Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

Hey Nathanial,

Everything is going great with Terrain Composer. Quick question though....I'm placing some tree trunks around the environment as objects and I want each trunk to be rotated randomly so they're not all facing the same direction. I noticed the rotation options when you expand the objects options. Is this where I would do that? I noticed there was a rotation map. What does a rotation map look like? Thanks for all your great support!!

David

 

Seem pretty neat so far!

Have a couple of question.

What I try to update [Check Now] I get the message
SecurityException: No valid crossdomin policy available to allow access

When I click the download link (tutorial package) I get the same message.

How in the world do I place rocks and shrubs etc with this thing?

My grass seems to be supper thin / spare. Is there a way to make it a lot thicker?

 

Yes I will change that, good idea thanks .

Nathaniel

 

Thanks for telling. Tom changed some variables in RTP3.1. I will wait for the official release to get it all synced. As when I change it now, in RTPv3 it won't show anymore.

Nathaniel

 

Hello David,

There's no option to rotate trees for the Unity terrain. This is a limitation of the Unity terrain.

A rotation map can be used e.g. for placing buildings. The map works like this. Red and blue channel for rotating 1 degree, green channel to rotate 1/255 degree.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

You are in webplayer build mode, you will need to switch to desktop build mode to be able to update and download in TC. You can switch back to Webplayer mode again after importing both.

For placing objects you can watch the video for placing trees, as it works the same.
http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials

You can also take a look in the examples how it is done...

Yes you can do this by using more grass (detail) resolution. You can change this in TC terrain list -> Resolutions -> Detail resolution.

Nathaniel

 

Hi Nathaniel

Thanks so much for 1.3 - now I have a Terrain

I wanted to experiment with Skyshop Image Based Lighting, and its terrain shaders - specifically the latest version has mobile terrain shaders that I wanted to try out.

I searched the documentation and the TC dialog but I am a bit confused as to where to set the shaders specifically.

Any ideas?

cheers,

N

 

Hello Puzzlekings,

TerrainComposer creates standard Unity terrain. That why you can use any additional shader with TerrainComposer created terrain, as it is just Unity terrain. So you have to look into the skyshop documentation how to use their shaders on the Unity terrain.

Nathaniel

 

Hi Nathaniel, Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. So after looking at the documentation in the runtime package, it seems that I would be able to randomly generate terrain, and then save the settings so that when the player exited and re-entered the scene it would generate the same terrain. Is this correct? If so, in terms of scripting would this setup be difficult to achieve? My team is very art/design focused, so our scripting ability is fairly low. Would I be able to generate terrain, save settings, randomize settings, ect. by simply calling functions on a terrain composer object, or would it be more complex than that?

Sorry for so many questions, I just want to make sure Terrain Composer is a good fit for my next project before I move forward.

 

Hello! I'm getting the hang of the basics, but I'm having trouble placing grass. I'm probably being silly and overlooking something obvious. Here's what my grass looks like after generating.

The grass generates in strips along my terrain. I'm following the grass placement tutorial so my grass settings should be correct, emphasis on the should of course. I recreated multiple terrains with the same results at the grass phase. Can anyone shed some light on what I might be doing wrong? Thank you

edit: I was able to correct the issue by adjusting the grass strength, everything looks great now

 

Yes this can be all done. There's an example script included in the package. If you use the perlin curve to create the heightmap you can change the offset to randomize. This is shown in the example script. Every parameter in the TerrainComposer window can be accessed by coding.

Nathaniel

 

You have to set grass density to 16 in TC Menu -> Options -> Generate Settings. This is changed in version 1.31 to 16 on default. I found out that higher density values above 16, cause these stripes, so I changed the default setting to 16 in new setups since version 1.3. I'm not sure if you use TC 1.31, but you can update it in TC Menu -> Help -> Update...However for an existing TC project the update won't change the grass density setting.

Nathaniel

 

Thank you, I just updated. I really appreciate it!

 

Hello! I can see v1.3 on the website, when it will be in the AssetStore? Thanks

 

Oh i am sorry i can update it inside unity3d inspector

 

Here's a fun plug for terrain composer/world composer, the last months knowledge finally placed in situ, a very large area around mt rainer rebuilt in unity land and hijinks happening. After understanding the process, this software is making very large scenes possible and that is great, i'll next be creating maps for tree placement i guess, its going to take a while. Additional plugs for fluidity for the simulation, which will one day be a grown up boss volcano, nuaj for the amazing clouds, rtp for the terrain shader, i think thats it

 

Nice! how did you make such a clouds? it looks amaizing with terrain composer alltegether

 

