GAIA - AAA terrain generator, procedural texturing, planting and scene creation

Teo, we are beta testers which means we have to respect Adam and only reveal what he has already revealed. We are limited in what we can say.

Gaia is not really a tool to fine tune your height map. You should do that elsewhere. You can make changes in the way the terrain looks but most of the control is in texturing and placing objects/vegetation on the terrain. That screenshot simply shows a way to help you do that.

For height maps, I highly recommend World Machine. Then use Gaia to augment WM's map. You can make changes to the height map with Gaia, but not with fine tuned control like you can with Unity's tools...although you can use those too. I can't say more..and wish I could..but you will learn more when it is released.

In the meantime, this is a tool that is being developed by a member of our community. Please realize he is not under contract to you so therefore, his time frame and the info he reveals is totally up to him. I am so grateful to people like Adam and all the other developers who take the time to make us what we need to use Unity, especially the terrain which needs help. A few months is nothing compared to other assets of this complexity. Wait patiently and all will be revealed. Then you can decide if it is what you want.

 

I personally like seeing all the pictures and any info that Adam posts. It's fun to see the progress. I'm monitoring this thread and will continue to do so until it's for sale.

 

I'm waiting for this tool as well. Looks amazing Adam. And if I can get easier better results than terrain composed I'm ready.

Question for @Adam how is that distance fog applied in some scenes? Like where the mountains in the distance look realistic with the blury bluefish fog ? Will we be able to get that result as well? I've tried playing with unity fog and maybe in doing it wrong it haven't got a good distance fog like that yet.

 

Hi Adam.

Are you married to Green and Red? They can potentially blend in with terrain tones, and Green and Red colour blindness is quite common. It's not immediately apparent to me, without looking closely at some of those nodes which are green and red, especially in the distance.

 

@TommyT the fog will be down to the lighting assets he's using

 

Guys, this tool is amazing and will blow you out of the water. It isn't the kitchen sink, meaning it isn't some savior of Unity terrain, but it does what it does very well. Lots of control over what it does and I think most of you will be thrilled.

Can't wait until Adam can show more.

 

So from the time you press a few clicks, what are some of the typical wait times till the results are visible? Can you folks say how progress is indicated? Can you see it populate the terrain in real time in the editor or this is a bake and show after?

I am trying to get a sense if this is an iterative approach or more of a plan well and bake thing?

If you can't say - that's fine too. ;D

 

No baking. I don't think Adam would mind if I answer this...or hope not anyway. You see it in real time in the editor. Like any other tool, it does pause a bit to make it's magic, but it is pretty fast. I am sure it depends on your terrain size and how much you are putting on the terrain, etc. A huge terrain might have a bit longer pause. Some of the guys have slower machines than I do so they may have difference answers.

It is not a brush system though, so not like Unity's tools where you brush stuff on the terrain and see it immediately...much better than that.

 

Regarding colour sensitivity or issues seeing them apart, the tool shown here is purely optional and easy to modify with say, numbers or such on it. It can be visualised in different ways and I only quoted your post so it's not lost in a sea of chatter

 

Does the water need to be placed manually, or does the initial generation do that as well?

 

Water is not part of Gaia. You have to supply your own and place it yourself.

 

There was a hole in my terrain and the expensive water I placed there drained out. Can I sue Gaia?

 

Better call Saul, since suing the entire planet is difficult.

 

That is amazing! I am just joining and it fascinates me to see what is out there to play with and modify, fantastic job Adam!

 

Maybe head directly to the Magratheans?

 

I'd sue the asset author who put the hole there in the first place

 

This feature is great, what's been difficult with other terrain generation systems is that it is hard to see what will happen until you start to output the terrain. I often work in low resolution when I'm trying to figure out what is going on, but even with that, it can take a long time between a tweak in your settings and seeing it output into your terrain. If I can quickly visualize what will happen before I hit the Start button, then the feedback loop will be much faster and I can maintain my motivation to finish the idea I had for that terrain more easily.

 

@AdamGoodrich if you're looking for a tool to help you pick better colours to use, I can recommend Coblis. I've used it in the past to ensure that a web design's colour scheme is still understandable and meaningful to those with colour blindness.

 

Or put the onus on the end user, it's only a couple of colour pickers they can use in prefs, and heck, maybe normal users will find this tweakable to their taste. That's what Unity basically does.

 

Hi, when would you expect this asset / tool to be ready, just curious.

 

Adam's said he's hoping for the end of the month, barring any external factors that cause a delay (real life issues, etc), but I'd rather wait for product that works from day one rather than rush it and have people have bad experiences, which is what we're trying to sort out in the beta

 

Cool, thanks.

 

How will terrains look from high altitude? e.g. for flight sims?
Can I try a beta for a flight sim project I'm working on?

 

It's unity terrains that Gaia produces so in the end the detail levels for high altitude views are controlled through unity's own settings

 

I would also say how your terrains look (high altitudes or otherwise) will be largely dependent on the shaders and textures you use, as well as your lighting setup. Terrain heightmaps and object placement help with the general shape and layout of your terrain, but the quality of the artwork and lighting you use to decorate it will play an arguably larger role in how good it looks.

 

I am with Hippo - I think you need to be talking with your level designer

It's standard unity terrain - so how good or bad it looks will depend on what you do with it.

Thanks - I have a blast creating them

To be honest this never even occurred to me - I will put something in place to address this.

There will be a bunch of pre-configured spawners that will do most of the heavy lifting - so you can press a button and wait of 5-10 seconds if you want... or...

You can run each spawner iteratively and see the result immediately. Most are sub second, but some are more intensive - such as texturing - and they take a little longer - it depends on the size of your terrain etc etc.

