Mad Maps - Non-Destructive Terrain Workflow w/ Layers, Copy/Paste, Roads, and more!

Mad Maps is Now On The Asset Store!

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Mad Maps is a powerful, integrated collection of tools to solve all of your Unity terrain pipeline needs. It is a terrain pipeline that is non-destructive, extensible, flexible, fast and modular. It's been battle-tested for the past 2 years in a professional studio environment, used for creating massive open world levels. Battle tested for 3 years in the creation of open-world survival game Hurtworld, Mad Maps is ready to revolutionise how you build your levels.

Mad Maps is 3 toolsets for the price of 1! All are tightly integrated to provide a complete solution to modular level building with the Unity Terrain.

The Terrain Wrapper

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The Terrain Wrapper is a layer system for your terrain data that gives you enormous power. Combine, blend and stack layers to get complex results while keeping the data in individual layers intact. Seamlessly integrate with existing procedural generation solutions, and combine your procedural generation with handcrafted polish without ever getting locked in to your procedural work. Organise layers, snapshot and store terrains, create procedural filters, and more!​

World Stamps

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World Stamps are a tool for copying and pasting any part of your terrain. But it's so much more than that.​

• Copy any section of terrain into a stamp, that can be moved, rotated, scaled and saved into a prefab.
• Built off the TerrainWrapper platform, so completely non-destructive workflow
• Capture Trees, Grass, Splats, Heightmaps, and Prefabs
• Blend the stamp however you want onto the terrain - for instance, in the above example, we are keeping both the trees and the splats intact. We could tell the stamp to remove the trees, replace them with it's own, and write it's own splats instead.
• Blend stamps together in multiple layers, and with complex blend modes.

Mad Maps Roads

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This is a complete road tool, for easily creating spline-based terrain modifiers and meshes. Works seamlessly with the Terrain Wrapper and World Stamp system for a non-destructive workflow. Intersection support allows for the easy creation of very complex networks.

This tool is also able to do much more than just roads - such as placing objects and trees along a path, or removing them. Build wires, fences, cliffs and more with this extremely flexible tool. The componentized and flexible structure means that if you can dream of a task that requires a spline, this can do it.​

 

Learning Resources
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Check out these videos to get started with Mad Maps!

Older Videos:

 

Reserved

 

"I want a free copy!" Please if you have any left.

 

I want a free copy!

 

I want a free copy!

 

I want a free copy!

Edit:

 

I want a free copy!

 

I want a free copy! This looks amazing!

 

@Mark_01, @Nyo, and @Legorobotdude, congrats! I'll PM you a voucher code.

 

I didnt win ? I was the 3rd

 

Damn am I late for the free give away!?

 

Well this is pretty interesting indeed.

 

We've now got an official Mad Maps Facebook page! Check it out: https://www.facebook.com/madmapsunity

We also want to know about the terrain pipelines you guys are using!

What's your workflow right now for creating levels with the terrain? Are you using a procedural solution, or handcrafting everything yourself?

What are the problems that you currently have in your workflow?

 

Looking good so far, only issue I'm having is that the MapMagic integration doesn't seem to compile (missing Layer.ILayer, Layer.ILayered). I made sure I imported the latest version of MapMagic (1.9.1. released on 3/8/2018)

Looking in the MapMagic source, there are a few commented out references to ILayer - it looks like it's been removed.

 

Hey Jaimi, yes it looks like the MapMagic integration is targeting the previous version. Shouldn't take too long to fix, and I'll post a .zip of the changed files here once I'm done (as well as a new version on the store of course). Sorry about that!

 

Great news - and no problem. I was looking at weeks of writing something similar, and frankly I'd much rather work on my game. My goal is to generate a bunch of precreated random "interest points" into my MapMagic world, so I don't have to pin tons of terrains. This was *exactly* what I was needing.

 

Cowtrix - While I'm waiting, I'm trying to capture my stamps. I add a terrain wrapper to the terrain, add a layer, and hit "capture from terrain" but I can't seem to get it to capture splats or details. It does capture the trees, objects, and hieghtmap though:

 

Hey Jaimi, this is explained a bit here. Basically, for Mad Maps to be able to cross-reference, resolve and merge splats and details across different scenes and projects, it uses an identical configuration scriptable object, instead of storing the configuration in the terrain itself.

The creation of these prototype scriptable objects is a little bit clumsy right now, should be a one-click process in the future. Basically, if you create matching splat and detail Mad Maps Prototypes (Create > Mad Maps > Detail Prototype OR Splat Prototype) and configure them with the same values as on your terrain, they will capture with a reference to that Scriptable Object. This also means you have a central point to manage a specific type of splat or detail, without needing to go and remember to change everything everwhever when you want "grass_3" to be 3 inches taller.

