Assets [Outdated thread] Map Magic

Colormap generator WIP, can get the colors and preview on terrain... now need to export to texture...

Edit: it will not be just a generator, I will need to change good part of the MM code... see where it goes...

My goal is to create something like WorldMachine color generator to use directly in shaders or as a colormap for Megasplat or RTP...

 

Hi Denis,

I have a few questions about MM + RTP.

1) I am hoping you could please clarify the work flow to use the RTP plug-in with an 8-layer configuration. Normally RTP would have you add 8 texture layers to the terrain object before adding the RTP components. That is how it knows to use 4-layer addpass mode (unless you explcitly check "8-layers in first pass" in the RTP LOD manager).

2) When RTP is properly set to 8-layer (4+4), will the MM RTP output node show 8 layers?

3) Do I need to convert my MM masks to bitmap and plug into RTP coverage layers so RTP can know of them?

Thank you and best regards,
Heinz

 

Hi Denis, I'm absolutely loving MM, fantastic work! One thing that would be nifty would be the ability to export modified terrain as a height map. Currently, modifying individual terrain with Unity's terrain tools will just reset whenever you change a MM parameter, as you know. If I could make changes to elevation, then export the product to a new height map, I could just change whatever MM parameters I wanted, then import the modified height map to "save" the detailed changes made to individual terrain tiles.

*I'm still a new Unity user, so if there is already a way to do this using a Unity tool then apologies, I couldn't find much on exporting terrain to a height map with google.

 

I was about to post the same question as m2duran. It would be great to have a way to keep manual modifications intact. It would probably work with the way m2duran described, but maybe there would be a more efficient workflow.

 

I'm thinking about built-in heightmap and colormap export, it's in my to-do list, not in urgent tasks, but rather high. However in usecase m2duran described I think it's better use terrain lock (a button next to Pin) - this will prevent terrain from any MM change, so there will be no need to export heightmap and import it.

tryptic, you can switch RTP to 8-layer manually using _RTP_LODmanager: RTP features first pass -> 8 LAYERS in first pass.

 

Hi Denis,
I guess you are quite busy with Voxeland... if you want I can try to do the texture export and then send it to you for approval/update into the next MM update release... that would be very useful for most terrain shader programs such as RTP, Colormap Ultra, Megasplat...(basically all of them could use a Colormap...)

What I would really need is a texture export/import node. The problem is I tried to implement it myself but while the documentation to create generators is simple and easy I have to dig trough code to undestand how to do it and then it might be broken with the next MM release.... so maybe if I can contact you on skype or such we can work together on this...

I think the layout is quite simple, if you look at the picture above I would like the Colormap generator to export texture data and then create a new ColorBlendgenerator that actually creates the final texture (similar to worldmachine).

Finally I would add a third TextureSave generator that could save the texture to file if needed...

Thanks a lot
Fred

 

Sounds good, but I think m2duran and me is looking for something which allows being able to tweak the map magic settings after the manually modifying the terrain.

 

Frednaar, there's no need to write color map generator from scratch since RTP Output Generator already can do that - it creates a color map and then assigns it to terrain RTP shaders. I guess I'll just make color map generator standalone - it will fire an event with a resulting color map, so anyone can use it with scripting. It could be assigned to terrain, saved to file - anything.

silentneedle, there's the other feature I'm going to implement that you might find useful: advanced locking. It would be possible to lock only certain outputs (like height or texture outputs), while the others (like grass or objects) will continue to generate changed results.

 

Hello Wright Thanks For Developing This Awesome Tool . I Am Trying The Demo Version Of The Tool So Far So good But I Got 1 Problem And That is I Am Not Able To Pin The terrains . I am Playing With The Island Tutorial Scene But Am Not Able To Pin The Terrains SO I Left With On 1 Default Terrain That You Have Pinned . Is This A Limitation Of The Demo or Something Is Going Wrong. I Am Happy To Help And Also Happy To Get Some Help

 

I've got a couple of bug reports that this could happen on 2-monitor configuration. Usually resetting the layout helps (top right corner of Unity window - Layout).

