Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

Hello,

For the workflow between WorldComposer, TerrainComposer, RTPv3 and WorldMachine you can read the '24 hour demo - How we made it' documentation.

1). You can use TerrainComposer for this, as RTP is mainly a terrain rendering solution not a terrain creation solution.
2). This is possible, but you need to do photoshopping on the heightmaps and satellite image for the stitching.
3). This very much depends on the resolutions and the fastest solution is to use meshes. Also RTP3 is for desktops not for mobile.
4). You can use T4M (Terrain for Mobile) Asset for this.
5). http://indiedevspot.azurewebsites.net/2014/03/12/optimizing-mobile-games-in-unity/

Nathaniel

 

Hello Nathaniel,

I guess you didn't notice my previous post...
Regards,

hlx

 

Hello,

Ah yes I forgot to answer.

1). 'Height' is a ray cast. 'Hit' is a sphere cast, with 'Ray Radius Scale' as a parameter.
2). Can you explain for what situation you want this cast?
3). Yes this is possible and will add it to the feature requests of the next TC update.

Nathaniel

 

What is the best way to limit placement of objects/trees/grass to certain coordinates?

Do you need to first create an image or heightmap to mask out an area, or is there someway to simply enter in coordinates that I'm missing?

Thanks!

 

Hi Nathan

Thanks for the reply
I'm watching your terraincomposerproceduraldemo-tutorial part 1 video, and was wondering how to get the auto preview works after clicking generate heightmap. I clicked the auto button on the bottom right but it's not working.
Also how do i export the terrain to mesh(fbx or obj) exportable to 3ds max , rather than terrain .asset using mesh convert and how do i reconvert modified mesh back to terrain

Hay

 

Hello Nathaniel. When I try to build my scece I get a few errors while unity tries to compile the script ("Error building Player because scripts had compiler errors").
I am currently working on Unity 5b14 on OSX.
Thanks.

 

Hello,

The best way for this is using an image as a mask.

Nathaniel

 

Hello Hay,

Shift click the 'Generate' button to enable/disable auto generate. The auto button is for the generating speed, on auto it will generate and keep the frame rate at the set amount, so in Unity editor you can still continue to work while generating and in runtime the game can still run while generating. If you disable auto it will generate at a fixed set speed.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

Are those errors related to TerrainComposer? Can you send a screenshot of the Unity console with the errors you get?

Nathaniel

 

Hi,

I have managed to get the Unity terrain as a mesh in the scene, but there is no associated file for the mesh and i cant import it to another project.

Is there a procedure to save the mesh to the disk as obj or fbx ?

Thanks

 

Hello,

Terrain meshes are saved in a folder of your choosing (see screenshot) as an .asset file. You can export and import these into other projects.

Nathaniel

 

Thanks, i will check it out.

 

What's the ocean / water in the island demo of RTP3.... Is it Triton?

Any news on Horizon/ON. I really look forward to that one...

 

Hello again.
A screenshot of the errors is linked bellow.
I tried to fix the scripts myself (changing the AddComponent format), but as I fix the lines of code, I get bombarded with lots more errors.


F.

 

In the Island demo there's a custom ocean/water solution used that is programmed by Tom, and this is not available for public (you can read in the video description).

As for HorizON, Peter and Tom are working on it at the moment, and this will be hopefully released this week.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

I will take a look into it and make an update for TerrainComposer that fixes this issue.

Nathaniel

 

Too bad It's stunning

Jesper.

 

Hi,
I want to use GIS based DEM data (1x1m res) with land use info (as raster or vector dataset) to create a visualization. The DEM data is not shown properly in Unity. It seems like the height values are snapped to full meters, instead of getting normalized:



data / software
I can use ArcGIS/QGIS/Grass (GIS-Software) in addition to Unity3D free and TerrainComposer (no WorldComposer, yet).
I have DEM data in GeoTiff 32bit float, or as .xyz ascii data.

method
The DEM data I could use is to huge for this test, therefore I clipped a 2049x2049 area out of it:


I tried to translate the GeoTiff to a .raw with the following gdal_translate command (.cmd file):
"C:\Program Files\QGIS Chugiak\bin\gdal_translate" -ot UInt16 -of ENVI -scale -outsize 2049 2049 "D:\temp\Verschiedenes\GIS\DEM_1x1_2049.tif" "D:\temp\Verschiedenes\GIS\heightmap.raw"

In TerrainComposer I use the following settings:




Look here to see the data: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yd1mpg10sdh45lj/AABLB050u7jNG7TUjGtW7VCla?dl=0

 

In Terrain Composer, Is there a tutorial to export a existing unity terrain for use in a mobile app. I saw it on the features list and purchased Terrain Composer today but can't find how to get this done. I have more than 4 textures for the terrain so I did not purchase T4M.

