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

It's rather odd since the AS version and evaluation one use absolutely the same demo scene. What is exactly wrong with the performance? Is it low FPS or lags on terrain apply? Or hiccups while terrain is generating? How big are they or how low is FPS?

It's exactly the way they could be created! No have no tutorial on that, but you've got it right: the most bottom layer should have an empty block and high noise curvature, while the higher layer should be cliff and more flat.

Error description helps, but it would be cool if you could memorize the sequence of things you do so I could reproduce this issue.

A bit unclear here, but I guess it's related with Voxeland only anyways.

Are they single voxels, or form groups? If so, what id the height of the group?

You can use voronoi for that - cell mode, inverted by curve. However the lines would be straight, you will need warp generator (image) or something.

Isn't stamp node is what you are talking about? It's not about tiling, but here is the example that literally turn one cone into a series of the smalle cones.

 

Ah, okay, then. I guess I already figured it out.

If I get to where I can reproduce it on demand, I'll document that for you. Right now, I'm not 100% certain myself exactly what's triggering it. As I said, I'm not expecting you to debug this non-fatal error based on my vague description.

I'll post a screen shot as soon as I can.

These appear to be very small groups, maybe 3 to 5 voxels each.

I had considered that possibility. I'll experiment with it. Thanks for the pointer to the custom generators.

Ahhhh, I had never realized the use of objects could become an input to generate or change maps! I have only been considering the other way around -- using maps to influence where objects are randomly distributed.

Yes, the stamp node is about 90% of what I had in mind -- thanks! The only thing I don't see, which would be useful in my own scene, is how to scatter objects in a circle, but I'll experiment around that and also may consider writing my own custom scatter-like node. Having looked at the examples, custom nodes don't seem to be as difficult to create as I might have assumed, and I'm comfortable with C# scripting, so I should be able to build what I need.

 

This is...odd. I just noticed that if I create two Groups in the same node graph, renaming either of them renames the other as well. Is that intended behavior?

 

good afternoon I have been using the asset for some time and decided to migrate my project to HDRDP but I had a question. MapMagic supports HDRP, perform a test on a blank project and I was unable to assign the created terain layers

 

Done! I've made a switchable preview shader that you can assign in settings, and a preview shader graph that works in both LWRP and HDRP. Submitting this version now, guess it will be available at the AS in a couple of days.

Propagate might be what are you looking for.

Nope. How can I reproduce this issue? Straight approach of creating two groups and then renaming one did not work - the other one's name isn't changing. Duplicating the group did not work either.

Yes, MapMagic works with the HDRP (except the preview part which is already fixed, but waiting for review). You've got to assign a custom terrain material in a Terrain Settings to make the terrain displayed properly. Usually it's anything with HDRenderPipeline/TerrainLit shader.

 

@Wright
I've been using MapMagic for a little while now, and more recently have been digging into terrain a lot deeper. I've found some issues and some feedback I'd like to present to you. Much of it is quality of life improvements with integrations, so I appologize if you just don't care about these things, but it's one of the reasons I was attracted to MapMagic, when it works it saves me a lot of time. When it has some issues, I really feel it so I would love some updates/fixes.

1) Integration with Vegetation Studio is very spotty, anytime the package is updated it causes all the links to the nodes to be lost, they reset to Object, and all the settings are lost. You also lose the link to the next item in the list, if you change any setting for an item, the next link just gets trashed. Also, sometimes links won't place (like to object instead of map on veg studio) unless you do it in reverse order (IE: scatter to veg object won't link, but veg object back to scatter output will). In addition to these being very difficult for workflow, there is also a simple lack of control in the integration, so there should be a way to opt in to controlling everything except the controlling input masks by way of the package until the integration supports most of the options (and it should be clearer that you need to enable the inclusion masks in the package, but not add any textures to get this to work, that took some messing around to figure out). Also, some stuff like simply trying to get some variation in scales doesn't work so well and you can't fall back on the package configuration to do it instead because the node forcefully overrides what it can control.

