Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

Nice to hear you will release TC2 this month (probably), i guess it will be a free upgrade? Also, will there be any gui improvements in there? To be honest, TC is a great tool, but the gui is not super friendly : p

 

Hi,

is there a way to use the RTP vertical texture for splatmapping (or even for heightmap filtering, object placement etc.)?

Will post this question in the RTP thread as well

 

I was wondering what settings were used in the 24 hour terrain demo project?

 

Once RTP 3.1 is done a video tutorial is supposedly coming that will cover World Composer, Terrain Composer with RTP3.1. Looking forward to it!

 

My own project is also based around Mt. Rainier too. The different could be rather interesting

 

Must agree with this
Really enjoyed the video
Explained things very clearly and easy to follow along with
Have watched it a few times
Looking forward to more like this

PS
Can't wait for TC2 to come out (soon)

 

Hi Nathaniel,

I've been doing some research on World Composer and it seems like the perfect solution to my terrain generation problems. In the past I've had to generate large scale simulation terrain by hand, which is possibly some of the most tedious work I've done. Due to the legal restrictions I don't think I would be able to use the sat data extracted through would composer which leads me to this question...

Would I be able to use the World Composer without using the maps it downloads?
If I was able to provide my own height and diffuse imagery, would I be able to use the mesh generation and shadow removal tools?

If so, this would still save me a lot of time in the long run and be a valuable tool to have in my arsenal.

Thanks!
- Ben

 

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced a problem similar to the one I'm having. I created a terrain using Procedural Islands but my splatmap textures don't appear to of been applied properly. The splatmap doesn't blend into the neighboring terrain tile. I attached a screenshot as an example. Does anyone know how to fix this issue? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

 

Hello Ben,

About the legal restrictions, it is a grey area you can read the discussion about in on the first page og the WorldComposer forum:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/21...tool-to-create-real-World-AAA-quality-terrain

WorldComposer creates standard Unity terrain. Yes it would be possible, if you buy WorldComposer contact me at my email Nathaniel_Doldersum@hotmail.com and then I can explain to you how to do this...

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

This might be a shader issue. Do you have any asset in your project from Michael O? Or Big enviroment pack? There are some Asset that use an additional terrain shader and they screw up the Unity terrain if you don't set them up. These shaders should be deleted from your project...But before you look into that, can you try an empty project and see if the issue is still there? If so...then it might be the shader issue...

Nathaniel

 

Hi Tom and Nathaniel,

First of all - congratulations to your products, I'm using them with WorldMachine and they are looking great! I'm eagerly looking forward to RTP3.1 as well!

Just wanted to report a very annoying issue I have just encountered and solved while fiddling around with Terrain Composer and RTP3, just to prevent other users to encounter it as well and prevent any negative reviews (I'm a publisher as well).

I dragged 4 splat textures that came with the Terrain Composer and RTP packages into Terrain Composer's splat-texture slots. At that time I did not notice that although the diffuse textures were all 512x512, their corresponding displacement-textures were 512 at TerrainComposer's and 256 at RTP's sample textures.
It wouldn't have been such a problem if it failed right away, but I was "lucky" at first: the smaller dispplacement-texture was at the first slot, leading to no error when the textures were atlassed by RTP. I noticed earlier that the parallax-mapping seemed odd at some places, but thought that maybe I had made some bad shader settings and didn't care much at that stage, since it was looking great most of the time.
Later, when I played around with some parameters and have switched the order of the splat textures, so that now the larger displacement texture was at the first slot. In the meantime I was tweaking some RTP parameters and playing with water maps, etc, and suddenly whenever I hit "Set All" or saved the scene, it raised an "Array index is out of range" exception. The problem was that I was mislead since I thought that maybe now I was using too many or too few texture layers, not that the textures itself were the problem (since with the other texture order it worked, at least it raised no error).
When I hit "Refresh" in Terrain composer, everything looked fine (must have been loaded from a previous state), but after hitting save, an auto-reload ruined the terrain again. As a solution I deleted the whole terrain and start from a new blank scene again, since I thought that one of my actions must have corrupted the terrain, but I failed to undo the error once it got into my setup - left me quite frustrated.

