[TerrainEngine] Voxel Terrain : Smooth,Cubic,2D,Hexagonal Infinite Procedural Terrain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJCZBE1PzM8
-also made with this plugin?

And if so:
Do you paint the the terrain height and / or the terrain texture/color using brushes or similar?

And
How will "terrain destruction" behave - destroying things in blocks?

And finally:
Is there physics, like if I destroy the block under some other blocks, will they fall down?

-a potential buyer.

 

That's not really a valid argument. otherwise EVERY SINGLE ASSET would cost in the $1000's.. The $3500 is NOT for the asset, its for his 6 months of personal coding help. He could very easily sell this in the asset store for $200-400 without the coding support and STILL get plenty of income and further his development with both "versions".

He obviously doesn't want anyone but studios to use it. That is obvious. Just like the guy the developed the asset you also mentioned.. "just a single guy in his PJ's" that doesn't want any other "just a single guys in his PJ's" to use it. Its all BullSRHE$R#!

 

Personally I don't think Unity should allow non-asset store post to be made here.. But that's their business choice

 

I can't believe that this discussion is really taking place. So what now, if you have a good asset you are not allowed to sell it for a price bigger than 100 dollars?

Based on this logic, we should all write some mails to Adobe and Autodesk. I mean, there are other free or cheaper options to Photoshop or Maya, but I want these products and I want them cheap! I'm an indie developer and even though I dream at success I want to sacrifice / spend as little as possible.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to come hard at anyone, but the simple fact that this developer is verbally sanctioned because of his price tag choice is ridiculous.
If you don't want/like it or if it's too expensive you can just move to the next thread. It's as simple as that.

 

Wow, that looks incredible! How much of that can be customized? As in can I change all the models of the trees/plants generated or add my own water shaders or scripts to the water?

Also does it have to be procedural or can I set the size then shape the world my self? I'd much rather use this than Unitys terrain, which is awful, as I'd be able to do awesome caves and such with this without silly tricks or loading screens.

 

I agree 100%. If you think it's too expensive, don't buy it, that's all. The price is chosen by the author only. If it is too expensive, he won't sell it and will lower its price. One thing is certain: he won't lower its price just because you want to! You know, this is just one of the principle of liberalism.

Thanks Tethys! Now I have some good information to decide what I'm going to do. In all cases I need to save some money for now

 

@Krileon - All of it can customized. You get Triplanar shaders that of course can all have their textures changed out (including water), tree processors, grass processors, detail processors all let you put in whatever art assets you would like. Here is an image of 4 different worlds we are working on (they are just saved biomes). Each one has different fluids, textures, grasses, plants and trees.

 

Wow, that looks amazing. I'm definitely picking this up for my next game.

Edit: Your game also looks awesome. I found it on Greenlight so I'll be eagerly watching for its release! So I'm double sold! (on your game and on dyox's Terrain Engine)

Edit: I saw a video on Greenlight (the second one) where you drag and rotate full prefab chunks to place in the world. Is that a part of Terrain Engine or something specific to your game?

 

Gratitude!

Yeah, that is actually a custom thing we wired up but our current TE build also came with tools to do that. For example Dyox has it scripted on the controller he included for putting trees or other prefabs on the terrain, if your using a processor, so you can rotate objects before placing them. The TerrainEngine package is so robust and filled with useful tools that we still are finding new stuff on a regular basis.

 

My response was not to how much he sells it for. He can ask whatever he wants for it. That is his business. My response was to the comment I quoted. This whole argument of well pay someone to code it for you it will cost a TON more. Duh!! That is with any software, and an invalid claim to a price point. Just like it I wanted a cell phone. I can't stand any of them on the market, so that means I should pay someone to develop one for me? Seriously...? Adding code support to any engine, is just a way to force a high price point, and prevent anyone except those with financial backing to obtain them. Why do you think all the Big "AAA" engines are in the hundreds of thousand to millions? They provide integration support... Or, they do that to prevent hobbyists or independent developers from creating anything with it. ie.. Less competition.