Nuaj, it's a volumetric clouds system and extremely good, a lot of features to play with and highly likely you can get a result you want in a pretty compulsive fun way

TC and WC are just great for these big open areas, there's several hundred or thousand sq km shown in that video iirc and after learning the procedure making very large areas with them is a charm. I think literally next thing on my bullet list of things to do is learning TC for all the other things it can do! As it's mainly been very useful for organisation so far (Lots of terrains in a scene) and i'd like to get onto trees with it. Man, trees, they don't seem a big deal but then you decide to grab your volcano from a national park with multiple millions of the buggers

 

Cool, thanks for the response! I'm looking forward to working with Terrain Composer

 

I've been getting this same problem. I'm using TC1.310, and advanced Foliage shader. I tried the fix you have above and it didn't work, it was already set to 16. It seams to be a problem with the terrain system and not TC, because I get the same issue when hand painting on the terrain. I've Tried differnt detail resolution settings and detail per-patch settings and the banding disappears with detail resolutions 256 and 128 per terrain tile. This leaves me with much to low of a density.

 

Yes it is indeed an issue with the Unity terrain. It has to do with the density you paint with though, if you reduce it enough the stripes should dissapear. Also if you use higher detail resolutions.

Nathaniel

 

Hello Lazygunn,

Your terrain looks amazing!

Nathaniel

 

I have been spending a lot of time with Terrain Composer. It is very complex, but I seem to be getting the hang of it. I have one major issue though. I used the examples to create a low, hilly terrain. However, I cannot change the textures on the splat map. How do I add new textures, not the ones already on the splat map but new textures of my own? I watched the videos but when I click on the texture pictures in the splat group layer, the textures toggle between the current textures. Adding a new textures only adds more slots that toggle between current textures.

I did export the hilly height map, thinking I would apply it to a new flat terrain. But it only applied to one of the 4 terrains or I could apply the same height map to each individual terrain. I thought I saw a video at one time that illustrated how to stretch the terrain over all 4 tiles but could not locate that video.

I would appreciate some help from someone. Thanks.

 

Hello Teila,

Did you watch the tutorial videos? I just did another tutorial that I will upload today and I will make one more on how to make a complete project.
http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials

I don't advice to add new textures because there's already 8 in there. And for perfomance reasons it's best to not go higher then 8. You can't change the splat textures in the layer itself, but you have to assign them to the terrains:

In TC 1.31 there's terrain tabs, the video still shows the foldouts, but it still works the same:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKcBk34KMfE



Why do you export and want to import the heightmap again? You can select combine in export in version 1.31, and that will export 1 big heightmap. But you can also use the same heightmap layers if you want to start from a flat terrain. Can delete the other layers from the example if you only want to use the heighmap layers.

Nathaniel

 

Okay, nevermind! Your picture above helped me.

I was trying to add in the wrong place and didn't realize I had to open the individual terrain to add textures. Love this program but there are so many buttons!

The tutorials helped a great deal to get me this far. Thank you for the help!

 

Just bought the Asset and on sale. Amazing deal
Trying to test it out but I don't see the world icon as in the video to select my area.
Unity is giving me this error
You are trying to load data from a www stream which had the following error when downloading.
401 Unauthorized
UnityEngine.WWW:LoadImageIntoTexture(Texture2D)
Map_tc:Update() (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/Map_tc.js:3510)
UnityEditor.EditorApplication:Internal_CallUpdateFunctions()

 

Hello Aydinu,

You need to create a free Bing key. This is descriped in the WorldComposer manual which is in the TerrainComposer folder in your project.

Nathaniel

 

Got it working. Thanks for the fast response

Aydin

 

Front page AND on sale
Great stuff

 

Hey Nathaniel, just a quick question. I was following through your tutorials on creating a heightmap and just made a base 2x2 terrain. Added one Heightmap layer, and noticed that by default the filter curve is set to normal. I changed it to perlin, and pressed generate and it did not affect the Heightmap. I moved the sliders around in the filter and nothing. It wasn't until I changed the position (default was 0) to a higher value before the heightmap started to be affected by the perlin. In the example, the Position is set to 0 and the Strength is adjusted, so I just want to know if I missed a step or if I should always increase the Position before applying the filters.

Sorry for the noob question, great product though I love it.

 

Hello Draxy,

Yes I changed the default heightmap filter, as some users tried to import a raw heightmap with the perlin curve in it, which gave a total mixed odd looking result. If you want the default perlin curve that is like I use in the videos, you need to click the 'Curve' button -> Line -> Default Perlin.

Nathaniel

 

Thanks for the help, keep up the good work =]

 

Random thought - Have you tried making a Cartoon-style terrain with this awesome tool?

 

Imported just updated it...

