Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

Hello,

Yes this is possible, you can blend any terrain ecosystems with using masks in TerrainComposer. TerrainComposer uses the same system for any output heightmap/colormap/splat textures/trees/grass and placing object. You can use the same layer/filter/mask system to create different ecosystems for those outputs.

Nathaniel

 

Works the TerrainComposer together with the Road Architect ?

 

Yes TerrainComposer uses standard Unity terrain and it works with Road Architect as well as Easy Roads...

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

Unity released a new beta: Unity5 beta 21, and making a build with TerrainComposer in it, works fine again. So seemed to be compiling bug in U5 beta 20, the only Unity version since 3.5 that gave this issue.

I also tested TerrainComposer runtime in the build from U5 beta 21, and it works fine.

Nathaniel

 

Can Terrain Composer procedurally generate infinite terrain with trees, objects?

 

Yes TerrainComposer runtime can do this. As it is now you would have to do some programming, but I'm working on a new major update that will have a runtime script that keeps generating terrains around the player. My plan is to release the update this week.

Nathaniel

 

Thanks for the reply. When the new update releases,Terrain Composer....Bought!

 

Sounds awesome update! can't wait

 

Hello Nathaniel,

It doesn't seem to work



The second screenhot shows the relief result saved as raw file (offroads_roads.raw).

The third screenhot shows the result of the ground layer associated to the roadheightmap layer based on the method you recommended.


it is a pity to know that a layer group can't be masked by a filter since a layer that already have 4 filters can't be filtered at a higher level.
Can we expect something in the future ? Or the planned visual node of layering terrain deformation could cover this feature ?
Anyway, maybe I am wrong following your recommendations. Can you give some explanations about my issue ?

Best regards,

hlx

 

Hello,

Here it works and looking at your screenshot it seems to work, but it looks like the road is too low, you can put it higher by changing the normal curve of the filter where you load the road heightmap. If you open the road heightmap in photoshop, you can add some Gaussian Blur to have an edge fade.
You can filter those 4 filters by adding another filter, with input to 'Current' and put a mask to that filter.

Yes these features are planned for the coming updates.

P.s. the screenshot of TC is how the GUI will look in the new update planned for this week. I simplified the GUI and hided some buttons into popup menu's, when right clicking layerlevel, layergroup, layers.

 

Hello,
at first thank You for this fabulous product. It has saved me so much time for development. And I really like it.

I would like to ask about one missing feature:
I'm creating one layer for forest. It's just adding and subracting of x textures/heightmaps to get result.

And now I would like to use this result for example for generating grass as base input. For now I don't see an maintainable way to do this:
1. I can copy whole layer of course for grass. But this is not very maintanable. Every change in forest layer must be redone in grass layer than.
2. I can export result as texture or heightmap an than use it as a base for grass layer. This is relativne good way. But it takes some manual steps.

Is there some other way to do this? I would like at best an option, to set as input an another layer? So it will be perfectly maintainable without redundant configuration.

Regards
Peter

 

Hello Peter,

I'm glad you like it . 1 and 2 is kind of the same thing, if you change something in the tree layer you still would have to remake the texture. The thing you want is already in there, for each layer you can change the 'Ouput' (Fist popup field in a layer) anytime, just click on it and switch your tree layer over to grass and vise versa. However in most cases a slightly different mask would be needed for grass, as the grass line should start a little bit before the trees start.

Nathaniel

 

Hmmm.. This may address something I was wondering about last night while looking through Left Island Pack from Philipp Schmidt. He has texture assets for fallen leaves. I'll need to look at them a bit closer, but if they are pretty much the same as grass assets, I should be able to do something like this by switching the "grass" layer holding those fallen leaves to output to the tree layer? Or am I misreading something?

 

Can you send some screenshots of what you want to achieve? As don't understand why to use fallen leave texture in a grass/tree placement, since they are sticking up, and leaves are laying flat on the ground...

Nathaniel

 

For me 1 and 2 are not really same things.Because with 1. I need to maintain settings for two same/very similar layers. WIth 2 I will have only one settings for geting an output for forest layer that could be used as base for addional changes for grass (it's just an example). Of course manual step of exporting will be needed.

Changing output is usable if I want exactly same output for grass and forest. Of course is not that easy. It would be needed to change slightly for different needs.

That would solve chaining of layer output to another layer input. Of course it's very specific feature.

Thanks
Peter

 

I want fallen leaves only to be around trees. Using grass was probably the wrong thing. Philipp has prefabs made so they would probably be placed as objects. The main point being, that if I only want something placed around trees such as fallen leaves, branches, mushrooms, or whatever - that I should change output from the default splat/object/grass etc, to the type that I only want it to be placed around. So instead of grass, a certain grass plant texture's output would be changed to trees instead of grass if I only want it to grow under/around trees.

