MapMagic 2 - infinite procedural land generator

What happened to the floating origin settings from v1?

 

I asked Dennis Pahunov about this recently. Here is what he shared:

If you are talking about MM1 then it has a build-in floating point solution that was designed for MM1 special requirements. MM2 bypasses these requirements and can work with 3rd party solutions like this one:http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Floating_Origin

 

Thanks for the info.

I'm just starting to work this out now and I've determined that keeping camera and player at origin and moving only the MM object would be ideal. It's a simple endless runner type of thing so requirements are really basic.

EDIT:
I see that script just moves the MM object but I don't see how that's much better. Won't the map itself eventually develop precision errors during tile generation?

 

And while attempting to upgrade to 2020.2.1 I received this error on a fresh install. I have no 'MapMagic/Icons/Window' directory.

Exception: Could not find texture MapMagic/Icons/Window
Den.Tools.GUI.TexturesCache.LoadTextureAtPath (System.String textureName, System.Boolean forceLight, System.Boolean forcePro) (at Assets/MapMagic/Tools/GUI/Editor/TexturesCache.cs:147)
MapMagic.Core.GUI.MapMagicInspector.OnEnable () (at Assets/MapMagic/Core/Editor/MapMagicInspector.cs:56)

 

How do you add a bunch of different tiled heightmaps together? Not on top of each other but at specific grids. I was using a Blend but Add seems to make all of the heights higher on top of adding the terrain to their specific spots. I feel I'm explaining this poorly

Edit: I want to have a grid of say 10x10 terrains, so a total of 100 terrains, each terrain uses its own heightmap. I can import a bunch of raws and clamp them, set the intensity to 5 and the offset to -5120X -5120Z, however if I use Blend and Add (or any of the other options for that matter although each has their own reason for not working of course) with each Added Raw it adds to every other terrain as well as itself.

 

It will help a lot if you could clarify what completely death actually is. Is it generating flat terrains, or leave them with no change? Any error in the console? What are the steps to reproduce this issue? I will appreciate it if you could report it all to ideainformer.

Confirming what boysenberry said, MapMagic 2 does not require special origin solutions and can work with non-MapMagic solutions.

Are you importing MM with AS/package manager or upgrading with your project?
This name is relative to the resources folder. You can check whether the file exists by looking it here: MapMagic\Core\Editor\Resources\MapMagic\Icons\Window.png - it should be a standard core MapMagic icon.

In this case you can use several Import nodes, each with it's own Matrix asset (i.e. heightmap), and own X and Z Offset parameters. And yes, they all should be blended together in additive mode, but since they will have different offsets each will be added to an area where all other heightmaps are zero.
However I'd really like to recommend using one Import node with combined heightmap - it can stretch the heightmap over several tiles without any problem.

 

Good to know I can use one heightmap, I'll see about doing that. I believe I can do that with World Machine 3. As for the blend with additive mode, every time I added a new import node to the blend, it raised all the terrain of the map slightly, even though each one had their own X and Z offset parameters.

 

Is there a way I can encourage the pathfinding to ROUND the corners, rather than turn them into sharp points?

Thanks.

 

Also, if you're not using

public class MonoBeh

in the Serializer.cs class, I would appreciate if you removed it. I'm commenting it out for now, but I often type "monobeh <tab>" when creating new classes, and my autocomplete started completing to that class lol.

 

Hi thanks for the feedback, after playing around with it I found a quick work around for this problem, just in case some body else having same problem :

1. Black terrain / no render at design view -> solved by set the "use HDR" to true (checked) in camera.

2. Cannot generate (death), refresh button not working --> disconnect the last node to Output and reconnect it... solved.

FYI I am using 2020.2 and URP.
So as of now consider the issue is closed.

One more question..
Is there any limitation about multiple biomesh terrain size? Of course the Demo and some tutorial using only 4 tiles. I wonder if we can use for example 4000 tiles? Meaning the map is extremely vast..

 

The thing is that Pathfinding creates two splines from this corner - one for each of the paths it creates. I'll think of adding some auto-weld module that can combine two splines in one. It's not clear what should it do with three splines in one point, but I'll try to sort that out.

Oddly enough, this class is in Den.Tools namespace. VisualStudio don't add it to autocomplete list unless you are using this namespace. Don't know about other editors, though. But anyways, this class has no references, don't remember the purpose it was created for, but now it's irrelevant. Removing it. Thanks for letting me know!