2) I am using 1000 size, but 256 resolution terrains and I still have a fairly heavy cost to generation and a lot of lockups while waiting for the terrain to render in (particularly distracting at runtime, initial load of 8 surrounding terrains is less concerning than the long lockups trying to load 2-3 during travel), even when messing with the settings to restrict frame time consumption. It would be nice if each of the nodes on the graph had a little spot where they universally report how much time they are contributing to the total cost of the terrain and where we might be able to focus optimizing to reduce the cost by fudging with cheaper ideas (it should be noted I'm not using anything really heavy like erosion, only one terrace and mostly voronoi, noise, curves and a couple blends). To be fair, I want the timing to confirm that it is in fact not the generation, but possibly other factors of other things causing the problem (rendering or detailing stuff at a distance should be cheap and fast, but maybe CTS is choking, this slowness existed prior to introducing veg studio).

3) Many nodes, including the custom shader output (used for CTS) and the vegetation output do not refresh properly without forcing a refresh all, it would be nice to have this work a bit more consistently and also force a refresh of the scene view (RE: trees and vegetation changes don't show up unless I force a refresh and then force the view to redraw by moving it around a tiny bit). This is also experienced after trying to pin new chunks, they end up not generating correctly without forcing everything to generate again.

4) A couple more cheap generators for masks could be very useful, like elevation to mask areas above/below a height, and a cheap way to get harder edges for texture transitioning where bias/intensity are a pain, curves are a pain, it would be nice to have something like a contrast that can easily give a 0/1 mask with little or no transition between or tighter control over it, particularly good for vegetation detailing masks too.

Otherwise, love MapMagic, hope to see it continue to improve and bring us better integrations.

 

Thank you SO MUCH for the microsplat integration. Getting real-time feedback came at the perfect time for rearchitecting my terrain layers. Here's a little sample, particularly loving the accumulated (and dynamically wet) mud on the left. About 8 terrain layers in this shot, all blending very subtly and leveraging the great erosion filter.

 

try in several ways to assign the texture layer in HDRP in an unsuccessful way.
Could you please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
Attached screenshot of the configuration of terrains and laslayerterrains.
Thank you

 

Thank you so much, will test it as soon as it gets approved! By the way - the black terrain in standalone build I reported earlier is a known HDRP bug and it is already fixed in HDRP 5.14 which should be released soon, so you don't have to worry about it.

 

Oddly enough, but it works fine for me in 4.1.0. Maybe some sort of regression...

Thanks, I will look into it. Integration with other assets is usually a headache since the other asset might be changed after integration is done, tested and released. Just to be sure, you are talking about VS, not VS Pro?

Could you please profile your lag time? For the resolution of 256 it should not be noticeable at all, about 5-10ms or so. Try running the island demo scene - do you get this lag here?

Ok, will do it in the next version. Actually, will try to append the version currently pending review, but not sure if I catch it.

 

try in several ways to assign the texture layer in HDRP in an unsuccessful way.
Could you please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
Attached screenshot of the configuration of terrains and laslayerterrains.
Thank you

 

You've got to assign the custom material in a Custom Material slot in Terrain Settings. In most cases this material should use HDRenderPipeline/TerrainLit shader.

 

I would like create number of biomes with sharp borders in voronoi like areas - anyone got idea how do it?
I am experimenting with different elements but no progress so far.

UPDATE: Found it - combination of Noises + terraces gives the result..

 

I've been using that to turn a single (intentionally) blurry circle stamp into a randomly-shaped blob (by overlapping the stamped shapes), so that's definitely a very useful node. I'll have to revisit it and see if it can do the specific radial thing I had in mind. That's an interesting suggestion I had not considered.

The issue went away for me after I restarted Unity, so I can't reproduce it now, either. I'll let you know if it comes back.

 

Yes, Vegetation Studio standard edition, I may look at upgrading but so far haven't convinced myself I need it.

