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WorldComposer a tool to create real World AAA quality terrain

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by eagle555, Dec 6, 2013.

  1. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello Drum,

    You have to make sure that the curve in the 'Create Terrain' tab is a straight line. You can click the 'R' button to make it straight, then recreate the terrains and it should be fine.

    $Inverted.jpg

    Nathaniel
     
  2. Drum

    Drum

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    Again, many thanks. That solved it. I have to say that this is one of the most useful assets I've ever purchased for Unity.
     
  3. Drum

    Drum

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    Hi Nathaniel,

    I have run in to another problem which I don't understand. I have been modelling various parts of the world as practice for using the tool, but the actual area I am interested in for my project is the area around Arras in northern France. When I try to set this up, however, I get an error message saying 'Can't Download Information'. Am I doing something wrong here?

    Thanks

    $arras.png
     
  4. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello Drum,

    No you are not doing something wrong, this seems the only area I know off that Bing hasn't got elevation data for...Hopefully they will fix this soon...

    Nathaniel
     
  5. Djiel

    Djiel

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    Can I please get some insight on this, still haven't been able to improve it.
     
  6. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello Djiel,

    Sorry I missed your post. Can you show a screenshot of your WorldComposer window from the area with Regions, Heightmap Export, Image Export and Create Terrain tab active? Will take a look if you can enhance the settings.

    Nathaniel
     
  7. Djiel

    Djiel

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    No problem, it happens :)
    here is the screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wsbp95bye95gji8/worldcomposer.png

    Thanks
     
  8. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Indeed you are using the max elevation resolution from Bing. It looks like Google has even a higher elevation resolution, which is impressive, I will also add Google maps to WC in a future. Although the problem is that Google elevation can almost not be used now as they have so few transactions allowed in a day, that you can only extract about 33x33 elevation data a day, for your heightmap that would take 8x8 = 64 days...

    Nathaniel
     
  9. Djiel

    Djiel

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    I see, this is highly unfortunate.. :( This kind of detail is not good enough for me to work with, damn..
    and 64 days for such a small section is ridiculous.
     
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2014
  10. eagle555

    eagle555

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    What you can do to get more detail is using WorldMachine for erosion on the heightmap. You have 256x256 and the WM free version can do heightmaps up to 512x512.

    Nathaniel
     
  11. Djiel

    Djiel

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    Thanks for the tip, but what I meant was that it's just not close enough to the real world to suit my needs.
    I'm trying to recreate locations as accurately as possible for my race game and this was supposed to help create a reasonably accurate base to work with. Unfortunately, the accuracy in its current state is just not good enough. Looks like I'll have to stick with hand created locations after all.
     
  12. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Ah ok I get it. Maybe you can find custom heightmap elevation for that area, there are some sources online where they have 1,3,5 meter per pixel resolutions for custom areas. If you find something I can help you convert it to a raw heightmap so worldcomposer can use it.

    Nathaniel
     
  13. Drum

    Drum

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    Hi,

    I've been trying to use Wave Creator to make some nice animated waves in a coastal scene I'm working on, but there seems to be something about the heightmap generated in World Composer that Wave Creator doesn't like. It doesn't recognise the.raw files as being heightmaps, either for single tiles or for a combined generated .raw.

    Am I missing something?

    I also wrote the following in the Wave Creator thread:

     
  14. eagle555

    eagle555

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    WorldComposer uses standard Unity terrains and generates one combined raw heightmap for an area with multiple terrain tiles. I don't know how wavecreator works, if you need to put heightmaps in maybe it should be 8 bit images instead of 16 bit raw greyscale...Let's wait for the answer of the developer...

    Nathaniel
     
  15. Drum

    Drum

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    It doesn't work with tiled terrains apparently, so I am finding a workaround using a single exported image.
     
  16. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Ah ok that explains why Wave Creator doesn't work. What you can do is export a 4096x4096 resolution image to get the max resolution for 1 terrain tile. Or even a 8k total image resolution to raw with WC, and then scale it down to 4k in photoshop and convert it to jpg.

    Nathaniel
     
  17. Drum

    Drum

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    Thanks for that Nathaniel. I have a sort of work-around that I'm using at the moment, which is fine for the time being (involves grabbing a heightmap from the DEM explorer site - http://ws.csiss.gmu.edu/DEMExplorer/) from which, interestingly, you can also grab bathymetric height (or I guess depth) data, in case you need to model the terrain of the ocean floor...
     
