WorldComposer a tool to create real World AAA quality terrain

Hello John,

Thanks for showing, this needs to be in the Bing Api for me to be able to build it in WorldComposer, can't find it anywhere in there.

Nathaniel

 

Hello I am new to using World Composer. I am trying to figure out if there is a script or a way that i can create large areas of terrain. the most i was able to get was a 11km by 11km area, but i want to see if i can create a 300km by 300 km area instead. I know unity's memory wont allow me to go beyond a certain limit of memory, but is there a way i can grab a large area and have it broken down into smaller segments so when i create the terrain in one large go? I really dont think think making 600 seperate Areas is the way to go. Can anyone help me out? please and thank you.

 

First, great work on your plug-in and on your apparently tireless effort to support it.

In reading through the forum posts, I can see that there have been comments suggesting that you are planning on expanding the map and elevation data sources to include some additional providers. For our case, we would want OSM for the imagery, assuming elevation data would be able to line up with it to some degree of accuracy. The elevation data could probably remain Bing unless it became and issue. Licensing issues aside, if I was to buy your plug-in, is all the source code available for me to be able to make modifications to pull image and elevation data from a source of my own choosing?

I realize there are a large number of factors that would likely be involved depending on the provider I would want to work with, but knowing if you felt it was possible and or feasible would help guide my company's decision on the purchase. Let's assume I am a capable programmer who could handle the deeper programing needs of making such a modification

Actually, flexibility in data providers is the only piece of functionality that is making us even consider the other prominent option at the moment.

 

Hello,

You can:
* Lower the 'Image Zoom' that zooms out the area and needs less image resolution.
* Use amplify texture 2 to stream large textures, you can combine images to Raw with WC and then in photoshop convert them to usable format for amplify texture 2:
http://amplify.pt/unity/amplify-texture-2/
* Use streaming to load/unload terrain like Dynamic Loading Kit:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/5982

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

Yes WorldComposer comes with source code, and you are allowed to change it to your own needs, but you cannot share it outside your company of course. What elevation providers would you like to be able to choose from? Google elevation doesn't work by the way..

Nathaniel

 

Hello Everyone,
This is the very special artistic attempt to realtime rendering in Unity3d using Relief Terrain Pack (RTP3.0 exactly). We also used Terrain Composer and AFS2.04 plus a few other asset store goodies. As most of the work was done over a year ago, new versions of the these packages were released (expect even better quality with the up to date versions).
About the water/underwater - as you probably would like to ask about it - it's a custom shading solution (not publicly available)
RTP comes with terrain surface water solution though (like it runs down the rocks when tides goes away at 0:35). You can refer to our product pages on Asset Store to know what's included and available to the community.

 

Hi Nathaniel,

Is it possible to add the source I linked above to use for the Heightmap data. It would be great to have this as a secondary source, as well as Bing.
I don't require the highest resolution data like USA for terrain, but I do require underwater terrain - this is critical to my project. So if it was possible to have worldcomposser to have an option to use the data from http://topex.ucsd.edu/WWW_html/srtm30_plus.html to build the height maps and use the images from bing that would be a fantastic feature.
Would this be possible at all?

 

Thanks this helps out a lot. I was wondering will a terrain this size have any effect when i want to add grass and trees? Can i still get the same amount of detail as the tutorial videos? Also do you know a good link where i can find some simple trees and grass? Thanks again.

 

One week ago today I purchased World Composer and Terrain Composer, I am still struggling with the learning curve and I would appreciate some advice on a specific issue.

I have a relatively small area for my world, 600x600. The area is in the USA and when I right click it says, zoom 14>7.47m/p and the height ranges from -9m to +8m when I right click in various spots in the image area. This is a pretty flat area compared to much of the work I see on this thread. After trying many combinations of height map zoom and image zoom and resolution, the most realistic terrain generated did not seem to match the real world scale when I put in a first person controller. I used the controller to walk up to the highest point which was a hill of 8m and while it did have some slope it didn't resemble the actual height of the hill compared with the scale of the controller and looking down from the hill.

My question: Is this the best slope I can hope for since the area is fairly flat and only has a bout a 10m height variance? I am not sure how the pixel per meter and height map resolution are computed since it is done automatically by World Composer. If I manually create a unity terrain and set the height at 8m, I can paint a good approximation of the height of the hill and surrounding area. However, I would like to use World Composer so my terrain matches the entire area as close as possible.

Thank you for your advice and direction,
Struggling Newbie.

 

Hello John,

Thanks for asking, but at the moment I don't have time to build this in WorldComposer. But maybe in the future I will add it.

