WorldComposer a tool to create real World AAA quality terrain

Hello, I am unclear on the workflow between worldcomposer and terraincomposer. I want to use the satalite images to place textures in the proper places. Im really lost (total noob on this part of unity anyways) any specific tutorials to help walk me through this? Thanks.

 

Yes this is the case, the idea of a multi resolution terrain is that the user is restricted to stay within the inner area. As the resolution drops in the outer area, you don't want him to get too close to area1. What I do in the video is slightly lower the outer area's height, so you won't see any seam.

In the future I will look into making TerrainComposer be able to stitch different heightmap resolution terrains. But this won't totally solve the issue, as with Unity terrains you need to set the terrain.SetNeighbors to not see any seams at runtime on the edges of the terrains. How ever this only works if the terrains have the same heightmap resolution.
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Terrain.SetNeighbors.html

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

As I said before it's best to disable continues lightmap baking. Also it's best to upgrade to the latest Unity 5 beta version, then lightmap baking might work better as Unity is still working on the light baking process, since this is totally new in Unity5.

The terrain is build instantly in your video after clicking the 'Create Terrain' button. You just stare with the Scene camera into the open air, instead of looking at the terrain , and this won't change unless you move the camera around.

- Unfold USA in the Hierarchy window, then you see your terrain in there.
- Click on that terrain, then hover with your mouse over the Scene view window and press the 'f' button on your keyboard.
- Now the camera should focus on the selected object which is your terrain .
Here's more information how to navigate through the Scene view window:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SceneViewNavigation.html

P.s. With the comming TerrainComposer and WorldComposer update, the api updater in Unity5 is no longer needed, so they will run instantly outside of the box.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

Yes there is a tutorial for TerrainComposer for this:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials
Help Video for placement based on image colors (New)

Nathaniel

 

Is it allowed to use the images/data in a commercial game? Since they intellect property of microsoft / bing?!

 

Hello,

The imagery are not owned by Microsoft or Google, but the imagery supply companies which many:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/about-bing-data-suppliers

You can read more about it on the first pages of the forum. I tried to contact some companies, but they are so big they don't bother to reply. If you do shadow removal and further edit the images in photoshop it would be hard to tell from what source they come. Until now I never heard from a customer that had copyright issues or something.

Nathaniel

 

I guess a color scrambler would greatly help to that, like give slight variation to coloration and pixels, thus would make it 100% different than the source, but still keep the general look. Something like Jpeg compression would already do a part of that i suppose.

BTW, is it possible to post here when the regular price is submitted, so we know the last day of the offer ? I usually buy stuff the last day to be on the safe side. I am buying the World Composer, as i already have the Terrain composer.

 

THANK YOU! I dunno wtf I was thinking wow. Here is one Tile I made. Just AMAZINGness the things WorldComposer does.

 

Ok, I figured out part of it, thanks for that. I'm going to send you a private message with another question...

 

Juts bought, could not stand looking at the cool pics anymore

 

Since Google Earth Pro is now free of charge, is it possible you add support for that too? Google Earth Pro uses higher zooms as bing afik

 

Hello,

I will add Google maps in the second next update .

Nathaniel

 

Hi,
2 info.
The terrain created are georeferenced?
If possible import DEM from ASCII files?

 

Hello,

Yes, this is possible with WorldComposer. In the last update of WC I included a converter that converts ASCII DEM files to raw heightmaps (16 bit raw grey scale image). Raw heightmaps can be used in WorldComposer and TerrainComposer.

Nathaniel

 

Ok for DEM, but for the first question? The terrain created are georeferenced?
Is possible move on terrain use lat and lon?

 

Yes it is, WorldComposer can export world files.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_file

And yes it's possible to convert lat/long to Unity units and vice versa. I posted a script for that on this forum, and will include it in the comming update.

Nathaniel

 

Hey Eagle, I'm keeping you busy with questions.