I don't have any hard official numbers, but I have it loading upto 1000 distance away, generating at 1100. In general, this means when I load up the game I have the center terrain pinned already, and 8 terrains around it need to be generated and loaded. It takes about 5-6 seconds for the generation to finish and for it to start enabling terrains. And then each terrain being rendered seems to take 2-3 seconds each, so it's smooth until it starts adding the terrains then it locks up giving 0-2FPS for a couple seconds for each of the terrains. I feel like this is probably not MapMagic generation issue, but rather a problem with how the terrain is then handed to the rendering engine to display all at once.

I tried the island demo scene, I set it up to load the terrains the same as mine with 1100/1100/1000 for generate/remove/enable ranges. And I notice that it does drop the framerate substantially, it runs about 140FPS and then as it starts to load in the additional terrains I see it drop to about 20-30FPS, which is at least tolerable (although on a 2070 that seems pretty bad). On my own game, I'm getting 60-70FPS (need instanced indirect grass for SpeedTree8 in VegStudio), but it locks up for a few seconds to do my terrains. I suspect my terrains are a bit more complicated in their generation, but I can't see why it would lock up entirely. It must be related to the actual rendering, maybe CTS is to blame... but I saw framerates better than 140FPS with it prior to vegetation. Having a way to see how much each node is taking in the generation may tip me off to an area that is costing me more than it should though. It still takes 5-6 seconds before the lockups start during the enabling of the terrains and from what you say generation itself should be faster than that (less than 1s for all 8 probably). Even if generation is threaded in the background and not affecting FPS, it does seem to take longer than you suggest it should, not sure if this would be related to the rendering issue though (maybe DOTS environment will be the only way to go in the future to avoid heavy rendering lockups? I'm looking forward to DOTS being mainstream for assets).

Also, not sure this helps, but I believe it to be most problematic when it's rendering because in the hierarchy I see the terrains are all almost instantly created and greyed out, and it's smooth during the generating phase. It only locks up as it starts to enable each of the terrains to render them. I still don't know why it would take so long for a low resolution terrain though, at 256 resolution there shouldn't be that many tri's per terrain to render, even with 8 (the island demo seems to render substantially faster, the drop to 20fps is for about 1-2 seconds in total for all 8 terrains to get rendered).

No rush, I ended up working around it with curves for now anyway, but any way I can speed it up with faster generators will certainly help in the long term. Moreso I hope it helps others.

 

Does MapMagic & CTS 2019 integrate ?
I am thinking to buy them in sale. Quick answer will be appreciated.

 

I am using MapMagic with CTS 2019, it does work. You'll have a few workflow issues, the one thing I can recommend is figure out all the textures you want to use first, or at least how many you want to use. In my case I just setup a repeat of 16 base grass textures, after that updating existing textures in place seems okay. Just adding and removing them ends up breaking something.

Oh, and every time you edit something in the CTS profile, you'll have to wait a minute for mapmagic to catch up. You'll see the custom shader node for CTS briefly have the entire profile setting disappear, then it'll come back after light baking and such, and it'll be empty again requiring you to assign it again. Pretty minor inconvenience, so it does generally work once you get used to it.

 

@Wright , how do you manage buildings, villagers, mobs etc with this Asset? Especially when doing infinite streaming terrain. Also, how does this asset approach or support waterfalls, rivers downstream and water in general?

 

So, it becomes laggy on applying terrains, not generating them. And you are using CTS (or maybe CTS 2019), which might be related. I have not tested the CTS performance on applying to terrain since optimizing it is out of my control. And speaking of CTS 2019 it might be even worse because I haven't even looked into it at all yet.

I guess CTS 2019 has much in common with CTS (they are two different assets) which MM is compatible with, but I have not tested it so can't state anything.

Yes, you can place buildings and create villages with the MapMagic:

NPCs are also should not be a problem since you can set the creation logic for any prefab no matter if it's a stone or a character. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to create waterfalls this way - you can place particles, but should be connected to the river or stream, which is not supported out of the box.

 

@Wright ,

Excellent. Thanks for the quick response. Is there any effective way then to integrate assets like R.A.M. with MapMagic? In infinite terrain?!