Nathaniel

 

No worries Nathaniel,
Sure hope down the road you manage to implement such a feature. Would bring much more power and freedom to users of world machine.

 

Hello everyone,

I made a new WorldComposer tutorial on how to remove shadows from the satellite images:

Nathaniel

 

Hello everyone,

As promised I made a new WorldComposer tutorial on how to make a huge terrain with using the multi-resolution technique. This tutorial is how I made the FrancsPeak 922x922 km terrain, you can see this terrain is the WorldComposer showcase video's. I use RTP for rendering in the showcase video's, so in those video's the render quality is a lot better.

I made a new update for WorldComposer (version 1.2). I added a new converter that converts ArcInfo ASCII heightmap files to 16 bit raw grey scale raw heightmaps. The raw format is the format WorldComposer and TerrainComposer can use. Also I made some fixes, and you need version 1.2 to do this tutorial. You can update WC in the WC Window with the 'Update' tab. I submitted version 1.2 to the Asset Store today.

Nathaniel

 

hey there!
I chose the area of 30x30, but I can't set heightmap zoom more then 11 and heightmap size 640x624.
How i can set zoom 14 and size 2048x2048 for example?
I want to get very quality heightmap.
Thank you.

 

Hello,

Only in the USA the heightmap zoom level is 14 (10 meter per pixel). The heightmap zoom level is not the same over the world, and you can right click in the WorldComposer map to see what the maximum zoom level is for that area.

Nathaniel

 

Oh thank you. So, if i have zoom level 11, I get less quality heightmap, than if I had zoom level 14 right?
So, i want to make realistic terrain and i would like to see not only the mountains, but and the small hills (elevation changes). Maybe you have something advise?

up
what am I doing wrong?

 

You changed the heightmap resolution in the 'Create Terrain' tab, this resolution is automatically detected and unless you want to add more detail to the heightmap with other programs like WorldMachine, you shouldn't change the heightmap resolution. The resolution displayed is the resolution for each tile. You have 7x7 tiles so the total heightmap resolution is 7168x7168, while the heightmap you export is only 112x112, this will create this blockyness you encounter. What you need to do is put heightmap resolution back to 33, and then after you created the terrains you can 'Smooth' (button) if it's still blocky .

Nathaniel

 

Hi Nathaniel, I have sent you an email about my question but I though I should post it here too, for others (might be useful for them). I am converting openstreetmap into roads and the generic conversion I am using (LatLong -> 3D) is a little out compared to WorldComposers satellite output - so I was wondering what conversion system you use to do this (there are a number of them).
It may be that the map conversion is happening in Bing/etc. Any help/assistance would be great. Thanks for an absolutely briliant set of tools - its very amazing some of the output I am seeing with these apps.
Cheers,
Dave Lannan

 

Sorry to reply to myself but it looks like this is a Bing issue - sorry for any wasted effort. Heres what I found about Bing/Google conversion:
https://alastaira.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/the-google-maps-bing-maps-spherical-mercator-projection/
Cheers,
Dave

 

Hello Dave,

Yes the link about the google-maps-bing maps conversion you find the answer to your issue. In WorldComposer there's conversion functions included you can read on page 7 of this forum:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wo...-real-world-aaa-quality-terrain.215485/page-7

What you can also do is look into map-ity:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/11779

Map-ity is compatible with WorldComposer, and is able to place roads with RoadArchitect and building with BuildR.

Nathaniel

 

Hello I have some problem with the image import from bing




Whenever I tried to export the image past a certain line, it fails, throw errors and display a blank image when he succeed, whatever the zoom level ... On Actual bing site it show an image.

Also as you can see there is huge amount of water, can I select the tile I want to ignore?
I tried emulating that with multiple area but it's hard to align them correctly so they are seamless ...


errors message I get

 

Hello,

I recommend to read page 4 of the WorldComposer manual, as you're trying to export a 172032x192512 total image here. 1 4k image takes 10 mb, this will be about 42*47*10 = 19740 mb = 19 GB image data. Unity can't handle this...

Not all area's in the world cover the same image quality and image zoom level. The highest quality is in USA and Europe. The blank image means that Bing doesn't provide images for that image zoom level in that area. You can pre-check this before exporting to zoom in the WC map to the same image zoom level you are exporting.

Nathaniel

 

Well on bing image it's there :/ I guess they don't have license to share? but that's weird that's only half of it, I corrected the zoom level but it does not work for even level visible on the editor. Except very low level.

However thanks, how about the idea of breaking a big area in manageable chunk?

