appearing below a certain height? Basically, I'm using the "islands" demo, and modifying the generator graph, and want to stop the grass and trees from generating on the beach or below. It probably used to do that, but somehow doesn't anymore for me.

 

I don't want to get attached to anything in the scene, since it ruins the concept of the infinite terrain. But I like the idea of a model-to-map input. Got to think about it, maybe there is a way to repeat the "models" by tiling the map or something.

They will.

The heightmap - the map you use for the final height output node - is a map that wires intensity with a height. Using it as a mask for the grass output or object scatter nodes will make will make tree/grass intensity very low at the bottom and high at the tops. You can adjust it's contrast with the curve (see wiki example) to make the sharp transition between land and underwater.
In the island tutorial it's done even simpler: the grass texture (from the texture output) is used as a mask.

 

How to create a ditch for river?

 

Hi There,

I have just purchased Map Magic after spending months on map generation using perlin noise. I have a few questions that is not answered in the documentation.

1. Spawning a player on an infinite map - The map's seed is exposed as a setting on the "New Game" screen. This means that i cannot predetermine a random point on the map as it will always change. How would one find a valid point on the map in this case?
2. Disabling tiles not in range - This is a must in a world our size. however, our players are spawned after the map is loaded, which means there is no camera in the scene that will create a visible tile till such time as the player is spawned. This now ties back to the fact that i cannot use "SampleHeight" on the terrain to find a spot to spawn the player.

Note that we are using the infinite world option even though our playable area is fixed at 16km x 16km

 

That depends on the way you are going to create a river itself. MapMagic does not have spline support (at least yet). I used to create small streams using the noise heightmap and a curve like that:

You can place the spawn marker prefabs using the Objects output, the way it's done with the stones or other objects, and spawn character at the marker position.

You can use any object with a specified tag to trigger terrain generate, not only the main camera. In your case you can create a temporary helper "hero" (it might be an empty transform) at the center of the terrain you want to generate, once that terrain is generated spawn a real hero at the spawn marker and delete the temporary object.

 

Hi, I need help.
Every Terraine produced by MM does not have a 'CTS Weather Controller'. So I can't control the weather.

I can not use the weather features of CTS at all in the way of the video you uploaded. When moving to neighboring terrain, the weather does not apply to neighboring Terrain at all.

In addition, if you release the pin in the region, the CTS will not find the texture and will be stopped for an error. Even if you add the pin again, it will be stopped by an error.

I think additional update or explanation is needed about the addition of 'CTS weather controller' in MM.

ps. I used a translator as a non - English speaker.

 

You can assign any component (in this case - CTS Weather Controller) to the MapMagic object and turn on "Copy Components to Terrains" in General Settings. This will clone the assigned component and apply it to all of the MapMagic chunks - both in editor and in playmode/build.
Re-pinning of the terrains might be required.

 

Fine people... loving this compared to the multitude of other terrain assets I have... but one thing I need assist with please. If I can ask for forgiveness up front, as I am sure that it is user error on my part which is more typical than not... and I cannot find in the threads a reference to my situation by searching.

I have the latest asset build on the Unity Asset Store of MMWG, Windows 10, Unity 2017.2.0f3.
My question for resolution is:
Whenever I save my Scene, MMWG rebuilds (I have auto gen turned off), and whenever I go back to the scene and execute Play mode in the scene, the terrain(s) are missing and my character is just floating in that wonderful never ending fall that we all have seen. This also happens whenever I make a build, it does not error out, but after I have saved a scene and then build a test for myself, the terrains are missing again. Any assistance on this is greatly appreciated in advance.

Thanks

 

I absolutely love how the MapMagic editor works. It is clean and it produces the results you would expect. MapMagic also makes working with multiple tiles very intuitive. My favorite feature is the ability to use a single heightmap and scale it across multiple terrain tiles. It sure beats reslicing masks in Photoshop.

As much as I love how the editor works, I am not interested in producing a fully procedural game. For my purposes. the procedural editing is an efficiency gain in creating a large map. This brings me to my problem. Has anyone figured out a good work flow to create a large set of tiles in MapMagic and then reuse them in an alternative streaming engine. I assume that MapMagic provides no streaming mechanism of its own if you wish to make manual edits to every tile. Will the editor survive having a large number of tiles pinned and locked so that MapMagic can be used to work on a manually tweaked large world? Can I pin and lock terrains and then disable them in the scene to save the editor so I can keep my entire map in one scene? I understand that there is an export method for the individual tiles. How much does that export? Do I just get the heightmap? Do I also get the splat map? What about the objects?

I understand a lot of developers are loving the potential for procedural worlds today, but it seems a shame this tool can't also be usable for those who want to use it for its editing capabilities, but then also apply manual changes. If anyone has figured out a good way around this, please let me know.