Help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

Forgive me for asking here. I hope it is ok? I know Peter alias becoming is here sometimes and that you Nathaniel is working with him on the Wingsuit Flyer Game. That game looks really fantastic. You can be sure I will back you when you launch a kickstarter campaign ;-)

My question: Is the flying/free fall controller based on UnityFS?? Or is it custom made.... Don't worry. I am not making anything resembling your game... What I really need is a bit of advice from others who have experience in meddling with aerodynamics in Unity.

Chris has helped me quite some but his focus is on airplane/fixed wing mostly.

Cheers, Jesper

PS: When will the Kickstarter Campaign be??

 

I got this problem with tileable SPlatmap (<Colormap>) I activate it, i choose the tileable splatmap, but then it doesn't make me push "Select" button. It simply do nothing.

Also, when i use a mask with those tiles it correctly works when option is "area" but not if it is in "Multi Terrain" I don't know if it is related.

Thank you

 

The result you get is because that is the actual information in your heightmap. You can either smooth the result with TerrainComposer -> Quick Tools -> Smooth (press smooth button multiple times). Or you can smooth the heightmap in photoshop by using blur. Or use a lower terrain resolution, which is the best options as it is better for performance.

Nathaniel

 

You can use Unity terrains in mobile, or you can use a mesh. But for the mesh you need a special layer shader like the Unity terrain is using. You can download a free 4 layer terrain shader from wiki:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=TerrainFourLayer

In TerrainComposer you can convert Unity terrains to meshes (if they don't have resolution higher than 128). You can convert to meshes, in 'Quick Tools' foldout -> Mesh Convert tab.

Nathaniel

 

Hello Jesper,

Thanks, yes we're working on a wingsuit flying game. No the physics of wingsuit flying are created by Peter and his previous programmer Jurgen. They put a lot of time into it and Peter made many adjustments over time with feedback from real wing suit people.

We don't know exactly when we will do kickstarter, but we're making good progress with the game.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

What exactly do you want to achieve with the colormap option? As it is for to put a splat texture as a colormap, so the entire splat texture is stretched over 1 terrain.

Yes that's correct, as multi terrain stretches 1 texture over the entire total terrains, while terrain and area over 1 terrain. So you need to keep Image Mode on terrain.

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.

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

Nathaniel

 

Is the data in dropbox the data you used for gdal_translate? gdalinfo indicates that DEM_1x1_2049.tif.ovr is 1025x1025 not 2049x2049.
Also, look into the specifications on gdal_translate, i'm not certain, but "-ot UInt16" doesn't seem correct here. Perhaps "-ot Float32" ?

Chris

 

Just a quick question, there is a hell of a lot of info to read through here, and im sure someone can answer this quite easily for me.

Does Terrain Composer (or even standard unity) allow you to import 4x 4096 heightmaps, to create a terrain that's 8192x8192 (2x2 tiles)?

Is there a particular tutorial that covers this?

Coming from CryEngine, Unity terrain is taking some time to get used to.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers.

 

Hello,

Yes it is possible to create an 8k 2x2 terrain. Although I recommend to not go higher than 4k total heightmap for performance. With TerrainComposer you can import heightmaps for each terrain tile and they will be automatically converted to the heightmap resolution of each terrain tile.
I show how to do this in these 2 video's at http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials
Help Video Importing Heightmaps
Help Video Importing from WorldMachine

Nathaniel

 

@newoldmate

I was feeling suicidal so I tried making 9x9 grid with 4k height maps and 2k spat res in unity 4.6 instead of 5 as a test . Used default spat/trees/grass and rocks. Looks like it worked fine. You need to untick "restrict total resolution" in order to create the 9 4k terrains with 2k spat textures.

