Assets [Outdated thread] Map Magic

Looks really nice! I have to ask also what are vegetation Assets that you are using in the scenes and are you using some post image/processing effects?

 

Thanks!

These are Voxeland nature assets. They will be shipped with MapMagic too.

I use my own image postprocessing shader. It will not be included with MM Briefly it uses a bit of color burn and a bit of desaturation. PS These effects could be noticed only on screenshots, web demo has no postprocessor.

 

I understand!

 

In my opinion, rather than rushing your implementations, adding a simple example of how one might add a simple custom spline-based generator and similar would provide much more product value.

 

Well, I suppose you are right. Anyways, making advanced custom generator tutorial and docs would not come amiss.

And speaking about docs: here is the unaccomplished MapMagic manual I'm working on. And since I'm not a native speaker (as you may notice) anybody is welcome to do any proofreading, make comments or give a feedback. The most active and helpful participant will get a free coupon

 

I think you mentioned this already about importing heightmaps, however would it be possible to export a heightmap/normal map images generated by MapMagic? That could be a really useful feature, especially the normalmap for RTP shaders. It's looking great so far btw!

 

Soon the time comes for the beta, so I invite everyone who are interested in plugin to fill-in Beta Test Sign-up Form.

NightAvail, Thanks!
Any generator's output could be viewed and exported as an image file. This image could be processed with xNormal or other tool to make a normal map. It's not automated yet. Let's see if there will be a demand for this feature, and maybe I'll make an automation in scope of MapMagic.

 

I sen you my request, i feel stupid for my english, Try to ignore it xD

 

I'm pleased to report that MapMagic Beta Test just started. If you properly filled the sign-up form then you should receive an email with the Beta version attached.

And in honor of this special day I'd like to publish the new video for the Asset Store page. I think it's the best MM video so far

 

Awesome video, Wright, I'm glad to test Map Magic, it's potential is limitless. You will be receiving our feedback next week, bro, keep up the good work! I have a question for you: Is Voxeland implementation on your short-term goals?
Thanks for your work!

 

Thanks! Very pleased to hear that you are enjoining MM.

Here is my roadmap for forthcoming versions:

• 1.01 - fix all possible drawbacks that could be found in initial version
• 1.1 - feature: using MM as a tool for editing already existing terrains (to plant grass, scatter stones, place trees or anything else automatically on manually sculpted standard terrain)
• 1.2 - Voxeland compatibility (both of plugins will require an update)
• 1.3 - first spline algorithms

These plans are subject to change, I've got to hear the feedback from the first users to decide where I should move exactly.

Btw here are some more screens for Saturday:

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HI! I'm taking the first looo to the plugin and it's incredible. I will try it in deep this week.

Thanks for the beta!

 

btw what do you guys think about the plugin name? On the one hand it is settled among this modest community, on the other - there is a chance to change it before the release. Is "Map" associated more with textures than game maps and levels (or at least topographic map)?

 

for the name of this plugin, I vote magicland.

 

Due to the game jam in the weekend i almost missed the video update! Oh mine, it seems that you did create worldmachine inside unity.. And you didnt stop there! Multiple terrain support, procedural texturing and procedural object placement... I am speechless!

For the name instead of map, i would try to add the word terrain in there, it will help with seo

 

I've been tested Map Magic beta and it's really interesting and powerful. However I think that I could do my best with Voxeland integration. We are making soon some videos showing our basic "climbing" system adapted to Map Magic terrains. You will be receiving our feedback as soon as we have some free time to test in-depth your plugin. We are waiting your news!
PS: Sincerely I think "Map Magic" is a nice name.

 

This plus the dungeon and architecture generators on the way would be a great combination. Mix with Morph3D/UMA and you basically have procedural everything visual

 

+1 for Voxeland integration

I'm testing it and it's a great solution. Congratulations!
I think MapMagic is a cool name but it does not address all the things it does.
How would you describe it in one sentence? "It's an environment toolkit"? "It's a level toolkit"?
These question could foster a more descriptive name.

R.

 

I'm really pleased to report that the new Beta is available for test. It brings these features and fixes:
- terrain apply was split in several frames to reduce apply lag
- texture (splat), grass and objects output generators are now made as singletons to simplify their use
- all objects are now use object pool
- new Preview Window and Preview On Terrain approaches: now they are called through context menu
- generator context menu: Reset to default
- graph scroll with drag-Alt and zoom with drag-Ctrl/Cmd for laptop users
- new skin for pro theme
- miscellaneous bug fixes: quick double undo, spikes on 4 terrains weld, layers buttons icons, erosion clamp, etc
- removed warnings on open preview window and context menus
- some generators and parameters rename (Inline to Slope, Splats to Textures, Forest in-outs)
- minor display changes

This version was sent to everyone who sent me back any feedback. If someone else wants it - please use the beta form (you can just enter your email leaving fields blank if you have already filled it).