 

I cant believe I'm asking such a basic question but I spent too long on this. I'm trying to have snow above a certain height. I don't want to use shore node for this and I've read what you've said above about using the height information as mask but it doesn't work. it only affects the intensity distribution but doesn't restrict it above a height. Can you explain what to do here?

 

Another question.
Can I get a reference to self?
in other words I would like to use ur erosion brush to sculpt the terrain and use MapMagic to apply on top. I know I can export the raw of the terrain but that would mean I would have to keep exporting everytime I made changes to the terrain. is there a quicker way.

also another workflow I used was to have two terrains, 1 for sculpting and the other Map Magic.
I would export the sculpted terrain to raw and then use it as an import for MapMagic using raw input.
Both terrains are align the same so I can just switch off the sculpt one and it matches up with the other, BUT the problem is that MapMagic rotates the raw data and that means I cant match them up.

any advice would be much appreciated.

 

Does this happen in a clear project, with only MMWG installed? Is your character starting on a pinned terrain? Does it appear after all (when the time to generate it passed)?

It will export heightmap, splatmap, grass prototypes and grass (detail) maps, tree prototypes and trees placed on terrain. However, it will not export all of the terrain child objects (the ones created with the Objects Output).
Anyways, even being exported all of the chunks will be loading in one scene at the same time, so it's definitely a good idea to use streaming assets when using the large number of pinned terrains.

As far as I know World Streamer works with MapMagic pretty well. However it's just a user feedback on forum, I have not tested it myself.

Here is how do I see the MapMagic pipeline and how do I actually use it: I create a large procedural terrain, pinning only a couple of chunks for the preview. Then pin and lock the chunks that are located at the places where the main POI should be, like towns or castles. I leave all of the minor POI like small villages, single buildings, mob spawn locations, dungeon entrances to be procedurally generated. This way I get only 5-10 chunks per scene that should be edited manually, while all the chunks in-between are generated with MapMagic. 10 terrains per scene is a pretty significant amount of work with an adequate level design, it makes a team of 2 (and a half ) level-designers busy for months.

You don't need to use the shore node here for sure. You've got to use the Curve instead, to make the height more contrast:

I plan to implement such a thing in v2.0. It will be called "Height Input", and it will read the current terrain heightmap and convert it to the node output.
Speaking of your case - you are using Unity (with EB) as a sculpting software, the way it could be done in zbrush or mudbox. So maybe it'll be convenient to create a separate project for sculpting and switch between Unity applications? Just consider a second Unity instance like zBrush.

 

Well If you use the hide out of range terrains, doesnt that work fine? It does for me at least, the terrains are pinned but in runtime are deactivated and they only activate when the player is near. That works good so I can have baked navmesh

 

Probably it does - at least while the assets you use on all of your chunks are the same. It will just load extra heightmap/splatmap/grass etc data (for each chunk no matter if it is enabled or not). But if you use biomes - you will have load the desert assets even you are in a snowy tundra. This way you will have to load all of your game assets at once! It's not the matter of FPS, it's the matter of memory.

 

I'm having a issue similar to some guys (LegacyOutput problem) but in the CTSOutputGenerator class, hoping there is a similar solution for this class.

 

Такой артефакт встретился на стыке, в чем может быть причина?

 

Увеличь safe border в нодах.

 

Не нашел.

Это все что использовал

 

Seems to be some update issue - CTSOutput is not used anymore since v.1.7. Just remove the CTSOutputGenerator.cs file in Generators folder.
Custom Shader Output is used instead to work with CTS, RTP and MegaSplat.

fenix6390, what is you pixel error value?
If you prefer to write in Russian feel free to email me, writing in Russian on a international public forum is kinda mauvais ton.

 

Thanks for the inquiry in this...
I have solved for this today... all terrains were pinned... but was missing a lock. Nothing builds for the terrain if not pinned and... locked. User error.

 

Has anyone experienced a hard freeze bug while using Map Magic in Unity 2017.1?

I'm able to install and setup a terrain node graph just fine. Run the scene, play around to my heart's content. However once I have setup a scene graph and go to save my Unity scene... Unity hangs... then if I don't immediately force-quit out of the operation it spreads and hangs my entire system.

I've never seen anything like it. I haven't done much debugging yet... I thought I'd chime in here and see if anyone else experienced anything similar before investing too much time trying to isolate the exact source of the problem.

I'm enjoying Map Magic so far and can really see how powerful and intuitive it is... this issue is preventing me from exploring much at the moment though.

 

Самой ошибки внизу нет, это просто бегал в сгенерированном мире смотрел как все сгенерировалось, и встретил данный артефакт, учитывая какая тонкая работа была проведена с mapmagiс подумал что вы наверняка хотели что бы подобное не генерировалось когда создавали расширение, лично мне это проблему не создает но подумал что вам это может быть интересно.