Maybe you could add a warning when textures are of different size:
- in RTP: throw a more descriptive Exception when the rtp_functions.CombineHeights method is called with invalid textures, would be 3 lines of code - including braces .
- in Terrain Composer: display a red error-message text label below the texture slots.

I know it's my fault of improperly using your tools, but i think it would be worth the effort.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Kind regards,
Harald

 

I just bought TC from the asset store (version 1.230), it worked. Then I updated it through the menu to version 1.320 (check for update, download, import).

It seems to be no longer working?

- In menu Window there is no "Terrain Composer"
- On loading Unity throws an exception "Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_classes.js(1,1): BCE0089: Type '' already has a definition for 'Main()'."
- File terraincomposer_classes.js is empty

Restarting Unity doesn't help. Unity version 4.2.2f1

Please help! I have no other terrain tools installed (had WorldComposer and RTP3 but deleted them before installing TC).

 

Hey,

I was curious if there was a way to get bathymetry data in the heightmaps from bing or somewhere else?
also what is the format of the raw file it spits out?

Thanks.

 

+1

 

I've been talking to Nathaniel about what wc could do and it was all very interesting stuff, being able to switch providers for both imagery and elevation data (Maybe even adding other folks fave services), as well as importing height data in whatever suitable form you'd like and wc align it with the imagery of your choice. Really quite interesting what could be added, given i've spent the last few days deep in learning about GIS and how complete wc could become by having more of a GIS slant over creating the terrain straight out of Bing

If you want to know what could be implemented fairly simply (mind, i wouldnt want to speak for the dev) then have a look at the Bing maps api, and then hazard some requests! Google maps (Using their static maps and elevation apis) i hope to come soon, and with that it make sense to incorporate other providers, so if you have a favoured web provider that can be queried, definitely suggest away id think

Google Maps do provide bathymetry data while a google search shows that Bing does not, however it'd be good if there can be as many services as possible, i'm already taking a keen look at lidar for some of the areas i'm working on, to be able to have that data merged with something a bit more easygoing as needed (although for the US locations at least, the NED 3m data would be well loved) would be great for terrain composer and world composer become such powerful tools

I don't think you could use so much detail too much before running into the unfathomable lack of 64bit Unity editor, but to have the information to pick and choose from would be great, in fact is already great, and we're luck stuff like WC/TC are there, because they're making the extremely unlikely become very possible, in very beautiful ways, in quite a neat interface

Looking forwards to getting stuck into Google's services (And others eventually)and the idea of importing data too, i had a go at implementing google maps myself last night and the resulting software was not wonderful, appreciate the stuff that's been done there getting it working as it does

Edit: And I may be talking hoo haa so this is tentative, but raw files are.. well, raw files, they have no header so the sequence of information in them (If in a heightmap, a 16 or 32bit value i'd guess) is defined by whatever parses them, such is the way with raw files - you could possibly use a GetPixels on one and run through it in a loop and see what datatype is used for a value in the map

 

Hello Harald,

Thanks for your compliments. Yes I don't check for texture equal sizes with RTP in TerrainComposer, thanks for pointing this issue out...I will make this in the next version.

Nathaniel

 

Hi,

I don´t understand how to save and reopen terrain composer prefabs. If I open a TC prefab that I have saved one moment ago, it gives me a completely different result

I had thought, that TC prefabs store all the heightmap, splatmap, trees, grass, objects settings, thus giving me the ability to recreate the same terrain

I believe, the workflow should be like this:
create new terrains
open a prefab
generate > start (or generate heightmaps, splatmaps step by step)

what am I doing wrong?

thanks

 

Hello Nuitari,

This is a Unity 4.2 issue. You have to delete the terraincomposer_classes.js file and the global_classes.js file, and then it should work fine. Unity 4.2 can't seem to handle empty scripts...

Nathaniel

 

Hello Mike,

At the moment there's no bathymetry data from Bing. I'm working at the moment to get Google maps in and they also have elevation, maybe google elevation have it.