 

Seems like it would be reasonable for two splines to weld, and three or more splines to remain as-is. Three splines is an intersection. Two splines is more likely a continuation of a path.

What I was trying to achieve was a flat environment with nice winding paths. Without elevation, the splines wanted to go directly to each other -- so if I increase the starting node count, there would be more winding, but then the sharp angles show up. So I did a middle option, and I'm manually adjusting the sharp points in a baked terrain for my map.

I'm good for now, just wanted to give feedback.

---

I'm using Rider from JetBrains, and it'll search all namespaces in the project.

It would give preference to a using namespace. But, when I start a new file, I'm not "using" anything, so when I type "monobeh" it will find UnityEngine and Den.Tools as two options -- and since "MonoBeh" is closer to what I typed than "MonoBehavior" it suggests importing the MonoBeh namespace.

If I had already been using UnityEngine namespace, it wouldn't be a problem. Thanks for removing it.

 

Thank you for verifying this, and sharing your findings/fixing! I was considering using this for my next project, and taking advantage of the latest release + URP instead of SRP.

 

I'm considering terrain holes. Can I create them using the textures output node or do I need to use microsplat? Can I even use terrain holes with MM?

 

Unfortunately there's no way to make holes with MM. The thing is that holes usually require something more than just cut out rectangles in land - special objects and special generators. If you have any ideas on what should be implemented with the holes - feel free to share on ideainformer.

 

Relatively new MM2 user here -- trying to generate a forest and output to VSPro. I'm having trouble getting the height condition to work -- the second i set minimum height condition to be above 0, all output disappears entirely from that path.

Trying to have two different forests at two different overlapping heights. But height condition seems to be ignored unless it includes 0. When it is 0, everything looks normal, but there's trees present at all heights.

Any ideas? (in the screenshot below, the "1" as the min in the rightmost height condition prevents that branch from rendering any trees)

 

The value here is not the world units, but map values in range from 0 to 1. This way if your total terrain height is 250 and you want to mask all objects higher (or lower) than 100 you've got to use value of 0.4.

 

Hi, Couple of questions:

Is there a way to expand nodes?



Is it not possible to manually paint the terrain when using the Microsplat node?

 

FEATURE REQUEST: @Wright

It would be more practical to be able to lock texture, details and objects, and terrain height individually than all or nothing.

 

Version 2.1.0 will have a node width set in graph settings. There's an idea of changeable nodes size somewhere on ideainformer, but unfortunately it's still not high in priority.

I guess it could be done. Can't promise, but I will look into it a bit later, after 2.1.0 release.

 

Thanks, Understand, it is one of those nice to have, quality of life features.

Maybe you didn't see my other question, but is it not possible to manually paint the terrain when using the Microsplat node?

 

@Wright Hi, I am not sure if this is a bug but when I increase the resolution to 1025 this (see screenshot) happens. It works fine on 513 and 2049.

 

I want to use this example to show the importance of documentation. The code above is not accurate and the functional code is:

Code (CSharp):

1. namespace Den.Tools
2. {
3.     mapMagicObject.graph.random = new Noise(mySeed, 32768);
4. }

The only way I discovered this was by looking through obscure error messages and seeing Den.Tools being referenced. I had no idea this namespace existed otherwise.

There's a lot I would like to do with code but spending days upon days trying to decipher everything is simply not an option. MapMagic is a great tool but without proper docs, a lot of it's power goes unused.

I'm casting a suggestion to spend time on getting the basics finished, so we can all use MapMagic the way it was intended to be used.

Upvote on Idea Informer:
http://mm2.idea.informer.com/proj/MM2?ia=135331


EDIT: To be clear, the docs that *do* exist are great. I just want to see more of the same.

 

If you want to edit the terrain generated with MM then you've got to generate it with the standard textures output and apply the MS component after all generate is finished. I'm adding a support to output both splats and MS information in 2.1.0 and going to release it soon.

Is it a badlands demo scene or a custom graph? If the second one then could you please send me the scene, the graph and it's meta file? (I will need only 3 files. There's no need to send textures, models or other assets. I will appreciate if you don't compile the unity package with the dependencies.)

