WorldComposer a tool to create real World AAA quality terrain

I just purchased WorldComposer and expected that I could export the heightmap in a jpg or similar format to generate terrains in external applications like 3dsmax. But as it looks to me only RAW gets exported that looks like this in Photoshop (left side), what I need is right side:



Any solution?
Do I need a Plugin for Photoshop?

 

Can we have some way of importing height data from another source (NASA?)? The region I need happens to be in northern France, which makes WorldComposer completely useless when it relies only on Bing data.

Bing data being of a higher resolution is not useful when the data is not there at all.

 

Bought ...fantastic tool!
+1 to add alternative data sources than Bing (google?) Bing heightmap is very poor for Italy !

 

Hello,

Jpg is only 8 bit. WorldComposer exports 16 bit raw grey scale images wich are much more precise. No you don't need a plugin for photoshop, only need to select the right import settings when opening the raw file. Choose 1 channel and byte order IBM Pc...

Nathaniel

 

Italy has 90m per pixel resolution, which is what you can commenly get. It's not possible to extract Google heightmap elevation, as they have key restriction that you can only export a 32x32 a day. That means it would take a month before you can export a decent heightmap...

Nathaniel

 

I currently am using world machine to generate hightmaps, how does this offer and more value once the content is loaded into unity?

 

You mean the heightmap exporting doesn't work there? I remember someone else had that issue too. If it is that area, it's the only area that doesn't work in Bing...

Nathaniel

 

You can use TerrainComposer to import heightmaps/splatmaps/vegetation maps from WorldMachine, I made a video about this:

Nathaniel

 

Awesome ok last question , does it have a feature like ProWorld or compatible with ProWorld? ( The procedural generation at runtime)

 

Yes TC can generate at runtime...

 

Yes Bing for Italy uses old SRTM 90M but Google uses the more recent SRTM30.
Is there no way to use different source for heightmap and Photo coverage?. (for ex. Bing Photo + SRTM 30 online free source without passing through Google service).

 

If you can find a free srtm30 source, you could use those heightmaps as well. Only need to be fitted with the satellite images, but that you can do with photoshop.

Nathaniel

 

Bought this yesterday. I've been looking after something like this for some time for a project. Only one problem - how do I zoom in on a laptop without a mouse?

 

Hey Eagle can you help me out please. I must be missing something here or not understand the concept of making this terrain. I'd like to create something like your 900klm terrain or something larger.



What the heck did I do wrong?

Also there are lots of options in WC that are not covered in the manual, will you ever update the manual yo go into depth what command does what?

Ive gone through the threads here looking for a tutorial to see if someone else can help. Please.

Why so dark as well??


Thank you.

 

You should be able to use 2 fingers on the touchpad to zoom in/out. But now I added the plus/minus or keypad plus/minus.

You can download and import the package and then the keys should work...

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

Send you a message on skype, it looks like a terrain shader issue. This happens when an Asset has a terrain shader included, as there can only be 1 terrain shader in a project at the time. Those terrain shader only work if you set them up with their script attached to each terrain, etc. To get the Unity default terrain shader back, you need to delete any other terrain shader from your project.

Nathaniel

 

Hi Nathanial,

I was reading this thread and came across the post about amplify texture,:
#####
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)...
#####

Do you know if someone has used this successfully with worldcomposer? Does it help a lot when getting really close to the terrain?
Many thanks,
Kim

 

I got this on the sale and just wanted to say 'thanks!' It's great fun to play around in.

Here, for example, is a shot of a flight over the Troodos mountains in Cyprus. Gave my folks a thrill seeing that!



Will no doubt get terrain composer at some point too!

Again, thanks!

QS =D

 

Hello Kim,

Yes I know someone that is using it for making a bird flying game with WorldComposer, and yes it works very good. As with amplify you can use bigger size images, and with WC you can just combine them into 1 raw file and convert to jpg for example with photoshop and then add to amplify. I also tried it with a huge WorldComposer image and the results were great. You can download a free amplify trial at there site.