FYI y'all there is currently a build being processed which should fix Mad Maps, as well as improve feedback on Jaimi's issue.

 

Hey folks so v0.1.0a is now out:

• Updated to support latest MapMagic release.
• Improved feedback when attempting to capture off terrains that don't have Wrapper objects set up yet.

Thanks @Jaimi for your feedback!

Starting work on full Vegetation Studio support!

 

If there is a free copy left, I would be gladly review it!

 

Thanks, @cowtrix! I'll put the update in, and get to work. Much appreciated.

 

We are currently making a new Steam game, we are experienced developers, we may buy this tool, looks really interesting.. We use World Creator, World Streamer for loading unloading terrain tiles, we are making a large map about 30 km^2. So wondering can you slice up your road planes into tiles?

Also can you use only certain aspects of your tool. So if someone does not want to use your tools, does it work well with other road asset like easy 3d roads and such..I assume it does, Since you are supporting anything that uses Unity terrain tools. and such.. such as WC, GAIA, TC, etc.. Map Magic.


So example say I make a map in World Creator. and make my splat maps in World Creator.

I assume this tool can still work well, with someone who likes to use these tools? I do alot of hand crafting, and use tools like World Creator, to make my maps. but many tools you can't really hand craft, so this is what is peaking my interest, so correct me if I'm wrong, will, we be able to use a tool like this... if we make maps splats in another terrain tool.

Thanks.




You have my interest.


PS: you also have my interest due to being a proven asset and used in a REAL GAME, not a test scene like many assets...I hate buying assets that are ONLY TESTED in a scene....So having this being a proven asset is a great thing...I seen i was made with Hurt World. Great game by the way.

 

also any idea when the support will be in with VS? and will it work now.. what do you plan to add with VS..

 

Heya recon, thanks for your interest. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "slicing up your road planes", could you explain that a bit more? Are you referring to the road networks you can create with Mad Maps?

And yes, you can very easily partially use this tool. What I mean when I say Mad Maps has some out-of-the-box support for most terrain generators, is that it's able to capture information off of an existing terrain that has been generated with World Creator or some other tool. As long as the information is being stored within the terraindata at a given point in your pipeline, you can insert Mad Maps in there and start editing away with stamps and roads. Simply add the TerrainWrapper component, capture the current information as a base layer, and start modifying with stamps and roads. As the modification is reapplyable at any time you should be able to just iteratitvely regenerate a procedural solution back onto the terrain and then restamp your stamps and rebake your road network.

In terms of VS support, I'm aiming for the following:

• Stamps capturing and stamping Vegetation Studio data as they do native detail/splat/tree data.
• Roads removing/adding Vegetation Studio trees/grass as they do native trees/grass
• Vegetation Studio data being present in terrain layers.

Right now you can use Vegetation Studio as a separate solution on top of Mad Maps. The above features do not currently exist, but nor is there any real conflict between the two as Vegetation Studio stores it's information itself and is fairly self contained.

 

For example, say you have a plane, which is made for a road, would you be able to slice it into smaller planes, so we use tools like World Streamer, for loading, unloading our terrain tiles... So when we do this, we need to be able to do the same with roads planes as well. I could make my own tool if it does not..not the end of the world. but I was just wondering.

I figured it did, but wanted to be clear, I learned my lesson when adding an asset to my pipeline, and finding out after using it, it doesn't work for my work flow.. and ending up wasting valuable time, money. etc.

awesome you have me sold... I will buy it in the coming days. Thanks for info, looking forward to using this in our current Steam game, we are releasing, next year. roughly. Thanks!

PS: I never buy new assets anymore from people I do not know. but willing to take a chance, due to you already making a game with it..and a game I know well.. I hope though you do not bail for support like some asset developers do when they make games.... hard to support both.. but 40 dollars is NOTHING for a tool like this, it would take me a hours, weeks, month, possible to make a tool like this... so 40 bucks is nothing..



Last question.....can Mad Map be removed from project once , we are done using? I assume yes, unless there are some scripts that are needed... Then, those would stay which is fine. I always clean out assets from junk, that we do not need.

 

The road tool slices up all meshes for LOD grouping (and supports multiple LODs), and for MeshCollider efficiency. So the road network is pretty easy to slice and dice up. It's also pretty easy to create cross-scene Road Networks just by working with multiple scenes open at once.