 

Problems: I have set the Bing maps Key, then get the error:
You are trying to load data from a www stream which had the following error when downloading.
Recv failure: Connection was aborted

why?

 

Getting the following error, when I try to slice images after removing shadows:

IOException: Sharing violation on path C:\Users\John\Documents\Unity Projects\TilledTerrain\Assets\Reunion Island\Reunion Island_combined2.raw
System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, Boolean anonymous, FileOptions options) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.IO/FileStream.cs:320)
System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, FileMode mode)
(wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.IO.FileStream:.ctor (string,System.IO.FileMode)
Map_tc.slice_textures_begin (.map_area_class area1, System.String path, System.String file) (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/Map_tc.js:5022)
Map_tc.OnGUI () (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/Map_tc.js:2409)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)



EDIT:

Came back to project today and it works now - Worldcomposser must have needed a restart after installing it.

 

Exactly the same image data is displayed in the WC map as the images for the area you export. You have to enable 'Map Parameters' tab to see your zoom level in the WC map, if you use the same zoom level for image export the results are exactly the same. So if you zoom in, in the WC map to the zoom level 19 you will notice you get the same white image for that area.

There are a few solutions for managing big area's with large texture resolution. You can export a very high image resolution:
1). Use streaming code to load/unload terrain tiles. There's dynamic loading kit on the Asset Store terrain tab, you can use to stream.
2). Use amplify texture 2 to stream large textures, this works great with WorldComposer exported images:
http://amplify.pt/unity/amplify-texture-2/
3). Use multi-resolution technique:

Nathaniel

 

This can have to do with you having a firewall or if you are in Web player build mode. Can you tell me more details about the internet connection you have and which build mode you use?

Nathaniel

 

Hello John,

I think this is because Reunion Island_combined2.raw doesn't exists (image slice needs _combined2.raw filename), because you might have saved as a new file. You can rename your file to this filename or disable the 'save new' option:



Nathaniel

 

Hello,

So I generated a heightmap and used the image editor tool to create a more detailed map (following your 24 hour demo since my alaska terrain im generating is around 32 km big.)

I then thought it would be a good idea to import the heightmap into world machine and add some erosion and such to make it more detailed, and thats where I run into problems. So, I try to import the original heightmap I generated before doing the image editing, but I have no luck, it is in the photoshop raw format, but it shows a red box inside of worldmachine on the file input box. I then tried the new combined2.raw file and got the same thing. Im sort of new to both of these programs, so Im sorry if i sound very foolish in this request for help.

Thanks!

 

Thanks for the reply!

I'm already aware of the amplify and the multi resolution trick.

Ideally I would do the 1) but with offline data (for personal use, not commercial use), that's my problem, I can't download the data because of the limitation of unity and lack of option of world composer (let's disregard the blank images, I can try with the road map).

World composer is a fantastic program and do as advertise so that's not the fault. So great job so far

However I would be greatly please if there was a way to import the data in a way that it is seamless over large data. I want to be able to travel on the whole island (where I was born) at 1:1 with the highest precision possible. Currently the best way to download the data is to make multiple area that fit the limitation. However the problem is the lack of snapping function between area, they tend to be misaligned so it's jarring to seamless transition between them (setting manually terrain neighbor through the script).

Do you have an option that either snap areas or divide a bigger area in smaller but correctly aligned to each other ? I'm trying to tile the island with 5x5km area and then stream them back as terrain. It would also help with mappity as it only (seems to) download data on a ~2.5km radius from the center of the area, it would effortlessly map the entire map with data.

Thanks!

 

It had saved correctly as_combined2.raw alright, issue was due to not restarting Unity after installing worldcomposser.
The shadow removal is fantastic, tried it on a huge island of 60sq miles, took almost 6hrs to process but result was worth it.

 

I'm using UFPS with this and grabbing from a town I grew up in. As I walk around the houses on the terrain image looks really small (walking around the buildings roof and looking down It really seems like the buildings are too small). Its not to scale with my character. Whats the best way to adjust the scale of the terrain before converting from image, and can anyone recommend some techniques on getting it as close to real size as possible. Ive tried putting a car to scale over the terrain image of a car in a parking lot and the scale on the terrain seems off. Does anyone use UFPS and have a right scale number for the maps? Thanks in advance.

 

Hello,

In WorldMachine you have to rename the heightmap.raw to heightmap.r16 for WM to be able to import it. Let me know if that works .