Nathaniel

 

I'm glad you like it . Looks awesome!

Nathaniel

 

And +1 to khos85 question are your try amplify texture? May be some tutorial? This will be awesome!
Sorry, your answer early

 

Amplify texture doesn't really need a tutorial, it's pretty much drag and drop. Amplify trial comes with text file how to set it up...Also at amplify site there's description how to use it...

Nathaniel

 

Thank you for your reply, I am still not clear how amplify can improve the image, as I understand it worldcomposer can only get the level of detail that bing offers, how can amplify improve that? I guess I have to ask the Amplify team that, interesting though.

 

With Unity you can only render about a maximum between 16-32k in the Unity editor. What amplify does is streaming (loading/unloading) parts of a texture based on camera distance. Amplify does not improve the quality of an image, but allows to use a much higher resolution images. So instead of 4x4 tiles of 4k images, you can use 1 64k image instead...

Nathaniel

 

Hello Everyone,

As promised the PDF document on how Peter and me made the 24 hour demo:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/if9dpxqeseenj11/24 Hour demo - How we made it.pdf

Nathaniel

 

Wow! Thank you very much, I'll read this asap. Looks to be very useful!

 

Hello Nathaniel,
Just wanted to play with shadows cleaning, reading your guide to 24 demo, and got a bunch of errors:
-------------------------------------
IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
preimage_edit_class.GetPixelRaw (.buffer_class buffer, Int64 x, Int64 y) (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Scripts/global_classes.js:1375)
--------------------------------------
Please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
Here are my settings:

WC 1.150
Unity 4.5.2f1
Win7x64

 

Hello,

Can you try it without the 'Save New' enabled? As you didn't specify a file...Also did you click the combine raw button in image export?

Nathaniel

 

Hello,
Of course you are right and I did not notice the empty field for the file name Sorry!
But by the way, when I write the name of the file xxx_combined3.raw to remain still in the file xxx_combined2.raw. At least I have it, but this is not so important.
Thanks for the help!

 

Thanks a lot for this awesome asset. After I watched the video, I was able to get exactly the piece of landscape I needed. Took me an hour including tutorial and some tests. Now I can do it in 5 minutes (excluding scouting for a hot location).
A nice feature would be, if you could setup a large low res terrain for the background and a second terrain in the middle of it in high resolution. Where the hi-res Terrain is, the larger outer terrain should zero-out the heightmap (so it won't flicker) and try to match the hi-res height at the adjacent sides.

 

Yes save new doesn't seem to work. Indeed not so important, but will fix it in the next WC update...Thanks for telling .

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

This can already be done in WorldComposer . The screenshots and demonstration video with the clouds you see with WorldComposer is a terrain of 900x900 km. I used 4 different terrain levels for this with each outer terrain a lower resolution.

What is needed in 'Areas' tab in center is 'Go' and '<Set> button:



With the 'Go' button you can go to the center of an area. Then you can create another area and shift click the <Set> button to have the second area at the center of the first. With the second area you can use a lower image zoom, so they fit perfectly. Then you can export and create both areas, and you only need to disable the center tile of area2...

Nathaniel

 

how accurate is the WC for the UK. and will it work with unity5? thanks

 

The heightmap is zoom level 11, which is 80 meter per pixel. Image zoom level is 19, which is 0.25 meter per pixel. WorldComposer uses Bing maps, to see how it looks you can go to:
http://www.bing.com/maps/

Nathaniel

 

hello again, just bought WC and i really enjoy that in many cases, but I'd like to ask something..
lets say i need to take 3x3km area, that's fine easy to do, but when i try modify the terrain , looks like brush is much bigger than should be, so i did try to increase heightmap resolution to 512 (33-66 max now), but I doesn't work. any quick ones how it possible to do or any other solutions? Also if I want to modify terrain, should I do it on every single tile, or it is possible to do on whole terrain? thank You
P.S supereasy to use, amazing

 

This is great!