And I'd like to thank all of the testers who dedicated their time to make the plugin better. Their responses are vital for product improvement. And althoughI can't always write in response being busy with bug fixes and plugin improvements, I always try to pay attention to the feedback. Thanks, good job!

 

There are a couple on new tutorials that might be of some assistance to the testers:

• one is devoted to the two basic generators: Noise and Voronoi, and the most widely used adjust generator - the Curves
  
• another is introducing working with textures and Slope and Cavity generators

Enjoy )

 

Hello Wright! Thanks for the beta. I have a problem with the raw input generator.
When i use the node, i have a lot errors in the console. Sorry for my bad english.

 

OUTER GAMER, thanks for your report. It can really be helpful. But there's something that can make it more correct:

1. It should be sent to mail@denispahunov.ru - I hope that you've encountered this address before filling a form. I'm not sure that everyone on forums is interested to know that bug from the closed beta version.
2. I need some kind of hint about those errors. Any clue would help, but I would be very glad to see the quote of the first error from the console and a description of the steps you took that caused an error.

I guess it's a known bug, but I have to see the error to be sure. Btw thanks for testing and looking forward for your further reports on my email!

 

Hi Wright, question about Map Magic. After we create the terrain, would we be able to modify the terrain with Unity's built in terrain tools? Or does Map Magic come with it's own set of tools, that allows you to manually modify the terrain after it's generated?

 

Once the terrain is generated you can do anything you like - sculpt it, paint textures (using the standard Unity terrain tools), move, delete and place new objects, etc. You can even modify some of the terrains (the "pinned" ones), and let the MapMagic generate the others in playmode, to create, for instance, a custom town surrounded by auto-generating woods.

 

This looks absolutely great

 

Great work.

 

SAOTA, lazygunnThanks! I really appreciate your support!

 

Looks awesome. I have looked at quite a few of the options and this one really looks great. The tutorials show some of the huge potential for this generator. I am really liking what Im seeing.

Keep up the good work. Hope to see something on the asset store soon

 

Now as a release draws near (I plan to release the plugin this month, February), I'd like to take the last chance to change the name. Please vote for the name you like at the top of this page.

sharp911, thanks! Glad you are interested in the Map Magic (or whatever it will be finally called)!

 

Maybe not amazing or anything but done quickly. Went will something a bit more odd

 

@Wright You are welcome, and this image is exactly the look I want to get and dont want to use third party generators.

 

any chance to see reduce in polycount like decimation Ultimate Terrains

 

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kilik128, MM is not a terrain engine like Ultimate Terrains or Voxeland. It uses standard terrains, and as a consequence the standard terrain lod technique. It's not the zbrush-style decimation, but it works fine.

 

yes i hope win the beta i fighting with worldstreamer and worldmachine at this time
amazing fog and cloud !you got here

 

And finally MM is pending review in the Asset Store.

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Hooooooray!

Unity Asset Store package 'Map Magic - 1.0' has been accepted. This means that Map Magic is now officially released and available at the Asset Store. I'd like to thank all the thread participants - with your support and encourage you could make it happen! And thanks volunteer testers - again - for helping in polishing the plugin. It would be really great if some of you could share Map Magic experience or leave a feedback in a new forum thread!


To celebrate the launch of Map Magic, it will be launched at the special introductory price of just $35. After the first update, it will return to its regular price of $55.

And since it's no longer work-in-progress I'd like to welcome everybody at the new thread at the Asset Store section. I will be glad to see the posts of the old acquaintances!

 

Broken Demo Scenes?

Pretty much the first thing I check when I purchase an asset are the demo scenes, for an indication of what the asset is capable off if used correctly. Both Demo scenes in MapMagic though seem to have issues.

DemoSceneGui pretty much does nothing and complains that the scene is missing a full screen camera.

DemoScene does work, however, it suffers from extreme pop up. Whole mountain ranges just pop in to view, as do most of the assets. Unity also gives numerous warnings for the tree prefabs "xxxxxx must use the Nature/Soft Occlusion shader. Otherwise billboarding/lighting will not work correctly." Which strikes me as correct since the trees seem to be totally unaffected by fog giving a very unrealistic look.

 

Did you notice what the error says? Was it something about "the GUI scene could not be loaded because it was not added to the build settings"? Have you tried to follow it's advice and try to add the scene in build?

I'm aware that bringing GUI in a separate scene caused a considerable misunderstanding. It is the right way to make a GUI, but I think I'll merge these scenes to make it all a bit simpler. Thanks for pointing that out.

Here's a quick fix.

 

@Wright Hi Wright, and thank you for the info and fix, it is appreciated. I was wondering if you have any advice about the shader issue, should I switch the trees back to the Nature/Soft Occlusion shader as also advised by Unity?