  18. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    We are considering getting WorldComposer but have a few questions:
    1) Can you tell me what are its benefits over the "Real World Terrains" plugin?
    2) If I generate adjacent terrains in separate builds, what do I do to ensure they line up seamlessly?
    3) Is it possible to generate Meshes instead of Terrains with WC?
    4) In this thread you mentioned working on code to swap terrain data for a set of tiles as the origin in moving. Will you be publishing this? Will it maintain accurate placement of object via lat/lon positions?
    5) Is the product help or documentation available prior to purchasing?
    Thanks in advance for you answers.
    A picture is worth a thousand words. If you could produce an illustration that showed what all of the parameters represent and change, it would be a great help to all in understanding your product's use and power.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 14, 2014
  19. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello,

    That are good questions.
    1). You can compare the features, WC has shadow removal, 10 meter per pixel heightmap resolution for USA. Buildin map for selecting multiple area's. Combine images into 1 big raw image, etc.
    2). It's better to export a terrain a one area if you want them lined up, as WC export image tiles and for the heightmap you can cut it up in TerrainComposer or photoshop.
    3). This can only be done with TerrainComposer.
    4). Yes I'm still planning on making this, but first I will release TerrainComposer2 where I'm working on now.
    5). Yes, you can contact me at Nathaniel_Doldersum@hotmail.com and I will send you the manual.

    Nathaniel
     
  20. Agustin-Petrini

    Agustin-Petrini

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    Hi Nathaniel,

    We need to obtain real terrain data and are currently evaluating WorldComposer and <the other option>.
    My problem is that I'm not allowed to use this as it fetches data from Bing and Gmap, wether <the other option> does it from Open Street Map.
    Do you plan to add OSM as a source anytime soon ?
    How costly do you think it would be for us to do so ?

    Thank you very much.
     
  21. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello Agustin,

    Open street maps doesn't have satellite image or heightmap data as far as I know. You can use Map-ity from the Asset Store with OSM and it works together with WC...

    Nathaniel
     
  22. Agustin-Petrini

    Agustin-Petrini

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    Hi Nathaniel,

    Thanks for your reply, what about Nasa WorldWind ?

     
  23. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Yes you can get satellite images and heightmaps from any free source you can find and import it into Unity. TerrainComposer works great for this.
    Although Bing and google as far as I know have the best quality..

    Nathaniel
     
  24. John-G

    John-G

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    Any chance you could add in support to load heightmaps from Raw format as well as Bing source.
    Eg I would love to use this 24Gb source file to use within Worldcomposser as it has below sea level height data.
    http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=73570
     
  25. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello John,

    That will be possible with TerrainComposer 2, as it will have raw heightmap streaming...

    Nathaniel
     
  26. chilton

    chilton

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    Hi,

    First off, this is really a badass product.

    $Screen Shot 2014-05-31 at 7.09.04 PM.png
    (That's Mount Shasta)

    I have encountered a bug though, where it constantly tries to make me resize the area. Even quitting Unity won't help. When I reopen it, anywhere I drag on the map, it resizes the yellow resize border to.

    Any suggestions for how to stop this? Have you seen this bug?

    Thanks!
    -Chilton Webb
     
  27. John-G

    John-G

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    Fantastic, thanks Nathaniel.
     
  28. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello,

    I tried a lot how to get this bug happening, but I think I found it. It happens when you click the 'Pick' button to select a new Area, do a 1 click in the map, and then click the 'Resize' button...It will stay stuck on resize, all you have to do is click 'Pick' button again and confirm your area with the second mouse click on your map. Picking needs two clicks in the map...Then you can click 'Resize' button for resizing the area...

    Nathaniel
     
  29. smileK

    smileK

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    I am wondering, Can I provide a latitude and longitude to have the WorldComposer automatically to build the terrain within a certain scale of that area? (I need a 3D real world terrain, which includes real world buildings, trees, river, and etc. Just like the real world).
     
  30. roem

    roem

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    Great product. I have to say though, this is the first thing ever to cause my CPU to overheat.
     
  31. anis1987

    anis1987

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    Hello

    Recently, I bought two tools which are TerrainComposer and WorldComposer.