Sorry for not mentioning the namespace in this code example. BTW it's better use this instead of expanding the namespace from (most probably) the other assembly:

Code (CSharp):

1. mapMagicObject.graph.random = new Den.Tools.Noise(mySeed, 32768);

I've got your point: MM 2.1.0 will bring some changes to node creation and maybe some other code things, so after it will be released I plan to update and finally submit the node creation documentation, add code examples on how to do some most-used things (maybe FAQ), and list all the events called by MapMagic. Don't know the exact ETA on this though - most probably there will be more urgent documentation works on brush or critical bugfixes.

 

I need to export my MapMagic terrain to an external modeling program (Blender) for further processing. I'm testing with a single MM Tile using the SimpleGragh Objects graph. I've used Terrain to Mesh but when I open in Blender, I'm getting the terrain only with no textures or vegetation (grass or trees). What is the most reliable way to get the MM terrain, textures, and vegetation into an external 3D content creation program? Preferably as a .obj or .fbx.

 

I love MapMagic 2!

I can follow the Biomes Youtube tutorial and the Villages in 3 minutes video. How can I combine biomes and villages? I would like to make villages with flattened areas on a terrain with 3 biomes. I can't find the combined biome height, so I can't flatten it.

 

The thing is that terrain is a complex system that includes not only geometry and textures, but other stuff like shaders or procedural geometry. You cannot just export terrain to other editor tool - to do so this tool should support all the terrain features Unity does.

You've got to use Functions instead of Biomes - they have no internal height output, but instead they allow input of a heightmap (or any other map) and export it back to main graph for further processing. I planned to make a Functions video showing the way to tidy up the Villages graph, but buried with 2.1.0. This video is still in my plan after 2.1.0. release.

 

Hi ... just wondering if the Relax node in the Spline module is expensive when we try to increase the blur value very high?

Seems like my CPU goes on 100% load endlessly everytime I increase the relax node -> blur above 5.

Is there anyway to prevent ridiculous giant bumb on the spline path?

Is there any tutorial on spline and its nodes? Can't rely on the pdf manual alone.

 

Blur value is supposed to be within 0-1 range. If you want more blur try increasing the iterations value.Thanks for letting me know, I'll check the GUI limits for all the spline nodes in next big splines update.

 

@Wright -- Just wanted to give you an example of what frustrates me with my IDE (JetBrains Rider) but, also MapMagic's source is a contributing factor.

I use LINQ and Enumerables quite regularly. When I take a string array, and hit "dot" and start typing "Las" normally as soon as auto-complete pops up, I can hit tab/return.

Since I've imported MapMagic into my project, I'm continually getting the wrong version implemented. And, it takes me a few seconds each time to go back, undo, remove the import, etc.

I have a plan for the next project I start, where I'm thinking I will have two unity projects. One for building my terrain, then exporting the terrain + splat, and importing into my main project. So that I have no mapmagic code or files in my main project. This is because I mainly use it to initially create each of my maps/scenes, but once the terrain, and roads, and everything are initialized, then I disconnect mapmagic and manually tweak the terrain as needed.

But for today, as I plan to continue using my current project for many months as I extend development, it's just a constant irritation. Again, I know -- this is my editor that's causing this. But, I guess my desire would be that your tool didn't create extension methods that had the same name, and target as native extension methods. (

Last<T> (this T[] array)

for example.) My two cents.

I still appreciate this asset immensely. I purchased all of the bundles, and I love using it. It saves me hours and hours of time. I could rave about how awesome it is for days. And this definitely won't cause me not to use it -- I just wanted to share the frustration of the conflicting extension methods.

 

sarynth, this case really puzzles me. Last() is the member of Den.Tools namespace, but more than that, it is located within Den.Tools assembly. If you are creating non-MM script you most probably is using Unity's default Assembly-CSharp or your custom assembly. If Rider suggests using a method from the other non-used namespace in non-referenced assembly there's definitely something wrong. For a big project it will create a total auto-completion mess, and I'm sorry to hear it's started with MapMagic for you.

I've tried Rider a couple of years ago, but I can't remember this auto-completion issue. Probably it worked fine for me. Could you please check if you have something in settings that let Rider see-through namespaces? At quick glance I've found that you can exclude some namespaces from auto-completion list. Sounds like a hack, but it should do a trick with MM.

Just curious if someone else has such issue with Rider (or maybe VS) when you see the MM classes and extension methods when working in the other non-related (with no 'using') namespace?

 

Hi! Would you mind posting the complete .cs code for this example and where I should attach it? I'm not at all familiar with the original MapMagic and anxiously waiting the scripting documentation as well.