 

I'm planning to acquire Mad Maps today during the last day of the Asset Store sale. The way its tutorials sound, it's a sort of meta-tool that layers on top of others such as MapMagic to integrate the workflow. At least, that's what I'm hoping. Mad Maps doesn't focus on terrain creation but rather on connecting the other tools into a nondestructive layer-based workflow. Unfortunately, the sale will be over before I have time to experiment and post back here, so you'll just have to look it over and see if you think it can help you.

 

One of the river assets (either R.A.M. or Path Painter? I forget which one) has a new feature where you place a single prefab at the source of the river, and it follows land contours downhill to simulate a natural river. I haven't seen it in action, so I can't comment on how well it works, but this might be a way to go with MapMagic because placing a single prefab is less problematic than trying to manage a fully-predefined path.

 

When I enable shift world all my light probes stop working when it shift the world Is there a way for this?

 

Hello. I'm trying to build Android version and there are following errors -

Shader error in 'Hidden/DPLayout/TextureArrayIcon': 'Texture2DArray' : syntax error syntax error at line 48 (on gles)

Error building Player: Shader error in 'Hidden/DPLayout/TextureArrayIcon': 'Texture2DArray' : syntax error syntax error at line 48 (on gles)

 

I doubled Terrain Size but when I tried changing it back to the original value, nothing happened , it stayed the same!
Now I'm getting holes and visual artifacts between terrain parts.

Anyone knows how to get around this?

 

Thanks for awesome detail reply!

 

Thanks!!!!

 

Hello, i'm building a navmesh on runtime based on heightmap but i need to wait for the terrain generation to be done. What's the best way to get that event ? I'm currently running a timer, but that's very unsafe. Very great asset by the way.

 

Shift is designed to be used with the endless dynamic terrains, and since you are using the light probes you have to use pinned (baked) tiles. Maybe I just don't get, what are you trying to achieve by shifting the world?

Thanks for reporting the issue. Unfortunately, I've just tried to reproduce it but it seems that changing terrain size works fine both ways for me. Could you please describe the steps to achieve the effect you got?

Thanks for reporting this issue, I will look into it for the next version. As a quick workaround you can remove the hader - it won't affect anything unless you use Microsplat/CSO.

Thanks! You can use OnApplyCompleted event, it's fired when all the tile is done and generated results are applied.

 

Thank you

 

I'm loving MapMagic. Picked it up to make a hot air balloon racing game, and it does the trick very nicely for creating procedural worlds to fly over.

I have one technical problem: in order to generate the terrains at runtime, I disable the MapMagic component in the editor, delete the default terrain game object it's created, and then turn it on in playmode using the technique recommended on this page.

This works fine when playing the game in the editor; when I make a build, however, the generated terrain is invisible: in LWRP it doesn't show up at all, and in the default pipeline it's pink. I think the terrain shader is being stripped from the build. If I include a reference to the terrain material on a MonoBehaviour in the scene, the material's shader is included in the build. This works okay, but the base terrain shader still isn't included so splat maps go untextured at far distances. If I turn off the base map on the generated terrain it looks okay again, but it would be nice to have that back.

It's somewhat low priority for me since I can hack around it, but is there a way to automatically include all the necessary shaders in a build? (I know I can manually add to the list in Project Settings / Graphics, but I can't get at the LWRP package shaders from there.)

 

There is no need to use temporary object since there is a more convenient and proper way to add a shader to build: Edit > Project Settings > Graphics -> Always Included Shaders.

EDIT: Oops, didn't read until the end. Oddly enough, I can see the defaults shaders in list when I click on a shader select circle next to shader slot in list.

 

Been struggling with the same thing on HDRP. I think HDRenderPipelineResoruces (I suppose LWRP has the same) is Intended for that use but not yet fully implemented. I tried drag&dropping the HDRP shaders to Always Included List which is possible even from Packages directory but it dodn't solve the runtime terrain shader problem.

 

Now that Map Magic uses the separate texture assets, would it be possible some how, to have it select randomly from a big selection of textures, which ones to use?

I'm thinking, I have a rock, sand, gravel, grass etc, set up in Map Magic. Prototypes, if you like. And randomly, based on the seed, it chooses from the large selection of each type, which one to use.