 

Ohk Thanks It Worked I was Terrified , Thanks Very Much I Also Have Some Features requests , 1. If someone Is Working On Area Like Say 50x50km And He Want To Edit A Perticular Region Say he is referencing It From Height Map So Now there Should Be An Option Where User Have A Window With Heightmap Expanded And When He Clicks On a Perticular Position On Heightmap Or That Image Then He Will Be Taken To The Desired terrain Which Is using That Perticular Region Of Heightmap Or Image.

I Will Tell You More Requests After testing The Evaluation Version. Like What Can be Implimented

 

I was planning to use this on Megasplat, in order to assign texturearrays megasplat can use an existing colormap or macrotexture (but cannot create one). If you use splatmaps as in the MM Megasplat example you are limited to the 4-8 textures that are allowed on unity terrains. Now megasplat supports 256 textures so this is quite limiting.

Here's the video where it is explained go to 7 minutes, 20 seconds...

as I said, if you point me in the right direction I can help code this...

thanks
Fred

 

Hello Denis,

I was looking for something like this for long time. After messing with various apps and evaluation version of MM, this is my favourite one. However, there is one question which I couldn't get any info about. Is there any possibility to use MM to edit terrains created not with MM? I am working on quite large scene with multiple terrains already created - I am going to expand it soon and, preferably, integrate new terrains with what we have right now with ability to edit them all at once. I couldn't find any way to do it in evaluation version, hopefully you'll be able to answer my question.

Thanks in advance,
Bartold

 

Hi Denis.

Ive owned MM for a while now, though just recently started using it again. Curious to what is causing these "spikes".
Increasing the terrain detail results in the spikes becoming worse, and creates even more.

Is there a global smooth option or the like?

 

Frednaar, I have not explored MegaSplat yet, the only thing I know is that Jason made it compatible with MM, at least for static terrains:
I guess this video will not help a lot, but anyways: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=VeHgcCdNAWE

bartold, unfortunately, MM creates terrains from scratch yet. I'm thinking of a way to use it like a terrain editor (some sort of MM-brush similar to Erosion Brush or something), but it's a long term.

Black-Spirit, can I see your graph? There's no need to duplicate post in two threads - I monitor them equally

 

Hi Denis, I'm really liking MM. However I seem to have run into a road block. There doesn't seem to be any support for splat maps. I'd like to be able to use an RBGA image and apply each channel output as a generator, specifically for biomes, but applicable to any input. I'm usually using 4 to 6 biomes and need to be able to apply them precisely using splat maps.

Secondly, with villages in locked terrains (as in your demo video), do these stay visible at all times? Is it possible to hide them until they are in generate range?

And lastly, this is a long shot, but a creek generator would be the bomb.

 

I figured out that I can use the Texture Input as a splat map.

 

Hi Denis!
Since no one has brought this up, I would like to ask about the copy component feature.
In the game I make, there are a lot of scripts we need to attach to terrains, so I checked the "Copy Component" box in general settings and attached my scripts to the 0,0 terrain under Map Magic.
However, it doesn't seems to work in runtime, newly generated terrains are blank.
Would like to know how do I use this feature or is this a bug for now?

 

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I cannot get the RTP plugin to work.

1. I add MapMagic and RTP into Unity, pull the scripts into RTPOutputGenerator and InstantUpdater into the MapMagic top level, and the InstantUpdaterEditor script into the MapMagic/Editor folder.
2. In the MapMagic GUI, I go to Terrain Settings and change the material to RTP.
3. Add the MapMagic 3D Object.
4. Add the component for RTP to the MapMagic Object
5. It adds the RTP_LODmanager.
6. I click the compile button in the RTP_LODmanager.

