Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

Hello,

The error isn't a serious one, only a repaint warning of the TerrainComposer window. It's just that some paint control get altered while Unity is rendering the TC window, as EditorWindows are rendered with a layout first then the actual painting, but you can just clear the console. As far as I know this harmless warning only shows up after updating TerrainComposer from inside the program, would like to know what you exactly do what makes it popup. For tree density just reduce the 'Strength' in the top of the tree layer, yes too many trees make Unity terrain slow.

I suggest we do a skype screenshare and see what's going on, on your side . My account is Nathaniel.Doldersum

Nathaniel

 

If you want exact control of the island shape I recommend to use a 16 bit raw grey scale image mask. I show how to make an island in this tutorial video:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials
Help Video Heightmap and splat texturing mask

The only thing you need to do different is instead of using an image (which is 8 bit and causes blockiness on the terrain, needs smoothing afterwards) use the 16 bit grey scale image instead, mask input on 'Raw Heightmap'. As I build in 16 bit raw scale mask option later to get more precision. So in photoshop enable 16 bit mode and image mode on grey scale, then you can save as Raw -> Byte order IBM PC.

If you need more help, let me know .

Nathaniel

 

Awesome news . You should leave step 4 out, as that changes the whole heightmap. The heightmap is already procedural and randomized based on world position of each terrain grid point if you use build in perlin and it will exactly fit if you don't change any parameters on the heightmap layers/filters. So if you want to use different settings for the heightmap you have to build it in as a whole. You can use masks to get different terrains at different world positions, even mix more heightmap layers together based on masks. Let me know if you can get it to work .

Nathaniel

 

It's working fine here on Unity5 beta 12. But you have to keep it run quite some minutes. TerrainComposer works fine in Unity5, once Unity gives more information about what code needs to be changed I could build in #If def for Unity5, so it doesn't need converting anymore, it should stay compatible with Unity4...But for now it's a onetime process that takes some minutes and after it, it works fine and you can enjoy Unity5 64 bit, no more 3 GB memory limitation which will not have out of memory crash when going Unity terrain crazy .

Nathaniel

 

Thanks a lot for your help Nathaniel. Currently it doesn't seem to happen anymore after I re-imported the asset but I will contact you if it happens again. Thanks for your disponibility and the tip about the trees (and the asset sale =D )

 

Terrain Composer may be broken? Was working fine last night. Woke up this morning and tried loading the terrain composer window and it fails to load bing data with this error...

You are trying to load data from a www stream which had the following error when downloading.
Rejected because no crossdomain.xml policy file was found
UnityEngine.WWW:LoadImageIntoTexture(Texture2D)
Map_tc:Update() (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/Map_tc.js:3676)
UnityEditor.EditorApplication:Internal_CallUpdateFunctions()

Any ideas?


======

Well the last thing I did last night was run a web player build so I thought maybe that could be the issue. So I built a pc version. I loaded it, still not coming up so I ran a check now on the Update() and then it started loading images again. Not sure what happened honestly.

Great tool btw.

 

Ah that is actually WorldComposer you are talking about. It is because you are in webplayer build mode. This is a quote from the WorldComposer troubleshoot manual:

Webplayer Mode
If you are in WebPlayer Mode you will get this error: You are trying to load data from a www stream which had the following error when downloading. Rejected because no crossdomain.xml policy file was found
This is because of the protection level, to solve it do the following:
Unity Menu -> Edit -> Project Settings -> Editor...Then in Inspector change 'Host URL' to http://dev.virtualearth.net

Nathaniel

 

Does terrain composer do something to the billboards?

I can manually add a tone of trees to the terrain and the billboards look really good. same color range as the model and very close in size etc.

When I generate the same trees with terrain composer the billboards turn really dark and get SUPPER pixelated.