As far as with the OP is concerned. I think he does it to control who/what game gets released with his "engine". Just be honest with why you price things. That's all I am saying.

 

Awesome, thanks for all the info. This is absolutely on my to buy list for my next game.

 

Would it be possible to get an interactive demo build?

 

There's some webdemos/downloads in this thread, though they are more focused on the construction part of the toolkit rather than on the terrain aspect. Other than you could wait for a game like Astral Terra to play with it yourself.

 

Haha thanks for mentioning us David. Yep Astral Terra is supposed to be available in Steam mid March but we are waiting on the Terrain Engine update v8 with construction kit before we move forward so that date is not solid and may be pushed back depending on how much the Construction Kit gets pushed back.

 

Yeah, my use case would be run-time generating very large worlds, ala Minecraft. @Tethys, I'd love to chat with you about your experience with it so far. If you could spare some time, please email me: steve at unknownworlds dot com. Cheers!

--Steve

 

Greetings Steve. Yep, that sounds fine, I will email you today. The company you work with has done some impressive work - I remember reading about Natural Selection. Nice to meet you.

 

Thanks! Your game is looking quite impressive as well - I would love to compare notes. The game I'm working on is recently announced: http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/

 

How well does this integrate with assets like Sunshine, UniStorm, and Skyshop? Idea is to have realistic lighting and weather effects.

 

Just wanted to ask again, is there a way to get a demo demonstrating the open-world use case? I see the user-building demo, but the size of that world is very limited. We are making an open world game, and we need Minecraft-like generation support. Ie. on the fly generation with persistence to disk, LOD (Minecraft doesn't really do this I guess), and multi-threaded voxelizing/meshing.

 

Hello.

@Krileon :
I'm using Unistorm on video. I'm not sure about Sunshine, if shaders need to be rewrited, you will have to modify TerrainEngine triplanar shaders. I don"t know Skyshop.

@Stevesan :
You can contact me by email or by skype. I can provide you a Win32 demo. World size depend of your graphic card, but it's voxel , you will never have a far range view like unity terrain. Generation is multi-threaded, procedural, infinite and in realtime. You can not modify or create a terrain in Editor mode. Only in playmode , but you can code your tools and save the terrain.
The terrain is saved as file on a folder. A generic save system allow you to save anything you need with the terrain. Like NPC positions, IA states, etc.
There is no terrain LOD, only GameObject with fading batching system.
There is an occlusion system that disable hidded chunks (with water, grass, plants)

About TerrainEngine V8, it's still in dev and no date is announced.
A new feature will come with it :
-Procedural Waterfall and Rivers :

 

OK when you say there is no terrain LOD, you mean you have no way of generating lower-triangle versions of the terrain mesh? Is this a fundamental limitation?

 

Some way exist for Terrain LOD but it's not implemented for the moment.
LOD generate a lot of garbage and use more CPU. I chose to not work on it.

TerrainEngine V8 is still WIP. I have some new screens :
-Client/Server system ( for futur multiplayer support )
-Advanced Procedural waterfall and Rivers
-Memory + FPS optimizations
-Advanced GUI with :Select, Apply to all, Depth/Height, Noise Object placement, and more






Realtime procedural terrain (not premade or pregenerated)

 

WOW! Boooya! That last screenshot just looks so pretty! Well done sir!

 

I'm constantly amazed at just how much better this keeps looking. I kind of have to echo some of the existing sentiment though, a lot of the unity crowd is made up of hobbyists, I'd be ecstatic if there were a cheaper, non-commercial / no source license available.

 

Why dont you put this on the assetstore?

 

@Tethys : Boooyaaa

@Doddle : Thank you, i agree a major part are hobbyists but if this pack was free/cheaper TerrainEngine does not exist. It requires a lot of time and of work.

@paawanbahl : I do not agree with the User Agreement of asset store. And i want know buyers/projects personnaly for a better support.

I've made a new video of world exploration : You can see different biomes, constant FPS with new procedural waterfall and the fast loading time, video begins at the same time as the game starts.

 

As always, great work on the updates!