По поводу русского, скорее не столько предпочитаю сколько имею безвыходную ситуацию писать на русском т.к. в английском не силен, слов 40 от силы может знаю, а остальное все через переводчики, что конечно по свойму создает мне проблемы при работе с продуктами без поддержки русского ))) даже текущее все через переводчик читаю, такая околесица бывает в некоторых сообщениях когда он неверно слова переводит, емое )

По поводу вашей почты, было дело, писал Вам на почту, только по другому вопросу но ответа не пришло ((( поэтому решил не писать на почту т.к. не было ответа.

 

I was still getting trees occasionally underwater. The simple fix was to just add a "minimum height" field to the trees output and just cut off everything below the sea level. If anyone needs this, I did the following (in the TreesOutput class in 1.8.3)

Added a var to track the height for the node:

public float minimumHeight;

in OnExtendedGUI(int layer):

layout.Field(ref minimumHeight, "Minimum Ht");

in the layers loop in Process (around line 1127)

float minheight = layer.minimumHeight / terrainSize.height;

and, after terrainHeight is calculated, just bailed instead of adding a tree (around line 1188)

if (terrainHeight <= minheight) continue;

There's probably a way better way to do this, but this was quick and fast.

 

I plan to implement such a thing in v2.0. It will be called "Height Input", and it will read the current terrain heightmap and convert it to the node output.

Sorry to ask but when are you planning to release v2.0? soon or long term plan?

 

So what would be your advice regarding actually generating on runtime including navmesh? I have a hard time getting good times on generating each terrain, and i got 16 cores cpu. When I m not generating navmesh is better, would you add a navmesh generation with the terrain that would bake faster in runtime or something? cant find the best way to do it

 

Hi, I am just about 2 weeks thinking about how to make more realistic looking shape of forrrests. And I got idea to ask you, as could not find anything inside MM documentation.

If I use forrest node, it always lead simulation, lets say on flat land, without hand made masks always circle shaped forrests... Did anyone wrote a more organic looking shape, or any idea how to make it ?Thanks.

 

Sounds horrible. Does this happens in a clear project, with only MM installed?

fenix6390,
признаю, что читать русский текст удобнее чем ломать голову над смыслом автоматического перевода. В любом случае было бы здорово если бы Вы могли приложить автоперевод под текстом в сообщении.

Похоже, что эти швы баг Terrain.SetNeighbors при использовании высокого значения Pixel Error. Я смог воспроизвести эти артефакты пару раз, но они исчезали при приближении камеры (или при любом движении камеры, я так и не понял). В любом случае, спасибо за баг-репорт!

I admit that reading a text in Russian is more convenient than trying to wrap my head around the meaning of auto-translation. But anyways it would be great if you could include the auto-translate text below in a post.

These seams seem to be some sort of Unity's Terrain.SetNeighbors method bug when using large Pixel Error values. I could reproduce these artifacts a couple of times, but they seem to vanish as the camera moves closer (or at least moves in any direction - I'm not sure). Anyways, thanks for finding out that issue!

Jaimi, are you using the Forest Generator? If so - these trees seem to be the initial seedlings. Forest generator can create new trees, but it does not remove them - this also applies to initial seedlings. To remove them connect grass mask to scatter's probability input

I plan to start v.2 full-scale beta test in February.

It's better not to use anything baked on a dynamic terrain: not a lightmap nor a navmesh. A dynamic pathfinding should be used instead, using waypoint navigation, collision detection and steering behaviors. An open terrain is not a maze, so in most cases it should be enough.
Apex Path boasts dynamic pathfinding, but I have not tested it. Some users claim that they are using Apex Path alongside MapMagic with great results. (end of page 7)
However, for pinned terrains that can have some complex POI like villages or cities a manual navmesh could be created with the standard tools.

Well, the forest generator has a "Soil" mask, but I don't think this name is 100% correct. I've got to rename it to "Life quality" or something, just can't find the name that will reflect it's meaning accurately. This mask includes the soil quality as well as humidity, slope, luminance, etc. The more this mask value is - the better tree grows here and more chances it has to reproduce seedlings. This map could be created with the other generators like Slope (for slope) or Cavity (for luminance) and blended together using Blend node with multiply modes. You can blend in the actual height map too. This map should not be homogeneous for sure, and this will shape the forest by making the trees grow and spread where the conditions are suitable.

 

Has anyone setup Map Magic to work with Microsplat? Of course it works if I generate a terrain and then save that specific terrain and follow the steps manually. But it doesn't work if I create a "custom shader" output. Seems to be a problem with the terrains needing precompiled texture arrays.

 

Если я могу поделится какими либо еще дополнительными данными скажите и я их здесь размещу, могу вплоть до каждой строки попробовать расписать, кстати данный артефакт у меня не исчезал при движении, я бегал вокруг выбирая лучший ракурс для скриншота, думаю что проблема в чем то другом.