Haha I know the feeling, making Hurtworld meant trying every map generation toolkit under the sun. This isn't even the first generation, Mad Maps is like the 3rd generation of internal tools I wrote to try and build a really flexible pipeline. I'm not working on Hurtworld anymore, so this has my full attention. Let me know what you make with Mad Maps! Looking forward to seeing it.

Yes. The end result of Mad Maps is a completely vanilla terrain (and soon a Vegetation Studio terrain as well). The end result of the road network can be completely stripped down to just Unity components.

 

Thanks a ton for this information. Ya we are experienced developers so this isn't our first game., but first game as a company together, before we worked for other AAA, indie studio's. It was just time to make our own games. Look forward to using this tool.

I will be buying it for sure in the coming days. before May 1.

I work with other asset developers, and developers so if its good I will let others know what I think. May want to consider a discord channel. it helps with support, and others using the tool to help one another as well and get to know each other. Many people kinda know one another from other assets so that helps. Something to think about.

 

I bought this, so I will let you know how it goes. Thanks! are there any plans for the future updates?

 

Hey recon, Discord is a good idea! Just set it up here.

Lots of plans for future updates. Currently Vegetation Studio integration is the main focus, with other integrations down the line. Lots of QoL fixes I want to do, and the road tool has a couple of rough bits in the UI. It's generally feature complete, in that Mad Maps does everything I have ever needed it to. However, always listening for requests and bug reports to try and improve it!

 

Sounds good. Thanks.

 

Hello, @cowtrix. This tool looks very interesting to me, and definitely is aimed at a problem that I am facing in my projects. I have several procedural terrain tools (just bought Map Magic to add to that toolbox). I use different tools for different requirements.

I was curious about a couple of integration questions that I couldn't answer from your documentation:

1. Will Mad Maps' road system work alongside something like EZ Roads 3D? What I have in mind is to let MM take care of terrain deformation and splatmaps for the road beds, but then use EZ Roads 3D to lay the pavement.
2. Can I tell the road system to place an arbitrary prefab of my choice at each of its node points?
3. Since Mad Maps integrates with Map Magic, and Map Magic integrates with Voxeland, does that imply Mad Maps and Voxeland will coexist if Map Magic is in the middle?

Thanks.

 

Hey @syscrusher, thanks for the questions!

1. I'm not sure if the two are compatible, I haven't tested with EZ Roads. From memory EZ Roads does a simpler version of what the Terrain Wrapper does (storing and restoring saved versions of the terrain data) so it's possible that they will fight over each other if you're not careful.
2. Yes! You would do this by creating an object-placement component on the connection between nodes.
3. No, currently Mad Maps does not support Voxeland.

 

Thanks for the reply. I haven't decided yet whether to buy (I guess I'd better be making a decision quickly, though) but I appreciate being able to make a fully informed decision.

 

Mad Maps v0.1.1 is now up for submission!

This build introduces experimental Vegetation Studio support! This means that World Stamps, the Terrain Wrapper, and the Road system now all work with Vegetation Studio data as you would expect - copy, paste, stamp, and manipulate just like you would prefabs or objects. Thanks @LennartJohansen for your help.

This release also ends the discounted starting period, and raises the price to $50 USD.

Full Changelog:

If you need this build before the next few days, let me know. Any bugs, issues or suggestions can be raised here or on the Discord.

 

So. I take the world stamp.
Just a small one. It includes an object. I observe object is recorded in stamper.

I attempt to restamp my object. (height data, and two splats, to boot)


I put together some AAA annotations to help show the issue. Any clues

Here is it being made again - as you can see a template was reused to get the settings back as you suggested.
The problem appears to be it capturing "1 object" which I assumed was the top level parent.

But further digging with the preview button and extrapolating from the extremely (all black?) dark splat suggests this may not be the case.



Am I missing something? colliders? or something? reasonably sure I followed the video faithfully

(I may have adjust the sound a bit)

I will try with some other objects.

 

Hmm. further tests with other objects also fail


Not sure what I am doing wrong

Attached the Data.png from this second attempt with a very "usual" shaped object.
Looks blank, but looking closer reveals a single dot. so.... it has recorded it.


Unity 5.6.6f2

 

@twobob - is the house object a prefab?

 

hmmm... I thought it was yeah. So it makes/takes a reference to a prefab then.
I will 100% that now.

Hmm it was indeed a blue object but...
When I tried again with a simpler prefab - worked fine - Must be a workflow thing on my side,
Will do!

Thanks Jaimi


EDIT: Okay so it turns out that that particular project was just being stupid. Worked fine when the settings were reset properly

and YES it must be prefabs.

