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Terrain Generator

Discussion in 'Wish List' started by JoshuaB86, Jun 5, 2008.

  1. JoshuaB86

    JoshuaB86

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    I am very happy with the terrain system so far. I do have an idea for something to make it better.

    A system to generate terrain. nothing SUPER fancy, but a starting place. Generic rolling hills, mountains, valleys, combinations of these, etc.

    I hate to bring it into this forum, but the terrain generator in Torque is kinda what I'm hinting at. Of course with the Unity goodness built in.

    -Josh
     
  2. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

    Volunteer Moderator Moderator

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    <shameless plug>You could always buy Fractscape.</shameless plug> (For those waiting for version 1.2, BTW, apologies for the delay; primarily that's because I'm waiting for Unity 2.1.)

    --Eric
     
  3. JoshuaB86

    JoshuaB86

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    Ohhh that does look nice, and the fractal terrains can be fully imported to Unity? By fully I mean, all data intact and textures in place?

    -Josh
     
  4. podperson

    podperson

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    The procedural examples project (in Unity Resources) has everything you need to do this yourself (or pay Eric $20 and save a lot of time :) )

    Basically there's a perlin noise example for your source heightmap, and a dynamic terrain example to generate the mesh. Plugging the first into the second is left as an exercise for the reader.
     
  5. JoshuaB86

    JoshuaB86

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    Ok, thanks... nonetheless, my idea still stands to have it built into unity. Just another option in the terrain maker pane.

    -Josh
     
  6. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    Yep. Actually, for the simplest solution, paint a few blobs in Photoshop or whatever and use this editor script to apply it to the terrain, no .raw format required. The biggest limitation there is the lack of 16-bit resolution, but it might be useful as a starting point. And of course it doesn't do anywhere near what Fractscape does, which is a tad bit more involved than a Perlin noise function. ;)

    --Eric
     
  7. podperson

    podperson

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    A kind of complicated option ;-)

    Procedural terrain would be a huge bonus. We don't even have infinite planes (e.g. for oceans) in Unity. I'd love a spherical terrain too :)
     
  8. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

    Keyboard Operator

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    Perhaps this wish list post should be about getting unity to hire Eric as a tool developer? :wink:
     
  9. podperson

    podperson

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    Boo!

    He might stop answering my boneheaded questions!
     
  10. Dragon Rider

    Dragon Rider

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    The torque *cringe* generator never worked correctly for me... Had bugs. Only worked for the first pass and then nothing. Kinda useless, that...

    My vote is FractScape. It's the closest thing you can get for Unity, unless you want to write your own plugin ( not that I'm encouraging you - it takes a long time ).

    Cost/benefit analysis:

    Fracscape:
    Price: $20 US
    Time: 5-15 minutes for the reg code to be emailed
    Small download
    Very fast
    Can import and export splat maps and custom textures

    Write-your-own:
    Price: Free
    Time: A lot of working hours
    Fully customizable
    Does whatever you want it to do

    End Cost/benefit analysis

    If you have 20 bucks to spare, I'd say definatly go with FractScape. Download the demo first to make sure you find it satisfactory.

    Cheers!
     
  11. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    Should take 5 seconds max, if Paypal is behaving (and you're not paying with an echeck or something). Thanks for the plug! :) It took about 2 months...I didn't mean for it to become such a large project; it started off as just a simple utility, but I kept adding more stuff. Also, UI work is hard, which was over 50% of it. The more stuff "just works" the harder it is to program...I can only imagine the billions of hours it must take to write Unity....

    --Eric
     
  12. JoshuaB86

    JoshuaB86

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    Yeah, thats why so many programs UI's are crap. Because of the immense back ground code that goes into it. :p I applaud you for doing it though.

    and yes, I always had problems with Tge's terrain generator. Maybe I didn't know how to work it right, but I only got results on the first pass too.

    -josh
     
  13. chadchat

    chadchat

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    World Machine has all you need and more. I'm currently in the beta and the next update will be a whole new level.
    It's node based, and is a little tricky if you want to have real control over your landscapes, but if it's just a perlin noise with some erosion you want, then you won't have any trouble producing something nice.
    The Free version is limited by terrain size, but if you just need a base to start with this would be perfectly fine, just scale it up in photoshop if you need to.
    The real deal is $40.

    http://www.world-machine.com/features.html
     
  14. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    Nice but...no Mac version. ;) Of course, there's no Windows version of Fractscape. I could make one in a few seconds thanks to Unity, although Unity doesn't run on Windows so I'm not sure there's much point yet.

    --Eric
     
  15. nickavv

    nickavv

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    EDIT: Yeah, pretty much what Eric said. :p
     
  16. AaronC

    AaronC

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    chad that world machine app just crashed on my pc. Wouldnt run at all. My videocard is 32mb maybe thats why?

    Cheers
    AC