Now I am experimenting with large scale maps. I previously did Europe and now I'm pushing world composer with the whole world. The detail does not need to be that high and it actually works very well, as you can see from my screenshot below. However, there seems to be some kind of restriction on how much area I can grab from Bing with worldcomposer. The second screenshot shows the maximum area I can grab. I would like to grab a 4x3 area, which should grab the rest of the world and complete my world map. I know I could probably piece things together but it would be a lot more difficult that being able to grab it all at once. Is there something I can tweak to allow me to do this? Thanks!

 

I will look into it and try to fix it for the coming update, this is do to clamping of lat/long of the world map.

Nathaniel

 

That would be really great. This thing is gonna make a really slick world map.

 

When Google Earth Pro will be integrated are there the legal iformation clear? Am I allowed to use Google Earth Pro heightmaps and colormaps in my game for commercial use wthout any extra fees?

I know that it takes time to integrate Google Earth Pro in Worldcomposer and I don't want to rush you, but for personal time management and planing how long will it take.

 

Hello,

We talk about this on the previous page, you can also read more about it on the first page. As its a grey area. I will integrate Google map imagery, elevation is not possible at the moment, because the google map api restricts the use of transfers that it would take a month to get 1 single heightmap. I can't say how much time it takes, as I'm still working on the TC and WC updates and programming is unpredictable.

Nathaniel

 

Hi, just purchased both and am soaking in the tutorials. However, I'm running into an issue with World Composer. I've set up a Bing account as per instruction and World Composer starts up; however- the map is not loading in the UI(?) See the screenshots. I've tried scrolling out in case that had anything to do with it; but the UI just says 'generating' and really seems hung up. Plus I'm getting the Array out of range error. Any suggestions? Apologies if I've missed any prior discussion for a similar issue- I looked thru the thread but came up short on tips related to this in particular.

 

@methano, turn 'Image Editor' off when starting. If you don't already have an image exported to work with it will show the 'Generating' screen instead of the map to use. I have done that before and been confused. Maybe it needs a message that tells you that no image exists?

 

You indeed have to turn of the Image Editor as CaptainMurphy suggest. I will fix that it gives an error on an empty map in the coming update...

Nathaniel

 

Capt. Murphy and Nathaniel- thanks to you both. . . . right under my nose. This is why Space X will never pick me as a Mars colonist. Nathaniel, you've written some incredible software- congratulations on earning some serious developer karma. Thanks again guys!

 

Thanks , I'm glad you got it to work now.

Nathaniel

 

Hey All, getting this error message when trying to create terrain for the first time.

Parent directory must exist before creating asset at Assets/Terrains/Texture Maps/Plateau/Terrains/_Plateau_x0_y0.asset.
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:CreateAsset(Object, String)
Map_tc:create_terrain(terrain_area_class, terrain_class2, String, Transform) (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/Map_tc.js:5400)
Map_tc:Update() (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/Map_tc.js:3470)
UnityEditor.EditorApplication:Internal_CallUpdateFunctions()

I'm not sure what "parent directory" its referring to in this situation. Its just keeps infinitely trying to create the x0_y0 terrain tile.

Any help for be appreciated.

 

It means that you are trying to save in a folder that doesn't exists.

Nathaniel

 

Argh, the create directory got out of sync with the height and texture export directories. Thanks

 

Just for an update on this, as I am (was) planning to make my simulator commercial I wanted to try and get on baord with the legal side of the imagery use. So I contacted bing/microsoft and eventually a UK rep called me to disuss. While being very friendly and imformative he was clear that since mirosoft now DO own the rights to all imagery there is currently no liciense that allows you to cache imagery data and provide within an offline application. The only licienses available are for the use of downloading data live for use within your project so any downloaded imagery and use of is effectively piracy.

This for me is a real shame and I will have to start exploring other options, i know you say its a grey area and they might not be able to tell if you play around with it, but the last thing i would want is microsoft on my case if my simulator was to get big (which i believe it has potentional too).

Anyway, just thought i would update this as Nathaniel mentioned he had no luck with contacting microsoft or the other companies. I also noticed that since the last few weeks, if you check out bing maps the copyright is now always "nokia microsoft" and not the seperate companies, hence because they now all the rights.