I have a question about terraforming and digging into the land. I'm not sure if you've seen EQ Landmark's voxel engine but I know you can use a square shape and cut a perfect square chunk out of the land or add perfect squares to the land. Can this engine do that?

Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pobfz2uit9c

If this engine could do that.. then it is perfect and something I'd be happy to purchase. Basically I need players to be able to not only modify the land with voxels.. but also be able to build houses/objects with those same voxels.

 

i love the look of this, i probably can't afford it (i don't know how much it is, but from what i see in the discussion it's a lot), but it looks fantastic, i'm sure it's worth the price, my only hope is that you don't one day abandon it like several other awesome things have been, after all, i wouldn't want to miss out on something like this if i am someday able to get it.

also, i have a few questions, how fast is it compared to unity terrains?, can it be saved or does it delete any unloaded sections?, how fast does it run on average?, can the terrain be remodeled more neatly? (all videos seem to use a cube that creates perfect cube holes), can the terrain be remodeled en masse inside the scene view?.

or in other words, what would you say the minimum requirements for someone to run a game with this engine?, like with a full scale land with water flowing, trees and foliage, all that stuff, and if it's not too much to ask, with all the usual stuff games have like enemies and logic).

and finally, is it possible to easily do cool stuff like in these videos and have the changes to the scene saved? (the scene view is a bit awkward, your system seems much easier to use).

sorry if i come off as irritating for all these questions.

 

Yes it's possible to create shapes with terrain like perfect sphere , cube, and modify the terrain for terraforming. TerrainEngine just doesn't support texture fading between different voxels type.

@SVGK : Thank you. TerrainEngine have smaller distance of view compared to unity terrain, and more vertices/tri (it's voxel).
Yes, terrain is saved on binary file compressed with zlib.
"how fast does it run on average?" : Depend of your computer , your terrain settings. But you can change all settings to make terrain usable on low computer.
" can the terrain be remodeled more neatly" : Yes. You but you need to code your tool. I provide example with basic modificator (cube , sphere, wave, line)
"can the terrain be remodeled en masse inside the scene view" : The terrain is not visible on scene view. You can only edit the terrain in play mode. TerrainEngine is a procedural terrain generator.

The minimum PC system requirements :
-Dual core CPU
-At least 2 GB main system memory
-Graphics card with at least 512 MB of VRAM and support for DirectX 10

Recommended system requirements :
-Quad core CPU
-4 GB memory
-GeForce 600 series or Radeon 7000 series


I'd like to introduce a new feature of the V8 : Procedural Floating islands and Waterfalls

It's an early preview of the new algorithm

You can control all aspects of islands , top height , perturbation, down height and foliage, frequency, distance from ground etc.

 

right, so this engine is only supportive of randomly generated games like Minecraft or Astral Terra, or can it be used for set in place worlds like most games use? (plus the cool damageable environments part of this engine).

and thanks for the other answers, it's a really cool engine by the looks of it, though for my purposes it wouldn't be useful at all if it can't be used for static environments, my personal suggestion would either be a "save for/in scene" option while in play mode, or a "generate in scene" option and ability to edit while in scene view, though i don't know if either is possible since i'm no expert, i don't see any reason why not.

is it at all possible to somehow save the terrain for having non-random environments?.

 

well?, is it possible to somehow use this terrain in scene view and not just at runtime?, i'm sure if you did this a good few more people would buy it (with a price tag of 3000, i imagine each purchase is quite bountiful), since destructible terrain and automatically generated terrain are both extremely useful things that could have far more applications without being limited to minecraft-like games (automatic terrain is mostly just laziness or lack of artistic landscape creation ability, destructible terrain is just really cool and can be used for setpiece moments, and general polish, like a giant leaving footprints in the ground when he walks).

or....

are you already planning something like this?.

 

In the thread it is already mentioned:

"You can not modify or create a terrain in Editor mode. Only in playmode , but you can code your tools and save the terrain. The terrain is saved as file on a folder. A generic save system allow you to save anything you need with the terrain. Like NPC positions, IA states, etc."