 

Hello, no TerrainComposer does nothing special with the billboards. TerrainComposer uses the same settings as the Unity terrain paint tools. Maybe we can do a skype screenshare and see what is going on. My account is Nathaniel.Doldersum

Nathaniel

 

Added you to skype.

- On Left: Trees added with terrain composer that ARE being billboarded. Very dark & pixelated. Also wrong sizes.
- On bottom: Trees added with terrain composer that are currently in 3d model form.
- On Right: Trees that were added via Terrain paint / place trees. These trees are also being billboarded.

 

Hello,

We will talk on skype . I think it has to do with your tree model, that it needs the tree color be white for all trees. What I do in TC in default is tinting each tree between a light grey-white tint (a color is chosen between these 2 colors for each tree). If you unfold a tree you can see these 2 colors in 'Color Range', what you can try is set both colors to complete white...

The scale you can also choose for each tree in 'Scale' and an overall scale for each tree in the tree layer with the scale slider.

Nathaniel

 

Thank you very much for the help today Nathaniel!!!!!!!

It ended up being AFS v3 (advanced foliage shader) not having a script on the terrain & not having the correct shaders on the trees them selves. With out those two thing default terrain tree painting was painting default billboards & TC was creating messed up billboards. Once the AFS was setup correctly it all started working.

 

Just picked up a copy of SpeedTree for Unity. When I get home, I plan to try it out with Terrain Composer in Unity 5.0. Just wondering if anyone has tried the same and had any issues yet, or does it work flawlessly?

 

I haven't tried it yet, but I think it will work fine as speedtree is intergrated in the Unity terrain. Let us know if it works .

Nathaniel

 

I got the see weed to generate mostly just on the flat areas of map.

Its being generated in large line chunks though. Checking the other masks does not seem to do anything. Any idea ho to get it to randomize a bit?

The other thing I need to figure out how to do is make the normal grass now generate on the flat ground.

I tried using the raw height map which works. But I ended up editing more of the map by hand so the raw height map is not accurate and will make it show up in the wrong spots. What is the best way of going about this?

 

Hi,

i bought terrain composer from the bonanza sale for a nice price
I know i can use 8 spaltmaps on a terrain for good performance vs quality.
So when i make a 2 by 2 terrain, how can i use then 8 splatmaps for each terrain, meaning 8 different spaltmaps.
I want to make a bigger landscape with some verry different places and for that 8 splatmaps will not work and because i want to stream the different parts of the whole landscape i thought that when i change some of the maps on each terrain i can make it but i do not know how to do this with terrain composer or manualy in unity later.

Maybe i can use only 8 per terrain that i export splitted and then later i can simply load some other 8 maps when i load the next landscape with the same names from another folder or so?

My landscape would be greater then 2 by 2, more 10 by 10 but i have to test performance first to decide.
Hope i explained what i want so you or someone else can aswer right.

Thank you for such a great tool

Edit:
I just read true the documentation and think the color map is maybe what i want.
Only if i want to use rtp3 color maps does not work or do it?

Edit2:
I do not have the tutorial package link to download.
There is only the example package that i can download even after restart tc.

Edit3:
In Unity 5 beta 12 do i have to create lighting from tc or can/should i use unitys own new standard scene wich have a directional light already but no skybox and windzone.

Edit4:
I sadly get the purple error on the tree leaves in the example package when playing it and also in edit mode. Also i can not see the splatmap textures. Everything is white (and grey with gi, i adjusted also the lightsettings) only some grass have textures. I think it has to do something with the new shading method in U5 that you now can use in beta12. Have to look in the beta forum there for answers depending on this but maybe you can tell something.

 

Hello,

This an issue with Unity grass. If you use too much strength it is rendered like strips. What you need to do make the grass resolution higher to get more density in TC terrain list -> Resolutions -> Grass. If you still get stripes, reduce the grass layer strength until they disappear.