Andy

 

Hello Andy, thanks for the information. Seems that indeed now is only nokia maps. I will add Google maps soon that still goes by the many providers concept...

Nathaniel

 

I'm glad you got it to work now .

Nathaniel

 

Hello everyone,

For a limited time only, instead of $90, I’m doing a custom sale with 50% off for $45, for both TerrainComposer and WorldComposer! Make sure you grab your copy before they are back on $90!
Nathaniel

 

Hello

I remember saying there might be a bug in world composer, I have more thouroughly investigate the case and it seems it is really on the Bing side. However previously the bing map website didn't feature the same problem, now it has appear on bing map as well ... which seems to corroborate with the story of @Gibbonuk

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3179wlljbn0ohd4/Capture d'écran 2015-02-17 15.55.22.png?dl=1

Oh well that kind of ties it for me

 

Yes seems to be a bug in Bing. I will add Google maps soon...

Nathaniel

 

Hello Nathaniel,

WorldComposer is really great . Tested it so far for small-scale, detailed terrain scans and large-scale, continent-wide scans and it performed sweet. There are two problems however that I'm having, most probably due to Bing, but I'm not sure.

First of all, the heightmap exporter hangs and stops doing anything when it encounters a tile where height information is unavailable. By rightclicking on such a tile, I receive a markedly unhelpful notification: "Can't download information". I took the liberty of quickly modifying the right-click mechanic so that I receive a log with the error: "500 DEM server did not return tile." I googled around and it seems that Bing has a few more "holes" in the world for certain heightmap scales. This is exceedingly frustrating since I can't just "skip around" these regions and literally cannot proceed with work (due to a combination of this issue and the one below). Would it be possible to add maybe some sort of time-out mechanic or perhaps fill tiles that return this error with zeroes, so the exporting can proceed? For testing, one such region is just to the side of the UK: 51.30416 / 1.679431. The tested zoom level of the heightmap on which it hangs is 10 in my case.

The other problem is related to tile and terrain sizes. As mentioned, I am doing large-scale, continent-wide region exports. I am aware of Unity's memory limitations, but my project nonetheless requires huge swaths of terrain in relatively high quality. I intend to dynamically load and unload them, but the amount of terrain is so huge, I am physically unable to have them in a single scene preloaded.

With that in mind, I started splitting the chosen huge singular region into smaller sub-regions using the same exporting settings. I adjusted their lat/long corners so one region would start where the other would end. This way, I imagined, I would be able to dynamically load and position the other region. Unfortunately, in my small-scale tests, I was unable to fit toghether two regions that had their top-left corner in a different latitude. After a lot of checking and headscratching, I determined that the starting tile size changes with the starting latitude - the higher the latitude, the smaller the final tile, as shown here: http://i.imgur.com/e8I58VI.jpg . The differences weren't huge, within my testing region (The Alps) it amounted to 30m/Unities. It's not much, but this difference makes it impossible to fit together without glaring errors, as seen here:



If, however, I export two different regions starting from the same latitude, they fit together perfectly.



(for comparison, this same scene with the regions separated for better visibility: http://i.imgur.com/ICAvJFm.png )

Would it be possible to, perhaps, have additional tools to "lock" the tile size, maybe split a region perfectly along grid lines?

As an aside, it would be great if there was a way to mark particular tiles as "do not export" or something - this way I could easily maneuver around large bodies of water without wasting data and API calls.

Thanks in advance,
Xtense

 

This tool is so amazing yet so frustrating at the same time, frustrating SIMPLY because what you create with it legally cannot be used in games. lol. It generates the most amazing terrains and perfect for my use and I am so ready to turn my already established simulator commercial but just cannot find a way to do it using world composer. I have spent the last 3 days phoning, emailing and pleading with all different owners of the imagery but they just don't want to help unless you have big pockets!

Adding google source whilst being another good source still presents you with the same problem, is there no way you can add sources of NASA's images and other free data? It might not be as high res but at least its usable?

I guess its just annoying to spend money on a tool that technically you can't actually use to its potential.

Don't miss understand what I'm saying, the tool is amazing! I just wish I could use it!