From there the terrain goes white and I start getting the error:
MissingComponentException: There is no 'Renderer' attached to the "Map Magic" game object, but a script is trying to access it.
You probably need to add a Renderer to the game object "Map Magic". Or your script needs to check if the component is attached before using it.
UnityEngine.Renderer.get_bounds () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/GraphicsBindings.gen.cs:894)
ReliefTerrain.InitTerrainTileSizes () (at Assets/ReliefPack/Scripts/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrain.cs:184)
ReliefTerrain.RefreshTextures (UnityEngine.Material mat, Boolean check_weak_references) (at Assets/ReliefPack/Scripts/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrain.cs:263)
ReliefTerrainEditor.OnDisable () (at Assets/ReliefPack/Editor/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrainEditor.cs:104)

It's strange because I have another person on my team that this doesn't happen to. I even rolled back to 5.5.0 just to make sure. I just put in a purchase request at my company for multiple licenses for MM and RTP and could really use some help getting them to work on my system.

Thanks in advance.

 

Hello Wright !
and thank you for awesome tool, i bought this couple of months ago. Im not really artistic guy so im asking your help. How i can generate/paint RAW image which are "correct/good" for MM? I have tried couple of images but they all seem to lack something and result is not good. Can you share your photoshop pencil and its settings and style how you draw them ? Plan is to create island whit couple of hills and snow/ice.

Image of raw input

 

I would love the ability to use MapMagic on already created terrains for object placement and/or texture output. The ability to use only certain features of MapMagic like this by themselves would really help for those that only need a subset of the full package.

I would say that this is probably one of the best purchases I made on the asset store but that is probably one of my only nags.

 

You could export the raw height map from your existing terrain and bring it into MM using the Raw Input.

 

If the scene has multiple terrains it may be difficult to do this. Addtionally, linking MapMagic to a specific terrain would eliminate the need to use biomes to separate terrain differences.

 

Thank you for your reply, I just saw this feature in your roadmap. I have chosen MapMagic after all
I have another question. Documentation describes Stamp generator's Fallof feature - from what I can see, it is now in separate generator called Flatten. However, Flatten generator isn't described in documentation (or I can't find more up-to-date documentation) and I don't know how should I use it. What should I do now to be able to use Fallof feature to modify area around placed objects? Thanks for your swift reply!

 

Hi,

The pinned terrains and procedural terrain logic looks great,

* Can players build houses and place objects on the procedural terrains?
My concern is that when the players leave the terrain and come back to it later, the objects will still be there.

* Can AI move from one terrain to another without a human player near or on the same terrain tiles?

Thanks.

 

I am having a big problem. I have a single chunck of my terrain 1,0 that is not able to be edited, unpinned or anything and will not accept any changes to the terrain. It is not locked. but is acting like it is. Any help?
i need to get this fixed asap. Thanks!

 

Mail me the scene (mail@denispahunov.ru)

 

Any news on voxeland integration?

 

Here is a small review a this assets

 

reocwolf, I plan to start Voxeland beta in a week or two. Generating voxeland terrain with MMWG works like a charm, but still I've got things to do. I will announce beta test start in main MMWG and Voxeland threads. Btw these are the threads that I mainly use to publish news - if any.

Elzean, great, thanks for reviewing my asset! Could you post it in a MMWG thread mentioned above? I guess more people will see it here.

 

Color map / height map export looks super useful. Your erosion is beautiful too - one of my favorite

Can we create a mask by terrain height for textures/trees/grass? Maybe with a smoothness for the start and stop edges?

For example id like snow to appear only near the top. I see there's ones for selection by slope and cavity which work great.

 

Hi Denis, thank you for creating this amazing asset, I always thought this is how the Terrain editor was supposed to be done. This will come in handy for a project I was dreaming up some years ago. I watched your video on YouTube where you made a tiled terrain with 3 villages. One thing that I'm missing with that is the ability to connect those villages with procedurally generated paths/roads. Do you think you can add a path/road generator to the package?

 

Is there a way to limit objects by height ? I want specific objects to spawn only between specific heights. I know I can use curves and so on, but it's not precise enough, I'd need to be able to tell the exact height. For example I want to spawn specific Trees between 300 and 400 Height. Leave a small blank until 500 and begin either with same or other trees from there.