I know it doesn't do this now, but is there a way to do this using these new texture asset things? Or am I barking up the wrong tree and the textures can't be swapped around outside of Map Magic like that?

And then, of course, the same question about randomizing everything else... trees, detail objects, grass billboards, etc. So these are probably just feature requests for future versions.

Ultimately I'd love to be able to generate a world where I don't know if the grass will be green or red. Or if it'll be the tall alien trees or the short realistic ones.

 

@Wright Hi again! Since HDRP doesn't support terrain details (grass/trees) yet and since we use networked tree objects and can't use the terrain built in system, how would one go about using Grass and Forest nodes in MapMagic but with custom objects in a way that it wouldn't use the detail system but place the objects on the terrain (as Object node does)? So we could spawn forests and grass in the same manner that the respective nodes do? Using the Object type in Grass node still uses the detail system, so that doesn't work. Thanks!

 

From the testing with the island demo, it seems to be more of a unity issue than specifically CTS or anything. I will try setting the shader back and disconnect the node from the graph and see what I get to confirm on my own map. But seeing the island demo drop from 140 to 20FPS when applying then back to 140FPS after it's done, it's the exact same thing I'm seeing to a lesser degree.
It may well be a combination of factors, and I'd be happy to buy an upgrade to MapMagic 2 when it's available if it uses DOTS and improves on the rendering throughput, but I'm also a bit shy about these because I've seen authors make promises for a 2.0 that never arrives and meanwhile 1.0 suffers, so until 2.0 is actually out I'd like to still see some improvements to 1.0.
Is there anything from the new Unity 2018 terrain updates that isn't being used, in particular the GPU instancing for terrain? Maybe there are some optimizations from the Unity changes that could play a part in this too.

I will do some more testing and try to get more details and maybe add some logging to identify the exact spot it's slow, but in the meantime it would be helpful to have that update to mapmagic that shows the time-spent per node graph item. just to make sure nothing in there is to blame. But if it doesn't enable the terrains until generation is complete, then I don't think that's the issue.

Update: turns out some of the added cost was a result of a second vegetation system being instantiated and copied to the terrains at runtime. Given the workflow I use, I had to disable my vegetation studio object in the scene, and create it as a prefab then assign it in the graph node to get something else to work, so that was causing a second one to spawn. Now my generation and rendering is almost like the island, I still very briefly drop to no frames, but each terrain is taking more like 0.5-1 second to render now, it cut it down by over half. It's still not holding a steady framerate during the enabling, but it's a lot shorter lockup... I'm hoping I can find some more knobs to turn and get it to not lock up and maybe progressively load across a number of frames instead of all in one frame like it feels it's doing on some heavier action.

@Wright Found another bug. When you use the veg studio output node, and you want to use the prefab option to assign a prefab that it clones instead of creating one (so you can set settings like global detail distance) it will end up adding the package to the prefab again, causing it to have 2 packages which makes it less efficient (and doubles the density of the details). When using a Prefab, you should not add the Package again (let the prefab contain the package when created from the hierarchy).

 

Hello. When I remove the shader, the android version works. Thank you. It looks like an error with the shader occurs if I update old version. If I download a new one, there is no error.

 

I agree that it could be handy to have a list of prefabs to create different variations for trees, but it should be something like selecting the alike models within one type and size, like different variations of tree -> birch -> tall. These prefabs should not have more change than say the speedtree trees with a different seed. And the random should depend on object position here, not global seed.
When it comes to filling the woods with big trees or small trees it won't work mostly because it requires more changes in a graph. For example, big trees should be places more spare than the small ones. Try taking a look on the switch node, it can help to achieve the desired effect.

I don't think that replacing the grass with objects is a good idea mainly because of the performance reasons. But still if you'd like to give this approach a spin you can use scatter node that will scatter thousands of objects using some 'grass' mask, and, obviously, objects output. It might work with trees (if their count isn't off scale), but for grass it's better to wait for Unity do their job or try using 3rd party asset like VS/VSPro.