    Unfortunately, these tools did not fit my expectations. In fact, I guessed that these tools let me have a 3D real city map example with roads and building. Then, my questions are:

    •With the TerrainComposer and WorldComposer tools, can I build a 3D real city map? If yes, is there any tutorial that helps me to do this?
    •If not, can you help me to find a tool which provides me examples of 3D real city map?

    Thank you in advance
     
  32. eagle555

    eagle555

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    WorldComposer export real world heightmaps and satellite images. With TerrainComposer you can do splat texturing, place trees and objects based on colors of images.

    If you want 3d buildings and road meshes, you can use Map-ity with WorldComposer, they work very good together...
    https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/11779

    Nathaniel
     
  33. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Thanks, overheating your CPU has nothing to do with WorldComposer, as it creates standard Unity terrains. If one goes crazy with resolutions then of course anything can overheat a cpu :).

    If you want to be able to use massive satellite textures of almost unlimited size in the same Scene, I recommend to use WorldComposer with amplify texture:
    http://amplify.pt/unity/amplify-texture/
    (There's a trial version)...

    Nathaniel
     
  34. chilton

    chilton

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    Hi Nathaniel,

    I would like more, smaller, terrain tiles. But the same overall resolution.

    I have created terrains using World Composer. Is there a way for me to get the same level of detail, but with more terrains? For example, how do I get four 1024x1024 tiles, as opposed to one 4096x4096 tile?

    On page four of your instructions, you say it's better to 4x4 terrains. But zooming the heightmap in results in larger tiles.

    Can I tell it I want 16 smaller tiles, instead of four larger tiles? If so, how?

    Thank you,
    -Chilton
     
  35. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello Chilton,

    Using more terrain tiles can be good for culling, but each terrain has a little overhead so something like 4x4-5x5 is good. Terrain tiles are made based on image resolution in WorldComposer. Because on each terrain there will be 1 satellite image. So if you want 4x4 1k instead of 4k, you just need to set image export resolution to 1k...The heightmap has no influence on how many tiles are used, as WC exports 1 big heightmap and spreads it out over the tiles.

    Nathaniel
     
  36. qjones

    qjones

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    Hi Nathaniel,

    I have just started using your World Composer/Terrain Composer add-ins. I also am trying to integrate the Map-ity asset into my workflow as well. However I am noticing that the elevation data seems to be off between the 2 different objects. Am I using the wrong heightmap zoom level or is there anyway to match these up a little better? The roads seem to be about 30-50 minutes below the world composer terrain in my test case. Also they do not line up but I could see how this could happen as I could see each converting to unity WCS a little different but I would expect the height to be closer...

    Thanks,
     
  37. daeuk

    daeuk

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    Is it possible to include (import) ocean floor heightmaps as well?
     
  38. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello,

    Can you show a screenshot? If you use Map-ity, you need to use the same scale as you use in WorldComposer. This doesn't have to be the same scale number, but there should be 2 fitting scales...

    Nathaniel
     
  39. eagle555

    eagle555

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    This is currently not in Bing heightmap elevation, only the shores have ocean floor a bit.

    Nathaniel
     
  40. topofsteel

    topofsteel

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    I am having a problem where the same image repeated over the entire terrain. I've adjusted the resolution, but I get the same results, different size. How can I fix this? Thanks.

    problem_01.png
     
  41. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Can you check if the exported images are the same? I see that you have RTP in there, and if RTP Lod manager is not setup, it can give this result.

    Nathaniel
     
  42. topofsteel

    topofsteel

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    Yes, RTP was in my project, but not in my scene, WC added it. And in my template project RTP is set up to use a mesh. Switching it to terrain and recompiling fixed the images problem. But now the images are saturated and muted. And I notice WC is using it's own set of textures, either black and white versions or the heightmap in the diffuse slot and a displacement map in the heightmap slot. What is the theory behind that? And Is there a way to disable the automatic integration? Since it is using RTP, what are your recommended settings?