 

I dont have an answer but thanks for the tip about curves - it may not be precise but i didnt know you could use it to restrict heights, but it makes sense

 

Anyone know how I can stop the trees from animated growing when they pop in the place in the distance?

 

That's caused by the LOD fade settings if I remember correctly. I turn them off.

 

I know that this is not so much a MapMagic question, but the fact most of us using MapMagic to create large worlds how do you handle spatial jitter? I have created a large world and when i spawn my character far away (5000/-5000) i get shaking on the character.

 

I believe World Streamer has a solution for being very far away from (0,0,0)

 

Thank you for your answer @Stanchion Does world streamer co-operates with MapMagic? Anyone achieved something like that?

 

When you move too far from the zero point you start getting floating point errors because Unity's physics system uses floats instead of doubles. WorldStreamer will help with that yes, but I think WorldStreamer wants the whole world created and saved before play, not procedural, which might be fine for you. The script to fix it is not hard: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Floating_Origin depending on how you're game was written.

 

yeah my world is semi procedural (with the help of MapMagic). I tested that script but i had problems with it (needs no static objects) and I believe it will create more problems in the future if i go this way. The problem is that my world is NOT that big, it goes up to 7000/-7000 which should be good, and i get no errors. but after 2000-3000 units away my character model (First Person perspective, with 3d model hands with humanoid rig, camera mounted to player) STARTS to shake (not that noticeable, but still it does shake).

 

I was playing 7 days to die a couple weeks ago and fell through the world. The further I fell the harder and harder the shaking animations grew until the fingers were literally spasm'ing across the screen.
There's really no other good way about it though. Scale you world down 50%, use a zero shift, or wrap your whole game using doubles instead of floats, which is apparently what Kerbal Space Program did, but that's not easy. If it's just your first person stuff since it's so close to the camera maybe you could find a way to use double with that part only, ignoring the basic Unity Transforms and using your own for calculations instead.

 

Curves are based on the total height 0-1 so you can just do 400/1000 or whatever and manually input points on the curve to allow 100% growth between x 0.4-0.5 and zero growth everywhere else. use a constant -> curve, and feed that into the soil for your forest generator, or as a mask for an object generator.

 

hi,
There is an option in Landscape Builder that i would like to suggest for MapMagic, if is not possible already.

Imagine you have a multi terrain, and you have placed objects(cabins with loot(props),other objects...) inside the different terrains.You have the option to export the terrain as a package, so you get a package with the terrain and the depencies that are inside the terrains, giving you a clean copy package of the terrains and objects inside the terrains, and no a package with all the scene.
This is useful to make a backup of the terrain and continue working in it and keep the project as clean as possible.

Is there a way to do something similar in map magic?

thanks

 

Thank you for taking the time and replying. I did some calculations and I see that now my 0,0,0 is the edge of my world, so if it becomes the center I would be almost fine.

I also thought something else, is it possible to create 2 different maps in the same scene with MapMagic? That way I could make a world in 0,0,0 (center) and an other ones center would be on 0,-500,0. Is that possible?

 

That is possible, but you can't have two MapMagic instances running at once or they will break one another. You can run one, wait till it's done, then turn it off and turn another one on. I run a loop check every thirty seconds to see if MM is using any threads, if not, I check the other map.

 

Has anyone gotten Map Magic running under 5.6? Seems like the main script won't load.

 

I've tested MapMagic 1.71 with Unity 5.6.0f3. I have not got any problems with it. Do you have any error in the console?

PS I've noticed that all of the Profiler.BeginSample and EndSample methods were replaced with

Code (CSharp):

1. UnityEngine.Profiling.Profiler.BeginSample

althoug UnityEngine.Profiling namespace is defined in the beginning of the file. Maybe that is the reason.

 

@tryptic the only problem is that when you upgrade an existing project to 5.6, the data file of mapmagic doesnt load. What i did is to go back on 5.5, save the data file from the mapmagic and load it on 5.6, all worked fine.

 

Thanks @dlevel, the 'data' file you spoke of is that mapmagic.asset? Then in 5.6 where did you load it?