 

Personally I don't like Soft Occlusion shader, just because it cannot receive shadows. Trees glowing in the shade of the mountain can ruin all the picture. I think it's unfair to force using this shader by spamming a warning in the console.
I don't know what I'll do to get rid of this warning: maybe I'll switch all the tree materials to soft occlusion and make a downloadable demo scene "that looks exactly as a demo".

You can try switching to soft occlusion yourself to see how it looks. Just remember to rename "Trees" folder to something like "Trees Ambient-Occlusion" because this shader requires a meshes from a folder that contains the name "Ambient-Occlusion"

 

ok question. It looks great, but what about the ability to blend into different terrain types... or biomes if you will? All of these procedural generation tools are great, but they don't offer much variance in the terrains yah know? Don't get me wrong, very nice... but we're going to explore mountains forever, or islands forever, somewhat just like voxeland, which will get boring.

 

Here are epics in my roadmap:
- Implementing spline support and a spline-to-mesh feature so MapMagic will be able to generate roads and rivers.
- Implementing biomes
- MapMagic as an editor tool: teach the plugin to work with already existing terrains. To scatter objects, to paint splatmaps according to terrain incline or cavity, to apply erosion, to plant terrains with grass, etc.
- Integration with Voxeland.

I hope that sooner or later they all will be implemented, it's only a matter of those which will go first. As far as I can say biomes and voxeland support are the most requested features. So probably biomes are not far off.

 

2All: I've already announced it in an Asset Store thread, but since this thread is still alive I'll reproduce it here:

Map Magic got a Free Evaluation Version.

This version is fully functional with two limitations:

• It should be used for evaluation purposes only. The project build is not possible with it. To make a build remove all the plugin files.
• Evaluation version has a save limitation: although the node graph could be saved, it could not be edited after the load.

Download

 

Hello! I was trying out Map Magic today and it looks great! Good work!

Just some thoughts:

When I was using it, I couldn't find a way to generate many terrains at once.
It seems like my options are "generate one terrain" or "generate infinite terrain".
I was hoping to generate a large island of size 16384 composed of many terrains of size 16.
This is what I'm using currently for my networked terrain.

Following that, I'd also like to have the island shape persist between generated terrain.
I think this can be done with a custom generator that depends on the chunk coordinates, right?
Chunks in the center will have a high height while chunks on the outer edges have a lower height.
When height is really low, the water plane will be draw on top to surround the island in water.

Lastly, my terrains have a bottom rock layer that players can dig down to.
I think since Map Magic would ideally generate my upper height map, it should also generate this rock height map.
I'm not sure if it's already possible to do this, but I'd like to get another generated height map into a script.
This would be separate from the height map of the terrain.

 

Thanks!

A new MapMagic object has one terrain pinned by default, but you can add new terrains by pressing "Pin terrains" button.

Do you really need to set size of you terrain to 16 or do you mean that your island will consist of 16*16 terrains?

You can use raw input generator to determine the base shape of you island - raw map could be scaled up to cover all of the square of 16*16 (or any other number you use) terrains.

It's better to blend your upper and lower heightmaps with Blend Generator using Max parameters. In this case you will not get an overhead by rendering invisible lower terrain.

 

Thanks for the quick response!

I've learned how to pin terrains now and have been experimenting with RAW images.
However, my RAW image does not have enough resolution for the terrain and is creating terraces.
When a pixel goes from let's say color (1,1,1) to (2,2,2) I get a huge increase in height.
I thought I could smooth this out by using some filters such as Blur, but...
Every time I try to use Blur with Raw Input my Unity freezes for 5 minutes.

 

What is your RAW image resolution? Some users experienced up to 10 minutes lags on serializing big raw files when MM object is selected. Right now it's fixed and new version is pending review, but here is a quick fix: deselect MM object in hierarchy after opening MM editor.

 

Hey Wright! You mention in your description, letting MapMagic do the hard work and you detail in the key places...

...if the world is all procedurally generated, how would you go about creating a world like Skyrim for example with unique locations scattered around, miles apart? Am I misunderstanding what you mean by detailing key places?

Thanks man!

-Steven

 

You can "pin" some of the terrains, making them always exist in playmode. These terrains, originally generated by Map Magic, could be modified in any way you want. They are saved with a scene and do not generate in a game.

By default MM starts with one initially pinned terrain. If you will move a camera in a playmode you can see that it always persists.

Here I've made a short gif-tutorial describing the concept of pinned terrains:

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so with a pinned terrain possibly you could create your own small "biome" essentially? I want to get this, but I definitely fear travelling around the same style of terrain for miles and miles... players want some variation (as it would possibly be used in a project already released on steam)


So far you're the only person to come even close to terrain engine (made by dyox, is also $8000 eu), the community is desperately looking for a solution close to what he has made, and this is almost close.