    Edit: Removing RTP from the project and re-creating the terrain from WC fixed all of the problems. It seems like maybe also setting up RTP would be a good idea.

    on another note, the images in Unity are not as clear as when I open them in photoshop. Is there a way to increase the quality in Unity? Thanks for your time!

    problem_02.png
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2014
  43. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Yes you have to setup RTP in your project or remove it, since it is replacing Unity standard terrain shader. The grey scale splat textures are for using with RTP, the thought behind it is that the satellite images are the colormap in RTP and then this is multiplied with the grey scale splat texture, which result in the splat texture pattern at close distance, without changing the satellite image colors.

    Yes you can increase the quality in Unity if you click on the images in your project and then you get Image Import Settings in Inspector, and there you can change the resolution and apply.

    Nathaniel
     
  44. chilton

    chilton

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    I'm using RTP and WorldComposer, and I get this weird glass-like or sometimes painting-like appearance on the ground. Any idea what causes this? Suggestions for getting rid of it?

    Thanks!
    -Chilton
     

    Attached Files:

  45. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello Chilton,

    Yes that is the RTP3.1 new feature about highering the colormap resolution by distorting the uv's. Only you have it a little too strong. I think the slider for it is in Global Maps under the colormap...

    Nathaniel
     
  46. metaleap

    metaleap

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    I've been interested in this for a while and I might finally buy this. Would need one capability though that I'm not sure it can do...

    Reason I haven't bought it yet is I have written my own command-line tools a year or so ago for fetching and processing global elevation datasets so this was never a big feature for me. BUT I like the integration into Unity and the smarter processing capabilities you have. But what I'd really need is a bit tricky to explain.. let me try:

    Having a life-size terrain with 1-to-1 elevation is relatively trivial but not what I want. "Downscaling" all elevation of a given country say 400x400 km into a "game world" terrain of say 40x40 km linearly is also relatively trivial but also not wanted. What I'd really want is downscaling with custom "importance-weighting" of designated points-of-interest. So for example I have a country with a few interesting mountain ranges of and lots of flatland in between, but I don't want to downscale linearly because this would result in "smaller (in map extents, not elevation) mountain-ranges than I'd like as the artist/designer" and "too much boring flat-land than I'd like as the artist/designer". (Or similarly, I know a few select urban areas will not be to-scale but relatively-bigger in the game-world than in reality, whereas endless squaremiles of repetetive rural areas will be compressed in the game-world relatively vs. reality.) So while downsizing real-world elevation set from 400x400km to 40x40km would be great to set certain markers at certain coordinates to crank their "importance-weighting" up or down.

    Like this: you're processing a grid when downscaling and implicitly with no other adjustments you could say each coordinate has an equal weighting of 1 already even now. Now let us tweak nearby selected coords and lerp accordingly ;)

    If World Composer can do this or you can add this as a to-do, it's a buy!
     
  47. ZINI-NGR

    ZINI-NGR

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    What is the difference between TerrainComposer and WorldComposer?
     
  48. eagle555

    eagle555

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    WorldComposer extracts real world elevation heightmaps and satellite images. While TerrainComposer is a terrain generator for heightmaps/splatmaps/colormaps/trees/grass and placing objects...

    You can check more about the differences at my site:
    www.terraincomposer.com

    Nathaniel
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2014
  49. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello,

    WorldComposer does not do this directly, but you could extract different area resolutions, and stitch different resolution heightmaps and satellite together in for example photoshop.

    Nathaniel
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2014
  50. eagle555

    eagle555

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    Hello everyone,

    Peter and me made SnazzyGrid and it is available on the Asset Store now!



    Links: Video - Manual - Assetstore

    SnazzyGrid aims to improve your workflow in unity. While the original intention was to speed up the work in modular leveldesign, it quickly turned out that there is more to it. Regardless what genre or type you are working in, if you place objects and need to manage the hierarchy, SnazzyGrid is the right tool for you.

    Pro or Hobbyist, 2D or 3D, Mobile or Standalone, Interface-Layouting or Leveldesign, does not matter, you will work significantly faster using SnazzyGrid. With a learning curve smoother than babyskin, you'll have it integrated into your workflow in notime and once you used it you'll always want to have it in your projects.

    Ok admitted, we are all used to cheesy advertising... but take a few minutes and watch the video and see why SnazzyGrid is special:


    Well documented...
    Apart from the detailed Manual(clicky) and the video above, there is a quickstart-guide integrated into the window. There are Tooltips for every button on the interface, not only explaining the functionality but also show whichHotkeys(all customizeable) currently are assigned.

     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2014