The format of the raw is 16 bit grey scale and byte order is windows.

Nathaniel

 

Hello Thousand,

Yes TerrainComposer saves all the layers and the rest of the project information. How do you save and open the prefabs? With the TC Menu -> File ? As that should work correct and never heard anybody had issues with it.

Nathaniel

 

Hi Nathaniel. I purchased Terrain Composer a couple of weeks ago and I'm just now digging into it. I'm wondering how to get my splatmap from World Machine into Terrain Composer. This seems like a simple operation but when I create a Splat layer I'm only seeing an option to generate a splatmap but not an option to apply a splatmap. I'm using an RGBA PNG created in World Machine.

I'm having no problem getting my World Machine heightmap integrated but the splatmap is driving me crazy.

Thanks!

Dennis

 

Hello Dennis,

I have a tutorial video for importing from WorldMachine. You can watch tutorial videos at:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials

Nathaniel

 

Thanks Nathaniel, this answers my question. I've been to your tutorial videos page and I don't know how I missed this one! The 'load on generate' bit is what was tripping me up.

Thanks for the explanation.

Dennis

 

Hi Nathaniel,
i purchased TC some times now, and it's quite a wonderfull tool. But i have one big problem.
I use World machine to make some "template". And at runtime i want to mix them randomly with some other noise made with TC. In the editor all works fine, but when i try to access the strenght or activate/ desactivate a filter with a raw map i have this comment:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. The Raw Heightmap file 'D:/PROJETS + TRAVAIL/T/UNITY PROJET/Echoes_From_Darkness_proto_03/Assets/Terrains/TC/forest/raw/montagne_val_var_a.r16' has a lower resolution than selected. Please check the File size. It should be X*Y*2 = 2049*2049*2 = 8396802 Bytes (2049*2049 resolution). But the File size is 0 Bytes (0x0 resolution).
3. UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)
4. terraincomposer_save:calc_raw_value(raw_class, Single, Single) (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js:4169)
5. terraincomposer_save:calc_filter_value(filter_class, Single, Single) (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js:3282)
6. terraincomposer_save:generate_output(prelayer_class) (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js:2529)
7. generateur_world:Update() (at Assets/Scripts/gilles/terrain_generateur_script/generateur_world.js:33)
8.  
9.  
10.  

Tc can't load at runtime a raw map if i understand it right). Or i don't use Tc like i should maybe?

To be honest, it's driving me crazy
I also tried to put the map in a ressource folder but i have the same problem.

If you have any idea, i ll appreciate your help on this one.

Thanks for all your work
Gilles

 

I saved my files just as you say. First I thought it has to do something with RTP. Because after some more experiments, I found out that the heightmap gets stored, while the splat maps won´t. I have saved a splatmap prefab consisting of 4 custom splatmaps. But when I save the TC prefab and reopen it, it will display the TC splatmap default set with 8 splatmaps.
(Layers are stored in the prefab, so that´s ok.)

The same goes for trees and grass: I have to reassign the trees and grasses. But the layers are there.


Summary:
Custom splatmaps, trees and grass are not stored, I have to reapply them everytime I open a TC prefab.

-------------------

these things are quite confusing, but now I know at least, what´s does working and what does not. So I am able to save things, but I have to add all custom items manually.


thanks

 

Can you make roads in terrain composer. Is there a road tool?
Also can you edit the terrain with the regular unity terrain script thingy. If I want to remove a certain tree, or texture at a certain place?

 

you can edit TC terrain with regular unity terrain script thingy, also you can remove a certain tree or texture at a certain place
on thing to keep in mind is, that those edits won´t be stored in the TC prefab as far as I know.

You can create paths and roads, but for advanced streets, you will need to use geometry instead of terrain (as far as I know, again)

 

Hello Gilles,

TerrainComposer runtime doesn't load a raw heightmap at the moment. I do this in the Editor script. I will make it in the next update.

Nathaniel

 

Hello Thousand,

What you notice is that terrains aren't loaded. If you want to do this you can go to TC Menu -> Options -> Generate Settings -> Enable Load Terrain Data (in the bottom), and then load your TC project prefab again...