Sorry.. New to all of this and just trying to wrap my head around everything. Probably shouldn't be trying to figure out WC / TC / RTP / SECTR all at the same time.. lol What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment... lol

 

Sorry for bothering You. But some ideas are popping when working with Your plugin.
So why not to try to propose a new features or tell about bug:

Feature:
It would be nice to have ability to specify blur/smooth amount of raw heightmap/image etc. That is used in filter or mask.
I'm not sure what does mean, if I will create mask with smooth mode and Input Raw Heightmap. And in next step I will use same raw heightmap for subtract. Will it bee smoothed or no?

Bug or annoying feature:
If I choose some raw heightmap for filter. For example with resolution 513x513. If I change resolution of this heightmap outside of Unity for example to 1025x1025. I need to repick/rechoose it in terrain composer to get it working. Couldn't be this done in automatic way? Probably only with warning.

Regards
Peter

 

Hi Nathaniel, since the uFS/TC/RTP demo scene was never released would you add capability to fly around the Mt Rainer demo next time you do an update to it (no plane required). I would like to see what it looks like. Also thanks for the nudge towards World Machine ... been trying to learn it. It's very interesting.

iByte

 

Hello. I'm thinking about purchasing this during the sale. I understand that terrain and terrain features can be done at runtime, but I'd like to know if organized building/city placement, as demonstrated here:



can also be done procedurally at runtime, not just in the editor. I'd like to make several separated/distinct city/town groupings based on user-input settings.

Thanks for your time, looks like a fantastic tool!

 

Hello Peter,

Ah yes I can see the benefit using a texture for that. Actually you can export the result of your tree layer or any output to a texture with a color layer. You can use the color layer to generate all kind of textures, for height/steepness/distribution, etc.

1). Just copy/paste your layer and change output to color, or switch the layer output between tree/color.
2). Switch to color output. In TC terrain list -> Local Area -> you can choose the colormap resolution (resolution of the exported texture).
3). Then you have to add a white color in the color range.
4). Slightly change the filter by putting Input to 'Always' and position to 1.
5). Click the 'Export .Png' button.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

Yes you need to place them as objects in an object layer in TC. You can do either duplicate your tree layer and change output to object layer. Or make a texture like in the post above.

Yes learning all of those at the same time...It's easier to learn 1 by 1 .

Nathaniel

 

Hello Peter,

In the current version it does't work very well. Yes I can add this feature in the next TC version, as I'm working on optimizing the generate system. As now you can smooth the end result, and smoothing in a mask doesn't work 100%, as I need to change the way TC processes each heightmap pixel with generating. As now in 1 heightmap pixel I loop through all the layers/filters to calculate the end result. But for smoothing I need to loop through the entire area for 1 filter, and then the next filter, etc. As smoothing needs to know the value of the neighbor heightmap pixels.

Also refreshing the heightmap resolution, this is an excellent idea and will add this as well .

Nathaniel

 

Hello iByte,

Yes we were planning that in the next 24 hour demo, only we never finished it. We were using a multi resolution terrain extracted from WorldComposer with 2 outer terrain layers, so the area is 400x400 km instead of 30x30 km. We had many things updated like you could do teleporting, added some sound effects, map zooming. If we can find some time maybe we will release it, would be great with the latest RTP 3.2 in Unity5. Here are some screenshots of how it looks from above :

P.s. this is still RTP3.0 in Unity 4.5:

 

Hello,

Thank you for the compliments . Yes you can use TerrainComposer runtime for advanced object placement. As in TC runtime you can do exactly the same as in the Editor...

Nathaniel

 

Thank You very much I'm playing with color output and it looks very promising for my described usage. And it's nice that color map size is not limited by texture size limit in Unity.

Regards
Peter

 

Yeah I got it why it's not possible now. Still very excited for blur, if it may be there in future.

Thanks
Peter

 

Looks really promising for generating vegetation/objects near player in dynamic way. For example grass and shrubs in 300-500m distance. And regenerating only when needed. With slowly moving player it would be perfect solution.

Is it working without noticable hiccups?
Nice day
Peter

 

OMG!! Unity 5, Terrain Composer, and RTP... Nothing here but the default textures and trees that you can get for free... It's hard to go wrong folks.

 

Hello Peter,

Yes although this needs a different system of instantiating and disabling/pooling objects. Another issue would be that static colliders would be moving. So this would be a system by its own.

Nathaniel

 

This looks nice , thanks for sharing.