Oh, I though I moved prefab slot to advanced settings, but just copied it here. It should be in advanced tab since the use case is pretty rare. I thought about removing this slot at all, but it would be sort of digression. Personally I can live without it, but since some users required it I've added it.

Glad you could sort that out!

 

Hello, i have a little question, im stuggling to find a way to make an island with a very long downhill underwater, for now i have my island on terrain 0,0 and all the other ones are plane ( thanks to a cone mask ), but i really need those plane Land to be dowhill something like -250 under "sea level" of the island .... Do you think it's possible ? Thanks !

EDIT : More visual :
I thought about bumping height of my island, but i don't know what to use, and where, i tried constants and some others things but, it don't do what i would like to do ...

EDIT 2 : https://puu.sh/DveKt/cc5c365360.png
My only option is to put planes manually

 

You're probably right about the grass, it was not really meant as a final solution for our project, but rather to be able to see how it looks on the terrain and such. Regarding the trees, we'll give scatter mask a spin and see how that comes out, thanks!

BTW, any update on the pending review? I thought that assets' updates are usually approved much faster.

 

Major issue!!

Why doesn't MapMagic create "Terrain Data"? I have the Terrain to Mesh asset as well and it cannot convert these terrains because the "Terrain Data" is null.

Strange thing is I can force it to exist if I do the following script, but that's kindof annoying and I feel like this may be a bug?

Code (CSharp):

1. #if UNITY_EDITOR
2. using System.Collections;
3. using System.Collections.Generic;
4. using UnityEditor;
5. using UnityEngine;
6.  
7. [ExecuteInEditMode]
8. public class TerrainFixData : MonoBehaviour
9. {
10.     [InspectorButton("OnFixData")]
11.     public bool doFixData;
12.  
13.     Terrain terrain;
14.     TerrainCollider terrainCollider;
15.  
16.     void OnFixData()
17.     {
18.         AssetDatabase.CreateAsset(terrain.terrainData, "Assets/(Temporary)/terrain test.asset");
19.         AssetDatabase.SaveAssets();
20.  
21.         terrainCollider.terrainData = Resources.Load("Assets/(Temporary)/terrain test.asset", typeof(TerrainData)) as TerrainData;
22.     }
23. }
24.  
25. #endif

All this is doing is extracting the terrain data as an asset then reapplying it back to the terrain and voila, it's fixed. Seems ridiculous though. So obviously the terrain HAS data, it's just not assigned in the object inspector level for some reason?

 

You've got to use curve:

I've found a bug preventing build creation on older Unity versions, so I had to re-submit it.

Actually, MapMagic does create the terrain data. No terrain could be displayed without it. It's just not saved to a separate file and has no name. I guess you are confused by the slot displaying no name, but the data is assigned here - otherwise it would write you None (Terrain Data).

 

Curve before Height ? i will try that tonight, thanks

 

It's nearly perfect, thanks you ! I will try to tweak that a little more to get what i want !

 

From the latest release notes:

1.10.4 - Compatibility changes for Tommi Pirttiniemi's GPU-addon for MapMagic

I've searched the web and this forum for more info about this addon, without success. Where can this addon be obtained?

 

They're getting ready.

 

Hello,

I just bought MapMagic. Created a blank project with 3D Extras, imported MM, opened the demo scene and this happens. All trees in the distance are white.

Any help ?

 

Well, in fact the trees should use the special shader, you might have seen the warning:

Code (CSharp):

1. The tree PineSmall2 must use the Nature/Soft Occlusion shader. Otherwise billboarding/lighting will not work correctly.

Try switching to this shader. Theoretically it is the proper one, but it looks like crap: no SSS, no shadows, no normals, no lighting at all.
BTW it requires one more thing to work (from the manual):

 

Hi is it possible to get the adjust node to face/rotate a object away from the surface normal. E.g. cliff face prefabs upright always facing towards the ocean as an example?

Also can you randomise prefab object selection for a single placement map? Thanks

 

You can make the object take terrain normal by enabling Incline By Terrain toggle in Objects Output if that is what you mean.

What do you mean by the object selection?