 

Hello,

I actually removed to possibility that WC creates a higher heightmap resolution then the exported one is, because many users were putting it higher and wondering about performance and also why it got blockery. Do you have TerrainComposer? As you can change it there, otherwise I have to give you a modified version for it. If you use Unity terrain paint tools you can only do 1 terrain at a time.

Nathaniel

 

btw, thanks Nathaniel for the advice with setting up hires and lowres terrains together, worked quite good. Only issue would be visible seams. Is there a way to aling them? O do I have to place scene props like rocks and roads there?

 

There should be no seams between the satellite images. If there are it's because image import settings 'Wrap mode' needs to be set to clamp. This is done automatically with WC if you click the 'Apply' button in the 'Create Terrain' tab....

Nathaniel

 

Hi, thx for your answer. No, I do not have an TC. And yes would be nice to have a modified version of WC please. How could I get it? many thanks.

 

Hello,

You can download and import the package, it removes the heightmap resolution restriction. Keep in mind you set the resolution for each tile (not the total resolution), so not use more then needed as the higher resolution to slower the performance. Also you will need to use the smooth button the get rid of the blockiness.

Nathaniel

 

I have seams between the inner hires part and the outer 8 low res terrain tiles. Within each set there are no seams.

 

amazing support! thanks for tips is well
Many thanks, Nathaniel

 

I you use multi resolution terrain blocks, then you can make the heightmap/satellite images of the outer terrain match as close as possible with heightmap/image offset. But of course you will still have a seam in the images, because it goes from a higher to a lower resolution. And in the heightmap is the same issue. You will need to do photoshopping on getting the heightmaps 100% connected.

Nathaniel

 

Hello! Please may I make a humble request to this forum? I respectfully request additional documentation. Although the video tutorial certainly did point this beginner in the right direction, I still have stumbled through a learning curve which has been difficult for me. Also, I found the document not as extensive as I had hoped for. For instance, after reading the documentation, I had more unanswered questions.

Regardless of such, I REALLY like the product, and find the lengthy comments regarding justification for buying this asset a weak argument. If you like what a developer has provided, the price point is justified. ANYHOW, Great Product, I was very pleased.

Again, if there is anyone out there who can help assist this slow learner to bring me up to speed, I'd certainly very much appreciate it. Some of the things I am hung up on with confusion are the levels of detail resolution this asset can handle VERSUS the optimization threshold of a particular scene in unity. For instance, can someone teach the community how to tile, or create multiple terrains? Is there a "must read" link regarding optimization within WorldComposer in Unity? Is there a workaround to create both highly detailed landscapes, and highly optimized scenes? What are some of the tips and techniques that people are sharing? Can you "scale up" worlds with detail to hypothetically, say, traverse the entire Pacific Crest Trail in the Cascade Mountains? or Fly from San Francisco to Boston as an example?

Thanks so much, your help is appreciated.
(Public School Teacher, USA.)

 

Hello,

WorldComposer automatically creates multiple terrains. How many tiles is based on your image zoom level, image resolution and area size. You can see the amount of tiles WC creates by the amount of squares in the area grid. I made the WC map which is a preview of what you export. You can zoom in and out with the mouse scroll wheel to see the level of detail for which image zoom level. The current zoom level is show in 'Map Parameters'. Performance is totally depending on your hardware target. It's all about the total image resolution you use for your area. So WC splits an area up into tiles based on how many images it needs to fit together to get the complete area. As the image resolution is the limitation for Unity terrain (can be max 4k in Unity). So you can increase image resolution to 4k and then based on image zoom level, you can see how many tiles are needed and WC displays to total image resolution. You can also export the image as one big raw file and convert it in photoshop and use it with amplify texture to stream it (so you only need 1 terrain tile then). This is very fast and allows extreme image resolutions. WC works perfectly with amplify texture.
http://amplify.pt/unity/amplify-texture-2/

If you need more help we can do a skype screenshare, my account in Nathaniel.Doldersum

Nathaniel

 

Just purchased Snap Terrain Composer and World Composer

Loving them so far.