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
TerrainComposer.Paint () (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:1146)
TerrainComposer.OnGUI () (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:891)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)

 

Mismatched serialization in the builtin class 'Mesh'. (Read 162696 bytes but expected 162697 bytes)
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:LoadAssetAtPath(String, Type)
TerrainComposer:load_terraincomposer(String, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean) (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:14081)
TerrainComposer:main_menu(Object) (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:14584)
UnityEditor.GenericMenu:CatchMenu(Object, String[], Int32)


Mismatched serialization in the builtin class 'Mesh'. (Read 162696 bytes but expected 162697 bytes)


Mismatched serialization in the builtin class 'Mesh'. (Read 109920 bytes but expected 109921 bytes)


Mismatched serialization in the builtin class 'Mesh'. (Read 100788 bytes but expected 100789 bytes)


Mismatched serialization in the builtin class 'Mesh'. (Read 109824 bytes but expected 109825 bytes)

 

Hello Ebolinux,

That are strange errors. What version of Unity are you using? Have you tried to restart Unity?

Nathaniel

 

I haven't tried it, but maybe some of my users did. Almost anything can be done, as for cartoon style it would need cartoonish splat textures.

Nathaniel

 

Hello Everyone,

I released a new TerrainComposer tutorial video about filters, masks and curves:

Nathaniel

 

Is there a way to use the runtime methods in C#? I noticed in the Runtime.zip from the site, the entire C# file is commented out, and if you uncomment it, it won't compile. Terraincomposer_save is javascript that relies on C# components, so you can't move TerrainComposer into Plugins, which means there's no way to compile a C# runtime class after TerrainComposer.

 

Hello, picked up TC not too long ago and am loving life. Wondering if there is any better way to set up static batching groups for culling than manually going through and selecting every object with a similar material in each 10x10m area over the whole map (impossible really). Procedural object placement makes it so easy to populate scenes with objects, but performance takes a hit unless we can batch these things... the giant strips that TC generates in are not helping. Ideas?

 

You will have to access it through reflections in C#, I have users using it this way. I'm working on TC2 now and it will be in C# also it will be possible to batch area's like 10x10 m in TC2. I hope to release it this month...

Nathaniel

 

Saweet!

 

Hi there

I just bought "World Composer" and tried to load it together with "Terrain Composer" in a new and yet empty project (Unity 4.3.3f1 on Win7 64bit):

Step 1) Import most recent version of "World Composer" (1.10 from Unity Asset Store)
--> All went well, no errors

Step 2) Import most recent version of "Terrain Composer" (1.23 from Unity Asset Store)
--> I get the following errors:

What am I doing wrong?

 

Hello Parallaxe,

If you updated TC to verison 1.32, and then imported WC (they share some files), you have to import TC package again. The lastest TerrainComposer is in the folder TerrainComposer -> Update.

I will submit the latest version of WC to the Asset Store today, that has the latest shared files so install order wouldn't matter once this version is approved by the Asset Store.

Nathaniel

 

Hi eagle555

Thanks for your reply.

As mentioned, I have imported WC first and then, as the second step, imported TC. Hence, the sequence you're suggesting was met. However, just to be sure I re-imported TC (TerrainComposer) again, but the errors are still there.

I cannot find the version 1.32 you are referring to either. The Asset Store only holds the version 1.23 (link). And I can't update to 1.32 via the TC internal update function/button either, because due to the error the "TerrainComposer" menu entry in "Window" won't show up in the first place.

So I'm somehow stuck.

 

After updating from 1.23 to 1.31/32 I lose the ability to generate a hightmap. I receive this error . I have tried downloading the asset in a new project, and was able to build terrains in 1.23 again, but ran the update and the error came back while generate leaves me with a flat plane. I installed the demo assets to determine if I might be making an obvious mistake, but the demo terrains would not generate properly either, with the Island demo looking like this .

I'm sorry to bother you with this, I've tried finding answers elsewhere but came up short. Thanks for answering all of our questions, you drive a top notch product!

 

TC2 this month? That's great news! I was worried it was still a year away.

 

It's a draw error, not serious, has not to do with your flat terrain. You can clear the console...

I changed the default heightmap filter in the new version of TC. If you click curve -> line -> Default Perlin and activate the second normal curve, it is how it was in 1.23. I made this change, because some users wanted to import a heightmap in the filter and then it got mixed with the perlin, giving total unexpected results...



Nathaniel

 

Nathaniel, this latest video really cleared up a lot of questions i had. I would say this is the single most important video to date! Thank you so much!

 

I totally agree! It would also be awesome if you did a similar video as this last video and added in creating buildings/grouped buildings (like small towns).