Yes you can use the saw raw heightmap mask for it with adjusting the curve, but you shouldn't change it to not influence the other masks where the same heightmap is in. You can make a new one, as you can use as many raw heightmaps in masks as you like.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

I'm not entirely getting what you mean. But switching splat textures during playmode will give a fps hickup, how long depends on the splatmap resolution. For terrain streaming it's best to enable/disable - load/unload terrains.

For your issues it's best we take a look in a skype screenshare, as splat textures should work fine in Unity5. My account is Nathaniel.Doldersum

Nathaniel

 

Hi. I just bought this package alongside RTP3. Going through your tutorials; however I can't seem to download the example package despite running the latest version (checked version updates). There is a download button but after it gets to 100% it just resets and there is no import option. Also the tutorial package download option is missing.

I'm using unity free 4.5.5 (pro trial). Is this the most compatible version?

EDIT: Nevermind, now it is magically working. I did nothing different.

EDIT 2: Exact same issues as our wheel of time friend, RandAIThor.

EDIT 3: Ok so zooming out in the editor shows me a perfectly textured terrain, zooming in or running the scene = white terrain. I tried switching global fog off, no change. Weird?

EDIT 4: Manually changing base map distance in terrain settings to zero gets the terrain textures to show up.

 

Hi,

I would like to ask what is possible with this pack. In all pics/videos so far i see the use of WorldComposer, so i cant evaluate what TerrainComposer is doing exactly and whether i can get so cool results without WorldComposer as base.

Is there a video or demo that has only terrain made with TerrainComposer ? And how hard would it be to recreate the exact same terrain seen in videos without the WorldComposer ? Can i simply add my own satelite images and have TC generate the mountains ? Or WorldComposer uses extra information from the google system for height etc ?

Maybe it is the WorldComposer that i need for to get the cool mountains and formations ? Is the scene we see in the video (the mountains) contained in the pack ?

Also does TerrainComposer have its own grass/tree system ? Is it possible to make trees grow in real time with it ?

Thanks

 

Hello,

You can download the example package directly from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nx5r0e6btv24dz4/TerrainComposer_Examples1.2.unitypackage?dl=0

If you have RTP in your project, it overwrites the default Unity terrain shaders, and you have to set it up correctly before it works, otherwise the whole terrain looks off. I recommend to learn one at the time though. If you are new to Unity terrain I recommend to start with TC first and then later learn RTP, what you can do is move the RTP folder from your project and later but it back, once you get the hang of TC.
You can see the tutorial video of RTP on the Asset Store page and also get the documentation:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/5664

Nathaniel

 

TerrainComposer uses not any other engine or vegetation system then the standard Unity terrain one. So all performance is done from Unity's part.

You can see my tutorial video's on what TerrainComposer can do here http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials

WorldComposer is for extracting real world terrain heightmaps and satellite images...Has a shadow removal algorithm which makes it very special.

With TerrainComposer you can generate heightmaps,splatmaps and colormap. Place trees,grass and objects. Import/Export heightmaps/splatmaps/tree maps/grass maps. That with an unlimited amount of layers, filters and masks for each of them. And many many more features which can be all found on my site:
Features TerrainComposer
Features WorldComposer

Yes if you have real world data and satellite images you can use TC to import the data. No the 24 hour demo is not included and is a big project and it cannot be included because it contains more assets we used for it like RTP, AFS, Pine Tree Pack, etc. There's 5 examples included and I show a few of those in this video, this is only TC:

Nathaniel

 

Thanks, i will check it out.

EDIT: That was exactly the video i was looking for . Buying the system asap, looks stunning.

EDIT2: Just bought. One more question, can i use the created terrains as Unity terrains in a project that does not have TC ? Without beeing TC editable of course.

EDIT 3: Where is the example project downloaded ? What folder ? It is not in download folder in TC.