I'm a bit new to Unity coming from an XNA team. I'm mostly on the content animation side of things and I mostly work in Houdini. World Composer is already saving me lots of time but I have many questions and items.

First a HUGE thank you for a great product!

Now questions / wishes.

Question 1) Is there a way to save the final terrains with textures as an obj or fbx file from the software? If not this would be a huge pipeline workflow improvement for me. I'd very much like to be able to use the output in other software that doesn't use height maps. Is there an easy flow to do this outside? Could I request it to be added for easy in the future.

Question 2) Terrain gets huge fast. I work with simulation often. Is it better to scale down on terrain creation and use small units everywhere in unity? Or is there away to set the extent preferences in unity better? I can't even frame some of the terrains I want to work with. The zoom seems limited and I can't figure out how to make it frame larger things.

Question 3) Is it possible to have the larger terrains created on a wgs84 spheroid shape that would accurately match the curvature of the earth? From any decent altitude this is totally obvious that you aren't on a curved surface earth and the terrain doesn't look right. It should be easy to march along the long/lat from corners out from the center of the WGS84 surface and create a terrain that is on the surface and wraps around it correctly. This could still center at 0,0,0. I'd love to see this if it's not already a checkbox I'm missing.

Question 4) Is it possible to build multiple areas of different resolutions in world builder and densities that overlap and send them to terrain composer to create seamlessly? I'd love to be able to have detailed areas and border overlapping less detailed areas and then huge much less detailed area. Create them all as areas with one creation center. Click on create terrain and have it cut the detailed terains into the lower density ones automaticcaly. Can it do this now? So far I can't even get it to download more than one area at a time. Also if it can't do this is there at least a way to pin register multiple areas in a region to one centroid that will be 0,0,0 when all the areas are created so they build correctly offset from eachother?

I have only had time to play with world composer so far. I'll start digging into terrain composer tonight.

Thanks you very much Nathaniel. I love the product and I love the way you support the product.

-michael

 

Hello Michael,

That are good questions:
1). Both TC and WC use standard Unity terrain. There's a free Unity terrain to obj exporter on Unity Wiki:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=TerrainObjExporter
2). It's better not to scale terrains down, because you would have to scale down physics as well. As gravity and forces values would be incorrect. Unless you are working with a terrain that is 1000's of km. How big is the terrain you are working with?
3). Unity terrain has not a curvature option, so I can't build this in at the moment.
4). Yes this is possible with WorldComposer, you can go to a center of an area by clicking the 'go' button (in Areas), then you can center another area by selected it and shift click '<Set>' button on center to center it on the other area. Also you need to use image offset to get satellite images and heightmap exactly fitting. Only the stitching of the heightmap you will have to do manually in photoshop. What you can also do is place the outer terrains a little lower and restrict the player to not be able to go outside the high detailed terrain. You can download multiple area's at the same time with WC, they will be queued and if one area is finished WC will download the next.

Nathaniel

 

Can't figure out how to get this set up for realistic first person. Everyhing comes in too small

 

I'll check out the OBJ scripts
THat should help. I like your idea of using a single raw of the terrains and pasting them together in photoshop at differant resolutions but I'm not sure how i'd slice this up arbitrarily to get the various resolution terrains together.

It's a shame you can't project onto a geoid. We need to do several 1000 km for some scenarios. Shrinking should help I probably won't need the physics and I should be able to scale the physics too??

It would be nice if I could have the fit to view not adjust the cliping planes in the editor is there a way to lock those?

A video demo on multi area download with a single center and loading into and out of photoshop would be very helpful. Even on super low res just to get the technique. I can't seem to get it download mutliple areas.

Thanks much,
-michael