Thanks for this incredible product.

 

Hey @Wright,
really excited for the new version! Any ETA?
BTW, if we have biomes and functions, will the new version break the graphs somehow or just reset all the exposed values? We use nested biomes + functions (which are broken right now as you know) and redoing all the graphs would be a huge pain. We stopped work on our environment couple of months ago because we need the fixed biomes + functions combo. Would be highly appreciated if you could confirm/test that graphs made in current 2.0.x version don't break in 2.1.0.

Thanks a lot!

 

It's incredibly useful and productive. It saves me tons of time. I have dozens of third party store tools pulled in, hundreds of namespaces, thousands (edit: tens of thousands) of functions and lines of code.

Rider very intelligently figures out exactly the right functions I'm looking for, automatically imports those namespaces. All assemblies are made available or imported.

I highly recommend it. Adding a method to your own class like MapMagicNode.Last(); or even to a shared interface MapMagicIterable so then MapMagicNode implements MapMagicIterable and then calling someVar.Last(); would be no problem.

But adding an extension method, that mirrors the Enumerable signature, makes it become a valid option to automatically import the namespace/assembly. Which in 99.98% of cases is wonderful and useful.

Again, I'm just sharing my case. As you point out, I can manually exclude the Den.Tools namespace from auto completion. I appreciate that idea. I just wanted to share that it causes a minor inconvenience.

 

I'm running into a memory issue with Texture2Ds staying in memory eventually leading to out of memory exception killing my game. I removed all objects and textures from my graph and it still has the same issue when the camera moves a long way forcing a lot of terrain generation.

I wanted to know if I am the only one experiencing this?

Edit:
You can reproduce this problem by:
Creating a new Unity Project
Add in map magic 2 bundle
add a new template graph
add a new script to the camera with this in the update:
transform.position = new Vector3(transform.position.x + Speed, transform.position.y, transform.position.z);

I suggest setting Speed to 100 so you can see the memory climb faster(for me it took about 10 minutes to triple my memory usage), but having it set to 1 still has the issue.

This example it's very slow, when real terrain/textures it's way more obvious and much quicker to eat up memory.

 

I was hoping to submit it this week, but still there are issues in a brush module. Will take some time to polish it, guess a week more (and week or two for Unity review). If you are curious you can always check the progress in Quire, my current task manager.

All of the biomes modules will work, and functions too - except one thing. The functions expose/override engine has changed - now you can use expressions in exposed values. For instance, you can add some value named MyValue to graph, and set noise size to

MyValue*100

, and it's intensity to

MyValue/4

, so this way you can control the noise effect with one control only. You can apply it to other node and use something more complicated like

(MyValue/4) ^ MyOtherValue - 0.1

as well. And yes, biomes inside the function and functions inside biomes are working quite well now. The bad thing is that won't read the old version exposed values, and you will have to expose them again.

I'm going to make a brief video of how it all works once I deal with bugs.

Unfortunately I could not reproduce out of memory exception neither in editor nor in PC x86-64 build, Unity 2020.1.2. I've traveled million units both in build and editor, the amount of used memory really grows at the beginning, it might seem frightening, but it didn't cause an exception - GC still seems to be working right.

It's odd that it's related with Texture2D somehow, since no textures are used in template graph. My final Texture2D memory doesn't exceed 200 Mb in all categories (with biggset one GizmoIconAtlas in editor).

Could you please provide some detail on your build platform and Unity version?

 

Thanks Denis, really appreciate the detailed answer.

 

Thanks for the quick response.

Long story short, I don't get that error anymore and garbage collection works fine. I'm guessing it was something to do with my OS since I restarted I haven't been able to reproduce it either.

Sorry for waisting your time.

 

Hi, Is there a way to offload map magic data that is kept in the scene file into a scriptable object? Because this is making the scene file over 100MB which prevents me from checking this into Git (source control). Thanks! @Wright

 

Hi Thanks ... it is clear now.

Sorry I have another question, is there any CallBack or something that I can attach my method right after Map Generation finished? Maybe OnDoneRefresh or something? ..

let say if I need to add some more additional code everytime a new tile is generated during run time.
I have the idea to constantly check within a loop if new terrain is appear, but i dont think it is a good solution and not resource friendly... thanks...

 

A callback when tiles are created would be useful.
I am also interested in the answer.