Andy

 

Yes exactly, in my opinion they don't seem to want to do any effort to even help, and the issue is that everybody is using it and they don't seem to do any effort for someone that want to use it the proper route, then they properly bother even less when you use the imagery in your game, unless you have extreme success, but then you have big pockets and can make a deal with them afterwards. I can take a look into putting NASA images and elevation data as well.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

I've made an update for this that skips and returns if data can't be download for a part and then continues downloading.

I get what you mean with being able to stitch area's, but this isn't a good workflow to work that way. As you want the heightmap/satellite information for each tile, it's best to export everything as one area. Because then you have each tile nicely named with _x0_y0 all the way to the end of your tiles. That way you know how to load/unload them. If you stitch area's the tile naming doesn't fit.

WorldComposer exports the heightmap as one big raw file. With the new coming TerrainComposer you will be able to split WC's area into smaller ones. It can even stream the heightmap and generate on the fly in runtime.

As for the last option this indeed can be useful, and I will add it to the feature list.

Also something to look into is amplify texture 2 to be able to use massive textures:
http://amplify.pt/unity/amplify-texture-2/

Nathaniel

 

Thanks! Waiting for the update with baited breath .

I admit, the workflow isn't as elegant as I would like. Sacrifices have to be made, unfortunately .

As for TC: oh, awesome! This will definitely help a lot with managing the project memory-wise!

Amplify Texture 2 is sweet and I'm keeping an eye on it. Unfortunately, it would exceed the budget for the current project and I have to make do with the stitching concept. As I said, sacrifices have to be made .

Thanks for your help!
Xtense

 

you could have a nice naming convention with Name_x0_y0_subregionNameID?

BTW in export terrain, what is exactly terrain resolution mean relative to the arc resolution? is the size of the hieght map in the unity editor the heightmap will be cut into?

EDIT:


BTW I finally applied the advice to dl large world, I set up an outsider folder, exported to raw, combine raw, rename it to ad "2", slice it into image (4k textures here).

I wonder if I change the setting of the image size (let say 1k) will the slice cut the combine raw into that? I guess it should be a multiple of the total size, I'll try that.

 

SO I tried to generate map, first I kept the export map in the outside folder and it give me this error

So I imported the map inside the folder within the project, change the export image path, and regenerate the terrain from there, now I got this



Notice teh white square as it come closer to the camera, while still having an overall far texture

I get this error message instead

ans also this warning at the end

Edit:
After saving the scene the terrain became chalk white

After restarting it says: Terrain splat 0 is null.

 

Hello,

Here's the update with the fix, let me know if it works...

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

As for the naming, why do you need this?

The heightmap is exported to 1 big raw file. As Unity has a 4k texture limitation, the terrains are being tiled based on the image resolution you set. Then WC will spread the heightmap over the all the terrain tiles. The size of the heightmap that is listed in 'Heightmap Export' is the total resolution. What you can select in the 'Create Terrain' tab is the resolution per tile (best to leave it on default, as WC chooses the best resolution for performance, unless you want manual control and add more detail, which will require to use the smooth button).

Yes the image resolution in 'Image Export' is the resolution for each image the combined raw will be cut into.

It's best to export the raw's inside your Unity folder, and then slice them inside, so you don't need to import the images and then the image importer should work correctly. As for the white textures...Do you have RTP in your project?

Nathaniel

 

Just imported, unfortunately it throws compile errors into the log:

 

@eagle555

Thanks for the answer

1. The main problem is large contiguous terrain. This has the problem of loading the soft with big data to process and store.The naming (in fact a better hierarchical structure) will allow to better manage such large file. Currently you either draw multiple manageable regions and pray for them to be correctly contiguous (or invest in costly post process that will automatically stitch the overlap) or you capture large data and hope it don't break down the computer limit.

For exemple my current map has 4k textures on each tiles, uncompressed it's 64mo, a row in my current project is therefore 640mo, I have more than 10 columns sot it's more than 640 x 10 = 6400mo. Now it's certainly compressed (not just on disk as jpg, but I think format like dxt reduce the load for video memory) but I don't know at which ratio. I have a 6go ram I don't know how much it matter right now.