Nathaniel

 

purchased and imported this asset into a new empty project using Unity 5 Beta 5.0.0b14 and get this Warning:

Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/Map_tc.js(5548,121): BCW0012: WARNING: 'UnityEngineInternal.APIUpdaterRuntimeServices.AddComponent(UnityEngine.GameObject, String, String)' is obsolete. Unable to resolve the type specified in parameter 'name' at api updating time. Delegating to APIUpdaterRuntimeServices.AddComponent(). In order to be able to build the game, replace this call with GameObject.AddComponent<T>() / GameObject.AddComponent(Type)

 

Hello,

Yes this is something they changed in Unity5, you can read about it here:
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/01/21/addcomponentstring-api-removal-in-unity-5-0/

I'm working on a new major update for TerrainComposer. I already removed all warnings from Unity5 and converted the code so it doesn't need the api converter anymore, so works immediately after importing into Unity5...

Nathaniel

 

hi, sorry if this was asked before. After I import into unity, is there a script or formula i can use to map the Unity units back to lat/long for placement of camera and other objects at real world locations?

 

Hello,

Yes, I will include the script in the next update.

Nathaniel

 

you rock!

 

Any ideas why i now fall through the new terrain i generated since i updated to latest build? was fine on the old one

 

Ha no worries sorted it!

 

Could you tell me what is wrong? I started a new project. Included only terrain composer. Created a single terrain. And followed the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZiT0GBjXXE. There's only a couple steps and I should see some terrain. However, when I click generate, nothing happens.

 

Hello,

The curve needs to go from 0,1-1,1...

In an earlier TerrainComposer version the default filter for the heightmap layer was on perlin. But some users where trying to input a heightmap and it got mixed with the perlin curve, so that give wrong results. So I decided to make the default filter flat. If you want perlin you have to click the ‘Curve’ button next to the visual curve and choose -> Line -> Default Perlin. Now if you click generate the perlin will appear.

You can also read about it here:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/troubleshooting/

It will add a note to the video...

Nathaniel

 

That did it. Thanks.

Hey, another question. Where do you set up the splat texture tile size?

 

In TC Terrain list -> Splat Textures tab, each splat texture has a 'Settings' foldout, in there is the tiles size. You can click the 'F' button to fold/unfold all.

If you have RTP you need to set this in RTP terrain script instead.

Nathaniel

 

I do have RTP. I'm looking around, but I don't see it.

 

It's in the RTP manual on page 22, you can download the manual from the RTP Asset Store page:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/5664

 

ok, that helps..thanks

 

Hello,
if You will need volunteer for beta testing TerrainComposer for Unity 5. Here is one...

Nice day
Peter

 

Hello Peter,

Thanks, I soon have a test version available for the new update. Actually the current TerrainComposer works already fine in Unity5. It's only that in the new update I will add the latest Unity 5 features. Like being able to randomly rotate trees on the Unity terrain tree system and there's no need for the U5 API converter anymore.

I'm still working on the code, and already added some major new features. Like being able to create non-square terrain tiles and min max sliders for the selection control of color/splat/trees/grass and objects. What I'm going to add now is multi-terrain area support. So you can create area's of terrain tiles, can be used for multi resolution technique (like is used in WorldComposer) or for islands,far away terrains, etc. Also build in a neat future where you can merge unlimited TC projects together, this can be very useful for generating on multi terrain tiles.

Nathaniel

The new min max slider system of painting the splat textures with TerrainComposer in Unity5 (heightmap from WorldComposer) with standard Unity terrain shader.

 

Great, I was thinking that there are some bigger issues with Unity 5 and TerrainComposer. TerrainComposer was my last big enough reason to do not move project to 5.

So let's go to Unity 5.

Thanks
Peter

 

Any updates on the long-awaited TerrainComposer 2?

 

I was waiting for the new Unity terrain system that would come somewhere in the Unity 5.x cycle. The new update I'm working on comes closer to TC2, I added many features from my original TerrainComposer2 project.

Nathaniel

 

Hi,

Firstly - thanks for an overwhelmingly brilliant product.

I've played a bit with the examples and now would like to start on my own terrains..
I have imported 16x16 tiles in (2049x2049.R16)file format in from World Machine for a total of 256 tiled terrains. They are setup OK, each with a basic terrain and normal.bmp, but due to a memory limit I obviously can't load all the prefabs into the scene at the same time.


The tiles are an island continent and I would like to be able to run TC against them, but I'm struggling a bit with the workflow.

Is there any way to mass import these tiles into TC without breaking the memory limit? If I try and run them a few at a time I will run into seam problems right?


Cheers

m