 

Hello !

Unless I'm doing it wrong, it looks like the locks aren't working as intended on my side.

I'm using the Dunes graph comming with the demo.
I'm pinning 4 tiles across the world.
I'm making hand made height modification (flatening) to those pinned tiles with the unity tool.
I'm locking each modified area with the lock tool.
I'm running playmode.

The locked areas won't retain the hand made modifications in play mode.
Generation will apparently ignore locks unless the pinned/locked tile is in the range of the camera or any tagged object used as terrain marker when launching playmode.
Even so, if I then move the camera away (or untag the markers) so the tile unload and come back to it so it regenerates, the lock won't apply anymore.

Looks really weird, and I'm pretty sure I've experienced locks working just fine when I've first tried it a few days ago

I'm using Unity 2019.4.16f1 and MapMagic 2 Bundle 2.0.8

Edit:
I can reproduce this in any empty scene containing a MapMagicObject with a Dune graph and using a single pin/lock.

 

Are there any chance of getting spherical or cubic coordinates and non square terrains in mapmagic 2?

 

Hi,

I am getting behaviour that I can not figure out. I am switching camera's and it seems to effect the highlighted area on the map, so that when I get to the map border there is a visible line between terrains:

Left side of image is scene view, right side is game.

The transform you see on the left is the "around objects tagged" I have used in the infinite terrain settings. I have switched off "around main camera".

The actual terrains are generating correctly, its just the highlighted area that is not moving.

Do you have any ideas?

 

This feature will be added to MapMagic 2.1.0. It will allow to save a terrain tile as a separate asset file (i.e. the ussual terrain data):

However note that on any terrain change you will still have to push your changes - not not the scene itself, but terrain data. If you want to get rid of it completely consider unpinning the tiles before saving the scene.

ysundawa, justinbarker,
You can subscribe to static Action<TerrainTile, TileData, StopToken> TerrainTile.OnTileApplied to determine if some specific tile has been generated and applied, or to Action<MapMagicObject> TerrainTile.OnAllComplete that is called when all of the tiles are done.

Thanks for reporting this issue. I will try to reproduce it and will fix for 2.1.0.

Unfortunately there is no way to create non-square terrains in MM, and it's not a good idea of doing it in Unity in general. No matter of the shape of terrain, the heightmap (and control map) are still square, so they will be stretched on a rectangular terrain. Terrain wireframe will be stretched too since it depends on heightmap pixel size. This might also create a problem with terrain LOD since chunks won't be square as well.

If you want a non-square play zone consider lowering tile size (and resolution) and pinning multiple tiles instead (like 1x2 or 2x3).

Could you please clarify which objects should have spherical coordinates? Tiles? No, no way - I'm thinking of the way to loop them so that the world could repeat itself, but yet it's just a though, and it won't affect tile coordinates, and it will create an imaginary torus instead of a sphere.

It's hard to say what's happening in a scene view, but I can see that one of the terrain is brighter than the others. Is it so? Are you using a custom shader, might it be related with this?

 

Yes the terrain is brighter in the highlighted boxed area that moves with the camera (is this not standard MM2)?

The highlighted boxed area doesn’t move with the second camera.

I was thinking that the highlighted area relates to the settings under infinite terrains in magic map 2:

1. around objects tagged
2. around main camera

 

Any idea why sometimes objects will spawn high in the air?
Is it something I am doing wrong or is it a bug with map magic 2?
It seems to happen when I travel a little ways from 0,0,0
At first I thought it was because of how fast it was generating the tiles, so I tried going a lot slower, but it's still happening. Then I thought it might be the editor, but a regular build does it as well.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 

Great! Any idea when this might be?
P.s. I just have one tile, nothing else pinned, and it is at104mb.

 

The VSPRO demo scene's seem to be broken (missing scripts etc), or do you need MM2 objects before you can use it?

 

Yes, you need objects module to create trees of any kind - prefabs, unity terrain trees or VS Pro objects.
Theoretically you may use VS Pro output only for the grass creation, but I have not tried this, so can't say for sure whether it works.

Hope to submit it this week.
What tile resolution are you using? And how many channel numbers do you have?

It's hard to say without seeing your graph - it's screenshot could help. The most typical cause is using "relative height" to output objects that were already put on terrain with the Floor node - this way they are elevated twice.

Are you using the standard terrain material or the custom one?