 

Yes you can as TC only generates Unity terrain, and after that you can even remove TC from your project. But another thing is that you can use TC in runtime to generate terrains on the fly. The runtime example package can be downloaded here:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/runtime/

Nathaniel

 

Hello, When I click on Main Manual in the Help section - nothing happens. All the other buttons open up websites, but that one does not. Is it supposed to? Im on OSX Maverick, Unity 4.5 - Help! - Thanks!

 

Hello,

Ah could be because of Mac, I use the Unity build in method Application.OpenURL to open up the manual as a local file. The manual is in the root of TerrainComposer folder .

Nathaniel

 

When I used Terrain Composer island demo with the Pro Water (daylight) I had a good framerate. But when I put in Pro Water4 (advanced) which has the foam waves, the framerate dropped dramatically. Does TC not play nice with Pro Water4?

 

Hello,

TerrainComposer does nothing than generating Unity terrains. So TerrainComposer hasn't got to do anything with performance. It's all about the Unity terrain which you can also put in manually in Unity without TerrainComposer in the project. So it is the resolutions and terrain settings that influence performance. Pro water4 is taking quite some performance...So you could try to lower the resolutions of the terrains to see how it runs. Or disable all terrains and test only with pro water4...

Nathaniel

 

By the way, why are the stock unity trees always showing up with square trunks when placed by terrain composer? Is there a setting I need to toggle somewhere?

And the stock pro water is quite demanding, I ditched it since I need to maintain 120fps+ for a oculus rift project.

 

Just a note...Terrain Composer works very well with Pro Water 4 (advanced). I found out what I was doing wrong. My mistake.

I am very happy with TC. It's an excellent terrain tool. Still learning, but this tool has a lot of powerful features. Am looking forward to creating some great terrains.

 

Hello !
I'm having an error when trying to generate heightmaps / grassmaps, and then the TC windows just disapears. Do you have any idea why ? I just bought the asset so I may be doing something wrong but a clue would be appreciated.
See the screenshot below :
http://i.imgur.com/GECRQS7.png

 

Hello Nathaniel,
Juste curious. Can you you give us a feedback about TC2 development ? Is it still un progress ? Is the visual node terrain building acheived ? The features announced were promising...

Hlx

 

Oh, ok thanks for the info!

The see weed is random now and not in big blocky lines. I also got the see weed to only generate on the low flat ocean ground and no where else.

I'm having a little trouble getting the other grass to Not generate on the flat ground though. Generating everywhere else is fine. Just not the flat ocean ground.

 

One more question, if I use anything beyond a 1x1 terrain size at 512 resolution I get 10-20fps, a drop from 200fps with the one terrain, independent of detail draw settings, i.e no trees, no grass, no textures, 15fps if I use 2x2.

What am I doing wrong.

 

Hello,

If that happen you have to delete the <Generating> GameObject from the Hierarchy. Then TC will appear again. Can you send a screenshot of your grass layer with the filter visable?

Nathaniel

 

TC2 is on the hold right now as Unity is working on a new Terrain system for Unity5. Don't know what or how it will be, so I want to wait that out. I'm thinking of putting some nice TC2 features I have in a new update, like a min-max slider for controlling the spat texture values in a layer and to add more noises like billow, multi-fractal, etc.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

Thought oculus rift dev kit 2 needs 70 fps. I don't know about the issue about the trunks, can you show a screenshot of what you mean?

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

You can use your 16 bit raw raw image mask for that or make a new one with better control. To make a new one, you can use the old mask in layer0 in photoshop, you invert the colors so the inside becomes black, then you create another layer and paint with white where you want the grass to be. Then exclude layer0 and save. Can load it in a mask in TC and the mask input needs to be on 'Min'.

Nathaniel

 

Hmmm that's strange. Do you use terrain materials? Can you show a screenshot of the resolutions? TC terrain list -> resolutions.