Having region would be cool to maintain continuity of tile, large capture could be broken in a serie of process, instead of building the whole terrain at once after a big capture and stress the hardware. It would also help editing without having to fiddle too much with terrain management.

2. Okay I get that, it's just that manual calculation didn't yield the same number so I wasn't sure. But I was assuming 1:1 correspondence with the initial raw, I guess it pick the best next size that make sense and interpolate across the array? Better ask than guess!

3. Okay, just need to be sure, so if I modify that after capture I should have more tiles corresponding to the new settings I guess

4.No rtp, just vanilla WC, however after reasoning about point 1 above, it might be that it stress the hardware too much, there is too much data, I have 10x12 height tiles with each a 4k textures. I can't build them per region and reduce the load it seems.

 

Keep up on that update. I can't wait to use it...

 

I tested it again with a new project, importing WC 1.2 and importing the package,
it works here. The global_classes.js script is included as well and that should get rid of the error. Do you use Unity5?

@Edit: It happens if you import TC over it again, because WC/TC share global_classes.js. To solve this you have to import the WC update again. In the next TC/WC version they won't share files anymore...

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

1). Well basically WorldComposer downloading an entire area doesn't stress the system, and you can already download the imagery in parts, as the current download tile turn red is the last image WC gets, and you can stop the process and later continue automatically. But then if you create the entire area at once in Unity, that would stress it. With the new TerrainComposer it will be possible to stream terrains around the player. Then for assigning the images to RTP or Unity terrain splat map, it is very convenient to use the tile naming of the area from WC as it is now. How do you want to program loading different regions?, what file names to load? This is much more complicated. While with tile loading you know exactly which tile comes next if you have logic numbering e.g. x0_y0 t/m x100_y100, and also you know which tiles are border of 1 single tile. Dividing in region names, 1 tile can have 3 different region border terrains (borders have to be set for each terrain not to see seams at the edge). E.g. it's possible to split the tiles into groups of 5, by having x0_y0 t/m x4_y4, x5_y0 t/, x8_y4, etc. But for a streamer it doesn't make sense to use this as it most be continues...A streamer works by e.g. having a set of 5x5 tiles, then you move the player forward and the 5 tiles in the back of the player will go away and in the front there will come a new tile row.

2). Yes WC picks the most close heightmap resolution per tile automatically.

3). Streaming terrains will solve this issue...

Nathaniel

 

Hello!

Thanks for taking the time to answer,

But I think we aren't exactly talking about the same things. Streaming happen once we got the data, it's checked valid and we do whatever we want with it. I don't hope world composer to work as a terrain engine, just a data capture engine. I'm talking about conveniance for checking validity BEFORE we get at "player's stage" and "in game streaming". At that stage we don't really care about bordering terrain (at least not in the same way).

3. But i'm not talking about usage in game, it 's about when I'm pushing "build terrain" it might cause the problem I have because it tries to build everything at once, hence why we might have an image at large distance that failed to load when getting closer and then a wipe of all textures. It's a problem because I also notice (a large) offset between the texture and the heightmap, that's at checking time after the capture that this is critical, not for engine usage. It's all about pre streaming stage!

So in a nutshell
a. it's too big it doesn't apply material to terrain properly
b. it does not allow to quickly check texture on heightmap
c. we should be able to build "region" to avoid overload of memory BUT for visualization purpose in order to check data validity.

So region would be more abouit big fine terrain visualization (checking if the data is proper) rather than in game usage. Once that is checked then streaming, player horizon and the like is green.

What I propose is rectangular region, we only need two corner position in tile space, it's easy to process the offsetting of tile within the region and return the correct tile. So we can build smaller region, check data validity, apply new settings to correct them and rebuild the region to check again, without having the whole thing trying to load itself at once and blew up. Also maybe a complete build that does not spawn terrain in the scene but directly to harddrive to avoid RAM overload, because we already the whole data is valid.

I hope you understand the nuance, I don't won't to bother you anymore, I'll figure out work around if you don't propose something about this anyway.