If I can share some more additional data, say and I'll post them here, I can try to paint up to every line, by the way this artifact did not disappear when I moved, I ran around choosing the best camera angle for the screenshot, I think the problem is somewhat different.


настройки mapmagic
Terrain Size 500
Terrain Height 300

Generate Range 500
Remove Range 700
Eneble Range 500

Сам проект mapmagic




Значение Curve сейчас другое, менял высоты, час побегал более не встречал такого. только стыки спрайтов но это уже проблемы спрайтов как понимаю.

 

has anyone used World Streamer with MapMagic? Is it hard to use or you can just create your world with MapMagic, and then disable MM and let World Stream handle the load/unload of it?

 

Nope, it is super easy.

 

It does. I narrowed it down as being directly related to using a large Raw file for height output. The crash happens if I setup the graph and try and save the scene, OR if I use the 'Save Imported Raw' button after browsing to my Raw heightmap file. It only seems to happen if I use a Raw file of 8192px. I've tried lower values (512, 1024, 2048, and 4096) and all these seem to work OK. 4096 takes a while to save but it does OK eventually.

Anytime I use 8192 it freaks out. Can't handle it. I also noticed the saved .asset file is considerably larger than the original raw input file. A 4096 goes from 32MB in the original file to 145mb in the .asset file. I've uploaded my 8192px raw height file in case you'd like to test with it:

http://www.tanukidigital.com/share/testheightmap8192.zip

Below is the basic editor graph I'm using. For now I'll stick with 4096px or lower.

 

@MarcusGod Can you write up the procedure you used to get MM working with world streamer? It would be awesome to have a map magic function to export a given range of tiles.

@wright0768 what is in the roadmap for 2.0? I'm interested in a feature like what Horizon[ON] does for creating horizons. It would also be nice to have a feature like the export feature mentioned above.

I'm finding that MM generation for some of my more complicated graphs is killing performance (especially around the erosion node) and would really like to export my maps to disk easily for faster load times with a tool like World Streamer. I see fps drops down to 4-8 fps during generation. I've reduced my tile size down to 512 with terrain resolution of 512. I could possibly get away with reducing to 256, but I would prefer not to.

 

I created my terrain, disabled map magick object, moved terrains to scene root and add a new terrain layer to the wolrdstreamer with rule finding "Terrain" in names. Also, i renamed most of my prefabs with proper distance prefixes before terrain generation, so WS can easily pick them up. If I need to regenerate terrain I am deleting the whole terrain, enable MM obj, UNpin terrain, pin them again, and do all necessary modification.

 

How to make trees grow only higher than water level, and not in water?

 

We were just talking about this a few posts ago:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/map...ite-game-map-tool.390920/page-46#post-3299947

 

Do I need to set RTP shader script to each of my terrain tiles? I need to use global maps for each of tiles.

 

I've opened the issue so you could track the fix progress.

Not me, but I'm going to answer anyways
2.0 roadmap:
- Interface enhancements;
- Height, splats, objects inputs (MapMagic as an editor tool);
- Margins to create borderless terrains;
- Low detail terrains at horizon;
- Native C++ generators in editor (erosion, noise, forest - Mac and Win editors only);
- Splines beta

What is the number of threads on your test platform? Try setting "Max Threads" value to 1 to see if it will slow down performance while generating.

No! You should use Custom Shader Output node with only one RTP instance assigned to MapMagic object: tutorial.

 

After generating map magic is there a way to edit it with Erosion brush? I think it's very important to be able to change terrain with a brush after you build the base.

 

Hello Denis, I am wondering if there is a way to blend together two flatten areas for the same scene?

I am trying to create two flatten areas of two differentes sizes. One height to villages and one height to cities. (to take again the terminology of the tutorial)

I tried to mix them or add them but it doesnt work.

a.

 

sure, you just have to lock the terrain (with the Lock button) to prevent it from further aut-generate changes.

I'd like to recommend you combining two object lists (one with the villages positions and one with the cities) before the single flatten node.

 

Is there a way to clear out foliage and flatten the area around where certain objects get created? Or does this need to be further up the graph? I have some large items that get foliage poking through them, and if they land in a flat spot at the top of a hill, parts of them might actually be hanging free over the edges.

Edit: OK, I posted too quick, I see the flatten object. I'll look at that.

 

But If I change my base a little then I will lose all changes I paint with brush. If it was possible to keep changes somehow even after regenerating the maps that would be really useful.

 

Не получается, я какую кривую ни делал, все равно либо частично остаются деревья в воде, либо они пропадают в сцене полностью.
Я думаю, вам стоит сделать новый тип генератора, который срезает объекты выше/ниже указанного уровня.