Nathaniel

 

I've just bought Terrain composer and Advance Foliage Shader v3

I'm a bit thick so How do I use AFS v3 with terrain composer?
if I click the prefab
"TerrainComposer Examples/Assets/Trees/Pine1"
I can see it has the following 2 shaders
"hidden/Nature/Tree creator Bark Optimized"
and
"hidden/Nature/Tree creator Leaves Optimized"

They're greyed out so I can't change them.

If I go into the AFS demo and find the prefab
"Pine1 - original using afs tree creator shaders"
I can see it has the following two shaders
"AFS_v3/AFS Tree Creator Bark Optimized IBL"
and
"AFS_v3/AFS Tree Creator Leafs Optimized IBL"
It seems obvious that I need to change the shader but I don't know how to do it.
Also is there other stuff I need to do add scripts to things etc.

Cheers

Roy

 

Needs 60fps at least, that's for each eye or x2 screens at 1080p, so that's 120fps as minimum on a single screen or ideally 150fps so I get the low latency 75fps per eye. To be safe you want to stick to 200fps at all times to account for unspecified frame drops. You don't want to give people headaches. This means very low draw distances/small environments and dolling up the scenes with sweet lighting (usually baked). I like composer because it allows me to build a large playing environment, and relief maps make it looks good. Given the resolution (1080p isn't enough for VR) you don't want large draw distances anyway, distant objects become a jaggy mess. But close up things are absolutely fine. This means in such large environments you're usually limited to keeping things dark and employing lots of fog...the good old flashlight is an important tool in any game characters inventory.

As for my other issues, resolved, I had imported composer and relief package into a corrupt project; starting from scratch, zero problems.

 

Hello Roy,

Yes you need to change the shader if you want to use those trees. How to do it, is in the AFS Documentation. You can just create 2 new materials (bark and leaves) with the correct AFS shader and assign it in the mesh renderer of the tree.

Nathaniel

 

Good to hear your issues are resolved .

Ah ok...But as I understand it, the oculus only has 1 screen in it and they use a horizontal split screen. And in Unity there's 2 camera's used and each is rendered on the same screen with the horizontal split. That's why they say the resolution for each eye (1980x1024) horizontally is 990 in dev kit 2 and 640 in dev kit 1. So refresh rate ideally need to be 60-75 fps.

Nathaniel

 

Doh thanks matey, I told you I was thick lol

 

What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of having a multiple terrains over a single terrain.

Does it have an impact on path finding?
do some terrain tiles get occlusion culled out for performance?

What is the optimum size of each terrain?
I understand that "it depends on the game" so lets say default unity terrain

One terrain 2,000 by 2,000 meters
or is it better to have a 2x2 of 500 meters?
or a 5x5 grid of 40 meters

Roy

 

Hello Roy,

The advantages of multiple terrains is that you can use higher resolutions, as 1 terrain has it's limit. Also camera culling improves. Each terrain has a little overhead though, so I normally recommend between 2x2-5x5. The size of a terrain doesn't influence performance, however the resolutions (heightmap/splatmap/grass) does.

You can go for 2x2 500, we did the 24 hour demo with a 2x2.

Nathaniel

 

Thanks matey, I'll see how I get on with pathfinding

 

Sorry to be a pain I've Screwed the Grass up and don't know how to fix it
I must have clicked something or done something somewhere I can't think where though.
The grass was absolutely fine before but now it looks like its lost its shader.

I've tried deleteing world composer from the hierachy
reimporting world composer
deleting world composer from the project, hirarchy and starting all over again.

I might have unchecked generate grass or changed the grass density but these black grass crosses still remain.
I unchecked Generate Grass and rebuilt the terrain but they persist
any ideas?

 

Grass layer is empty and gets me the error :
http://i.imgur.com/mFDwwYy.png

Height layer isn't and gets me the error also :
http://i.imgur.com/F9cHzuk.png
http://i.imgur.com/TThXSPn.png

Thank you

 

Don't worry about my grass problem I deleted my project and started again (its all good practice) everything is fine again.