Nathaniel

 

Yes for large images it might take some time, can let it run overnight. It's faster then photoshop though, first we did shadow removal with photoshop with using the content filling for the 24 hour demo, however I was not able to edit higher then 32k images and it crashed my PC after some hours many times with out of memory, even when I had 32 GB internal memory. So that was a motive to make my own algorithm. With WC I made shadow removal streamed so it can run at any size of image and the results are better than with photoshop .

Nathaniel

 

The scale from WC should be correct with Unity's default scale: 1 Unity unity = 1 meter. Can you show screenshots of your character how it looks on the terrain? What you can do is put a cube on a car/house/road and scale it like I do in the images below that I just made with WC from Paris in France:

As you can see the house size is about 9.7m x 18.95m and the car size is 2mx4.75m which are correct sizes. Also WorldComposer works and is tested with map-ity (uses openstreet maps to create roads and buildings), and it fits perfectly on WC images:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/11779




Nathaniel

 

Yeah I think I was just tripping, walking around in the building it seems about right size except my doors which i got from standard door dimensions, so its probably just that.

 

So you will have nothing to dl massive terrain in bit?

 

You can download a massive area with very large image resolution. But since Unity is importing all the images into the project with the image importer, it's best to save the images outside your Unity project or save it as a raw file and combine it, then use amplify to stream it. With the multi resolution, you can't really make it seamless as the player is not supposed to leave the detailed inner area, which then alignment won't be an issue, as it's not visible. Also the terrain neighbor script only works on terrains that have the same heightmap resolution.

Nathaniel

 

Thanks for the answer, I Don't know if I understand correctly, as for example we can't download bigger area than 32k due to 4gb limitation, but then how I'm suppose to download the 19gb for a "continuous" terrain? I thought the 4GB limit was tied to area, but it seems like you are talking about project size itself.

I'll do some test and look at data about unity's 32bit limitations to see if I can grasp aspect of it.

 

You can download a 19gb area, but not use more then 32k image in one Scene. As the reason for saving outside Unity folder for big area's behond 32k, importing textures, Unity is leaking memory, so it's best to restart Unity after exporting textures with WC, then import in the project if you start Unity. This issue isn't in Unity5, as U5 has no 3gb memory limitation.

Nathaniel

 

Hi,

So, I'll start off from the beginning here, too make things easier to follow.

So I have a 30km by 30km world size, so I decided to follow the 24 Hour demo when creating the world.
Here's a pic of the settings, with a 4k heightmap and such.


I then imported the 4k heightmap into worldmachine, these are the settings.

As you can see, everything looks good. Now heres where things get tricky ,
this is the output settings on the heightmap.

So I exported to .r16 file type (later on I tried .raw but got the same result), And then went into terrain composer,
I created 2x2 4k terrain, and added a heightmap layer in which I began to import the heightmap created in World Machine.

As you can see, it shows that my heightmap is only 513 by 513, resolution. So im wondering how to export the heightmap at 4k, since I brought it inside world machine at 4k, Im confused why it will not export at 4k.

Thanks for reading!

 

Ok I was able to dl the raw file completely, is there a free soft outside of photoshop that can read it (huge file)?
I tried gimp and plug in and some other and they don't recognize the raw format

 

UPDATE:
my post above has been fixed and i found a solution, thanks!

 

Hello,

Glad you got it to work now . Think you found out that in WorldMachine you can change the export resolution in WM Menu -> World Commands -> Project World Parameters -> Normal Build Resolution.

Nathaniel

 

You can use WorldMachine to import a heightmap and split it into seperate tiles. You can do this with TerrainComposer as well, but TC is limited to Unity 32 bit. In Unity5 there's no limitation.

Nathaniel

 

Thanks but I'm not talking about the height map, I'm talking about image exported externally as image as raw to edit. Unless I misunderstood something again?

Also I truly think there is a bug, I don't know if its bing or world composer, but pas a longitude the map goes full dark then full white, it's distinct from no map who have nice little camera icon to tell you there is no image at that zoom level. It looks like an overflow.

 

Ah ok as for photoshop and editing a raw rgb image, you should be able to do a 32k x 32k.

Can you show a screenshot of the full dark/white issue?

Nathaniel

 

Yes I did 32k² But I specifically mention if someone knew if there other software (possibly free) outside of photoshop
I tried some like Ufraw but that didn't work (they use different photographic raw format ...)

I'll post images as soon as possible.

 

So you don't have photoshop? Or does photoshop not work with a 32k on your machine?

Nathaniel

 

(fixed previous problem)

wondering how to use shadow remover tool on island formation, as theres tons of water and I haven't been able to get it working.