It sounds like the workflow for a defined (non procedural) would be to have a live playmode that is like a 'godmode' for placing things and altering world, and then having a real play mode that is published for players

It seems like that is happening in this Xeno Galaxies demo?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZkG71U_e8c

My question is how you do procedural pick-ups, AI, etc in the infinite world. Would these just be "pooled gameobjects placement" or in the biome itself?

Dyox I sent an email, let me know if you didn't get it

 

bump

 

@SVGK : No it's not possible to use the terrain in scene view, You can work on the terrain directly in play mode with your tools to sculpt the terrain and save it.

@stickleZ : Exactly. Objects are proceduraly spawned like Monsters, and IA/Waypoints can be generated proceduraly too. Or you can save your hand spawned objects/waypoints directly in game if you don"t use an infinite world. For an infinite world you can use : GameObjects Processor (used for trees) and param values to spawn any objects depending of : Height, Biome type, Noise, Terrain normal, Terrain type, Underwater or not, rivers close to point, etc..

I'd like to introduce a new TerrainEngine feature:
-Terrain Dynamic Batching. A new smart system combining chunks to reduce drawcalls and working in tandem with occlusion culling.
Drawcall reduction : 40 to 70%, Fps multiplied by 2 to 3.
The batching is multi-threaded and fast.

In Game result : 60 to 100 FPS (tested with GTX 660,670 and 780)​

 

Oh Terrain Batching, great job! We should see a nice boost in performance!

 

Sold! This looks perfect for a project i've been planning for a long time.

 

were is the download

 

I'm looking for the download also
If it is not so expensive. I'd love to test it

 

You must contact the developer directly for licensing. You should've read the thread before asking this, btw.
The plugins is for serious developers only as I understand is somewhere around 2500$ per license.

 

Hello, yes TerrainEngine is for commercial product.
There is no download.

I would like to introduce you some new features.

TerrainEngine V8.09 :
-New Procedural Caves system. Create beautiful caves fully explorable and customizable.
Caves are generated by level, from bottom of mountains to top. Cave ground is made for players/vehicules and cavern are connected. Cave entries are customizable height, size,etc
- Dynamic light system, detect when camera is undercave and fade lights/ambient. Use TerrainEngine Raycasting system, so no colliders are needed.
-Optimizations : Memory / Garbage / Loading Time : only 1 to 3seconds and game is ready to play.
-A lot of new params and GUI to add objects to biomes
-New Dynamic terrain batching.
A smart system that combine chunks into one mesh to reduce drawcalls. 40 - 70% reduction, fps multiplied by 2.

 

I don't have the money or business motivation to purchase this product, but I think it's probably the most advanced plugin on these forums.
It's one of the few plugins where, even though I don't own it, I still follow each new version and check the thread.

Very good work here!

 

Money and business motivations are needed, but if you are like me an experimented managed languages programmer from the business world you get something else : access to a complete solution of professional quality csharp / unity game source code design patterns.

Optimized and component oriented at the same time, properly using multithreading, binary serialization, activating collliders just around the game entitites etc ... Really worth it in my case. Learned so much things in there that can be applied to way more than voxel terrain !

 

The new caves system is a really welcome and great addition that helps complete the framework! Now we can have different minerals to mine spawning underground in caves with hidden treasures and other things that players would have to go searching for that can't be found on the surface. And of course it looks really neat too!

 

Can this be purchased or not????…if it can be, explain about the payment process please..

 

Agreed with above. Can this be purchased? I sent an email to dev but no response. I'd also like a demo version to make sure its going to do as required for my projects prior to committing 3k (which I am happy to do provided it works for me). Please advise.

 

Haven't figured that out just yet, the noise stuff still hasn't clicked - but apart from that it's looking pretty cool so far!

 

Yes, please contact me by email :
"fastmarchingcubes@gmail.com"

@adzza : Can you send me another email or send me your email by PM. thank.

Than you tethys and fivearchers.

Also here are few screens of the next feature : ( WIP V8.12 )

 

Here is the new video : Procedural Volcanoes V8

 

Any price ideas?

 

Dyox, if I may ask, please reply to my messages - a lot depends on your answer...