I make my settings iteratively and store them in different spawners. The i group them and run the lot with a single click. The nice thing about this is that when you change the terrain - everything just adapts to the new terrain.

Gaia is all about heightmaps. You can use it to create them from scratch, or add or subtract from what you already have. That said, as @Teila comments, its not a fine grained brush system like the unity system. You can use the Unity tools for that. Alternatively, if you are already happy with your heightmaps and you just want to texture, plant and position then the Spawning system can be used stand alone.

 

Keep in mind too, the time it takes Gaia to do things is also dependent on your hardware. So what is taking Adam sub seconds, may still take a few dependent on the quality of your gear you are running Unity on, the size of your terrain (or if not spawning an entire terrain, the size of your spawner area), etc. So processing times can be pretty subjective...

But the way the spawners work, you can have a terrain full of procedurally placed trees, grass, objects a lot faster than you might be used to now.

 

First of all I have to thank you Adam. It was about time to have a cool and simple AAA terrain asset. I am really looking forward to buy and use this Asset because TC was simply to complex and difficult to understand for me. As a hobbyist working after work on my project I want results fast and so much AAA as possible.

Since we were talking about holes some posts ago:
Is it possible to create holes in montains or earth? Because for TC / RTP it was pretty hard to create those.
I am sure that your answer will be that Gaia is using normal Unity Terrains so you should create holes like you would create those normally in Unity but perhaps there will be a feature / easier approach with Gaia? Like gaia using more ground hole textures if you want etc?
Also hoping that you will create some nice documentation and video tutorials after Gaia is realeased, so people like me can start with good explanations and showcases. Perhaps also exactly for this interesting points like how to add water / lakes, holes, good heightmaps etc.

Thanks a lot!
Ronny

 

@RonnyDance Yes, Gaia uses standard Unity terrains, so making holes is real pain. There are a couple of assets that can fudge it https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/terrain hole but we're really waiting on a new terrain system http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/official-new-terrain-system.255232 which will do holes (hopefully & don't hold your breath lol).

 

A couple of us have used Terrain Hole System with success on our Gaia terrains. Like Marcus said, the terrain you create with Gaia is standard Unity terrain. So any terrain tools that work with current Unity terrain should work with Gaia. The one thing I don't like about Terrain Hole System is you are basically painting a texture onto the cliff face and the way Unity applies the textures on cliff faces, it is almost impossible to get a hole the size that you really want. I'm wondering if I could get the exact size using some type of triplanar shader. The problem there would be I'd have to combine that shader and the one required by THS. But the good thing is, there is instructions for that in the THS docs. But again, like Marcus said elsewhere in his post, THS is pretty much fudging the hole thing to make it work (I think RTP does it in a similar way as well).. Would be nice if Unity would just let us actually cut holes in the terrain or form out proper caves..

BTW, the stretched holes are still workable.. You just have to hide the part of the hole you don't need with rock/cliff meshes.

 

Will it be possible to import an existing heightmap and splatmap with this and modify the result, as well as use the spawning functions of Gaia on that, or will everything have to be done from scratch in Gaia?

 

You can use Gaia on existing terrains..

 

Yep, I've used my own heightmap image, and used Gaia for splat, detail, and trees. You can use any individual parts that you want.

 

i remember Adam said spawner can be used at run time, but if we use it to spawn large structure like for example temple/ city prefab will gaia make the terrain stick under it by using some raycast to determine height?

 

The pictures look awesum but are you using speed tree in your asset?

 

Adam uses Speed Tree, as do some of the other beta testers. I can't afford any (yet - note to anyone from SpeedTree reading this - donations are greatly accepted ), so I'm using regular unity trees in pics you see from me

You can use any tree you like that unity will accept into the terrain settings, or you can spawn them as individual game objects if you like.

 

The only thing missing here is a jetty or two and some fishing boats

 

That lower house needs to watch out for High Tide

 

Will this work for you? - https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/29170

 

They're already part of unity 5

 

Hi, do I need speedtree to use those or can I just place those into a scene?

 

You don't need speed tree to use them in your scene, only if you want to create new trees for yourself

 

Thanks

 

Hi, is the plan still to release in August?

Thanks

 

Would this work well with GAIA?

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/36335

 

Am working very hard on getting release out in next few weeks.

The past 2 weeks have been spent working on usability - here are a couple of shots showing the wizard style manager and visualiser.

The manager essentially allows you to click a few buttons and get a scene that is fully configured and ready to go. I am working with some other asset authors as well to add and configure their assets as well (see Plugins in step 5).

The vision for Gaia is to make it possible for any skill level to quickly get a nice scene up and running so that you can focus on game development rather than environmental generation.



The example i was exploring in the visualiser below was what settings i would need to get a nice snow texture - green is where it would be thickest, red thinnest / not at all.

I am not sure. If they use the standard method of controlling where the grass would go, then it will work just fine. Will look at this after release. It may need a custom integration.

Yes - there will be pre-configured defaults that use these with the launched product.

 

@AdamGoodrich
WOW, this is coming together nicely especially for us non coder
Thanks

 

on the ressource Editor window we can see slider for "metallic" & "smoothness", does that mean that it will be tied to only one shader? if we cannot change the shader will you provide mobile version of the shader?

 

There are no special shaders as I am not a shader programmer. To automate the process of terrain creation and texturing I take a complete replica of all data stored in the terrain - including the data attached to the terrain textures, and this is what you can see in the screen shot.

The output from Gaia is a stock standard Unity scene. The only thing that's different from doing it manually is that it now takes minutes to do what would have previously taken weeks of an environmental artists time.

 

Oh this is looking so good. Keep plugging away there and get this for sale. Can't wait.