Nathaniel

 

Hello HuskyPanda213,

Thousand already aswered most of the questions. You can manually edit the terrain as it is Unity terrain. If your brush tool don't want to change, you need to restart Unity, I'm not sure if this bug is still in Unity...

As for roads, if you want mesh overlay you will need to use EasyRoads. TerrainComposer can be used for road splat textures, like a peddle road on the splatmap.

Nathaniel

 

Thank you for your answer.

 

Hi,

I am planning to buy TC for a app I am making for iOS. Can you please guide me if TC will be able to help me reducing the memory/CPU usage. Currently my app has two terrain (i) 1000 m by 1000 m and other 500 m by 500 m. Both created using Unity terrain editor. However I am getting lot of draw calls and memory usage from those, and after reducing the terrain texture size to 64 by 64 I can play it on iPad 3 but the graphic are no longer great. If I use TC do you think that will reduce this. Additionally, can I import the terrain generated using unity to TC. I am aware of T4M but since the developer looks like abandoned the program so little hesitant to buy it.

Thank you ,

Mohit

 

Hello Mohit,

What you can use TerrainComposer for is creating your terrain. TerrainComposer is using standard Unity terrain. So TC doesn't add any additional performance or takes any away, the right setup is the key here. Heightmap resolution is very important to keep it low, 129 is what I recommend. You can also convert to meshes with TerrainComposer for heightmap resolution 129 and lower, then it uses only 1 draw call for each terrain tile.

Nathaniel

 

This asset is annoying me to the point of wanting to break someithng.

I have purchased this and cant use it, worked briefly once and now just errors and cant bring up the terrain composer window.

Error i got is:

ArgumentException: The thing you want to instantiate is null.
UnityEngine.Object.CheckNullArgument (System.Object arg, System.String message) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/artifacts/EditorGenerated/UnityEngineObject.cs:104)
UnityEngine.Object.Instantiate (UnityEngine.Object original) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/artifacts/EditorGenerated/UnityEngineObject.cs:90)


furthermore, when it was working briefly, the help menu in terrain composer did not have a download examples button just a turorial button. Furthermore, when going through the tutorial video, using any of the masks stopped that layer working completely, its like submasks dont work.

I am annoyed because i have spent alot of money on this and have yet been able to use it to create any form of terrian!

 

Thank you Nathaniel for your kind reply. Once I convert to mesh, can I still have functionality available to texture paint , or place the tree using unity editor, or change the topography similar to unity terrain or it will be gone.

Thank you,

Mohit

 

im getting 2 new errors:

ArgumentNullException: Argument cannot be null.
Parameter name: source
System.Linq.Check.SourceAndSelector (System.Object source, System.Object selector)
System.Linq.Enumerable.SelectMany[Assembly,Type] (IEnumerable`1 source, System.Func`2 selector)
UnityEditor.EditorAssemblies.get_loadedTypes () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/Editor/Mono/EditorAssemblies.cs:39)
UnityEditor.EditorAssemblies.SubclassesOf (System.Type parent) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/Editor/Mono/EditorAssemblies.cs:44)
UnityEditor.AssetPostprocessingInternal.GetMeshProcessorVersions () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/Editor/Mono/AssetPostprocessor.cs:117)
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:Refresh()
TerrainComposer:load_global_settings() (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:13801)
TerrainComposer:Get_TerrainComposer_Scene() (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:230)
TerrainComposer:OnEnable() (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:184)


and


NullReferenceException: (null)
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase.Refresh () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/artifacts/EditorGenerated/AssetDatabase.cs:200)
TerrainComposer.load_global_settings () (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:13801)
TerrainComposer.Get_TerrainComposer_Scene () (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:230)
TerrainComposer.OnEnable () (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/TerrainComposer.js:184)

 

I have the same issue, though im running 4.1, deleting the empty classes file gets rid of the one error, but now im getting lots of "is not a member of 'area_class' errors.

Still now menu in terrain ..