 

Hmm... vegetation Studio it not likey.
What did I do wrong?

 

Watched your videos and this is exactly what I have needed all along. I use World Creator Standalone these days to make my height maps. But I prefer to create hand crafted areas on my map rather than full procedural placement. In the past, when I needed to go back and make changes to my height map, I lost everything I had crafted by hand. Obviously, this tool is perfect for my method of creating terrains.

I do have a few questions. Can it be used on a tiled terrain? Can another team member make hand crafted areas and save them out to be used in my project? Obviously, they would need the same textures, objects, etc.

Also, are you planning to make a video showing the road creation? This is one thing I really need and have been patiently, or not so patiently, waiting for. Do you use meshes like EZ roads or do you deform the terrain and allow us to add textures? I much prefer the latter for the terrains I make.

Thanks so much for this! I love the natural way the stamps blend into the existing terrain. Great job and another great terrain tool to add to my arsenal.

 

Hey @twobob, not entirely sure but it looks like the runtime classes (e.g. in your screenshot WorldStampData) haven't compiled properly with the VEGETATION_STUDIO define. Make sure it's properly in the Player settings and recompile, and see if that fixes things.

FYI to other readers - the prefab issue has been resolved, make sure you have "Write Objects" enabled on the TerrainWrapper component (under the Info tab).

Thanks Teila!

Yes, you can use Mad Maps with tiling terrains. Each terrain will have its own TerrainWrapper. The tool is made specifically to allow collaberation like that - you can split your level up into multiple stamps, each generated from an isolated scene of that area, and then combine them in a final scene. For splats and details, Mad Maps creates a ScriptableObject wrapper for these so they can be referenced across scenes - so you don't make splats or detail maps as usual, Mad Maps manages them for you on the actual terrain instance.

Yes, hopefully I will have more video tutorials soon - although I think the documentation is pretty good right now if you'd prefer not to wait for that. The Discord is also pretty active and I'm happy to talk you through it. So the road tool is very flexible - it can generate meshes along the spline, or paint splats, or deform the terrain, or any combination of those things. It's a componentized model where you add a collection of components to a spline that can do whatever they want. So yes, painting splats and deforming the terrain are totally viable. However, if you've got the time, check out the shaders included in the package, there's a pretty decent decal solution in there that works well with blending mesh roads into the terrain (in deferred).

 

Excellent! Makes perfect sense. I did go to the documentation after posting and it is fabulous. I prefer written docs to videos any day so thank you.

After the roads are placed and the terrain deformed, can you revert back if you do not like the way it looks? Can you get rid of a road or the entire network if you make a mistake? I am guessing the answer is yes, but just checking.

I already joined the Discord but am in the middle of moving across country so will probably spend more time with it once we are settled...or maybe not. I cannot resist any new terrain tool. lol

 

@Teila. Yes to both questions
Imagine this as a second layer of "info" (height, splat, stuff) over the original.

In this way it is easy to visualise, in addition the road layer is applied in a determinant order thus should be predictable

 

Yes, absolutely, this is the whole function of Mad Maps. A non-destructive workflow means you can go backwards at any time. A good analogy is layers in photoshop - we write information into these layers instead of the terrain, and then combine those layers of data into one final output.

 

Thanks for adding MapMagic integration into your asset! I really appreciate this - and not only because I don't have to do it myself , it really flatters that you had MMWG in mind while making Map Maps!

 

No worries! Thanks for making such a great tool that integrates so well with it. I'd love to include support for the next version of Map Magic - any chance of accessing the alpha?

 

Version 0.1.2a is now on the Asset Store

- Fixed painter on OpenGL platforms. If painting masks doesn't work for you, try enabling the fallback override with Tools/Mad Maps/Utilities/Force Fallback Painter
- Improved painter tearing down, could sometimes leave an orphaned painter floating in the scene until recompile
- Added VegetationStudio x MapMagic integrated generator
- Fixed WorldStamps properly removing existing Vegetation Studio data
- World Stamps will now properly configure themselves to remove existing data based on their own information, when created with the World Stamp Creator tool.
- Improved the World Stamp priority explorer
- Fixed compute shaders in 2018 and above

Thanks for the suggestions and bug reports yall!

 

Ya it works really well with Map Magic and any other terrain tool, I have tested this with them all, and works great,

 

I don't know if Wright contacted you but the MM2.0 alpha is on Gitlab and if you PM Wright your MM receipt you can get access to it!

Also I'll be picking up Mad Maps soon to use with Map Magic, they look to be a perfect combo for what I'm looking to do - thanks for all the hard work!