Below the errors:

Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(2298,127): BCE0019: 'colormap_resolution' is not a member of 'area_class'.
Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(2298,194): BCE0019: 'Colormap' is not a member of 'resolution_mode_enum'.
Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(3691,44): BCE0019: 'divide' is not a member of 'condition_output_enum'. Did you mean 'devide'?
Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(6160,66): BCE0019: 'Colormap' is not a member of 'resolution_mode_enum'.
Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(6162,94): BCE0019: 'colormap_resolution' is not a member of 'area_class'.
Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(6163,94): BCE0019: 'colormap_resolution' is not a member of 'area_class'.
Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(6164,113): BCE0019: 'colormap_resolution' is not a member of 'area_class'.
Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(6165,113): BCE0019: 'colormap_resolution' is not a member of 'area_class'.
Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/terraincomposer_save.js(6166,71): BCE0019: 'colormap_resolution' is not a member of 'area_class'.

 

Question about normal maps... I have placed normal maps alongside all the textures in the splat textures tab, but for some reason I don't see the normal maps being used. Curious if I need something else to get these going, this project example is working with Terrain Composer and Unity Pro with standard pro package and some higher resolution textures.

Thanks

dm

 

Hi

How do I create dense grass in the newest version? Do I need to do something differently?

These settings now populate sparsely, but they are max settings?
Layer strength 1, filter strength 1, Random Add with a Curve of Normal 0-1, and no mask. Grass density 16

Thanks

 

I have fixed my issues

its awesome !

 

Hello Klarax,

I'm glad you got it working now.

Hello Dakhalli,

As for those errors. If you have WorldComposer you need to export TerrainComposer over it again. The latest TerrainComposer is in the folder TerrainComposer -> Update. Then you have to delete terraincomposer_classes.js and global_classes.js files with Unity 4.2.

I will update both TerrainComposer and WorldComposer on the Asset Store to fix those errors and install order.

Nathaniel

 

I presume you use RTP? You will need to set it up in RTP Lod manager, then you have to check it inspector in the RTP terrain script -> Settings -> Global Maps. This script is assigned to every terrain (only need to check one).

You can see how I do it in this tutorial video:

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

The same as always. If you want more density increase the detail (grass) resolution in TC terrain list -> Resolution. After changing you can shift click <Set All>, then re-generate the grass again.

Nathaniel

 

Thank you, that solved it!

 

Actually I'm just using Terrain Composer at the moment... I plan to get RTP but want to get more comfortable with TC first. So, do I need RTP for normals to work then?

Thanks!

-dm

 

Oh now I get what you mean, I thought you meant a big global normal map. For the normal splat textures you need to assign a material to the terrain in splat textures. Then in the material you can choose the terrain shader that has bump to it, nature -> terrain -> bumped specular.

Nathaniel

 

Thanks, that worked! Just had to put the spec color to black to get the shine off the terrain. By the way, I'm using the procedural mountain tutorial map and I've replaced all the textures with higher resolution ones from a few different sources, along with new grass and trees. However, when I try to put water in the scene I keep getting an out of memory crash, wondering if having 8 splat textures/normals is too much with water.

Thanks again, TC rocks, 5 stars!

Another question: is it possible to achieve an LOD scaling effect on textures? For example, rock textures are scaled very large when at X distance and a much smaller scale when viewed close up. The rock textures that are scattered around the terrain are very blurry compared to the other ground textures, so I'm wondering if doing something like this is possible.

-dm

 

As for running out of memory has to do with the total resolution you use. What resolutions do you use? and how many terrains?

The different tilling can't be done, you will need RTPv3.1 for, RTP can do this with UV-Blending on distance.

Nathaniel

 

That's great to hear regarding the UV distance blending... I will definitely be picking up RTP, just want to get a few more days with TC under my belt first.

As for my terrain, it is 2x2 at 1024. However, I'm using 7 1024 splat textures/normals, and 1 2048 texture/normal. I have to assume this isn't a system memory issue since I have 24g on this PC.

I'm also running ambient obscurance for the grass, not sure how that affects memory.

Thanks again for your quick responses!

-dm

 

That fixed it thanks a lot!!