One tile took around 12 minutes to generate. (with trees,grass,rocks and spat) (The tile itself only took a few seconds to create)

I don't really think there is any reason to not use smaller tiles, but 4k tiles look possible.

I will try adding the grass/tree etc on the other 8 tiles but I have a feeling the editor is going to die. I will update after finish or after crash which ever comes first.

 

UPDATE - Looks like terrain composer had no problems with 9x9 4k height maps in unity 4.6 during my simple test. I really thought this would not work.

I even played some multiplayer AVP2010 while generating tile 8 and 9 height maps to see if I could crash it. (no crash)

I resized the terrains to 4000 meters in the final screenshot. (Still 4096 resolution)

Took around 40 minutes total on my system to complete. (used procedural canyon example and included assets)
Added a standard character controller so I could walk around after building. Seems to perform fine in build as well.

4K tiles 1000 square meters


4K tiles 4000 square meters


Mind blowing. I don't know what kind of crazy black magic voodoo terrain composer does but it works really great. This is one of those assets that is well worth the price.

Thank you Nathaniel for making terrains so easy to work with.

 

Hi Nathaniel. First of all, I want to thank you for such an amazing product you have made available for us here. It has saved me countless hours and I am getting some awesome results! I have a question about the tree placement using terrain composer and an issue I think might be happening.

The trees placed on the left were placed manually by me, and the ones on the right were placed with terrain composer.

http://puu.sh/doigx/fc0859df44.jpg

I am using Advanced Foliage Shader V3 currently, but I don't think that is part of the issue. I have tried playing around with the tree colors in the Color Range drop down, but I can't seem to get anything looking similar. I am also using Gamma lighting space.

Hopefully you have some help or advice on how to fix this.
Thank you for your time.

Matthew

 

Hello,

Thanks for your testing . TerrainComposer uses standard Unity terrains and because Unity is 32 bit it can crash if it uses more than 3 gb of memory. I tested an even bigger heightmap resolution in Unity5, since U5 has no memory limit, and it doesn't crash as well. The only issue here is though with a heightmap resolution behond 4k is that the framerate won't be good enough to use it in a game, as not every player has the latest hardware.

Nathaniel

 

Hello Matthew,

This has to do with AFS v3. You can adjust the tree color settings in the AFS terrain script. TerrainComposer uses the Unity terrain tree system and does nothing special, but AFS influences the colors. If you can't get it to work its best to contact Lars the developer of AFS about it.

Nathaniel

 

I've been struggling with TC for about a week now, and yesterday downloaded the update to 1.51, from within the program. Over the next couple of hours, Unity (Pro 4.6.0f3) crashed on me 3 times before I got completely frustrated and gave up. Normally, Unity is pretty stable here, so I'm wondering if this is something related to the TC update. Any other similar reports?

 

I am in need for a bit help. I wanted give my heightmap some more details so I added a second heightmap filter set Input to image and added a noise map with very slow strength (0.004). That works fine for the rocky areas but is way too bumpy for the flat areas of the map. Therefore I added a mask, set the input to steepness, output to max. The result was that there is full bumpiness everywhere or none of it. Unfortunately I am stuck now. Has anybody some hints on this?

TIA

 

Hello,

No this cannot be, TerrainComposer by itself is very stable and doesn't cause any Unity crashes. However Unity terrain engine which TerrainComposer uses, can cause Unity to crash if you use too high resolutions. Unity 4.x is 32 bit and has 3 gb memory limitation, if you go over that Unity crashes. Can you send me the amount of tiles and resolutions you are using?

Nathaniel

 

Is there a way to combine 4 terrains into one? Painting seperately is a bitch -_-" I don't want to regenerate everything with TC because I always screw it up somehow and the terrain becomes a mess. -_-"

 

Hi all
I just bought terrain composer and have been playing around with it for few days. then i wached ur video about how to make rivers but i dant have photo shop and would like to know if there any other tools to use for editing heightmaps? seems like gimb cant do it either.
and second question is it possible to add more terrains after i have generated something because i have made some sculphing in unitys terrain editor and i wouldnt like to start over.

-Toni

 

I am sure this has been asked before ...but will this allow you to mass place trees/rocks with a script attached? (so i can cut it down/mine) or do i still have to manually place them?

 

Hello,

Height and steepness inputs don't work in the heightmap layers, as they are read from the terrain. This has to do with the way TC generates and it does it much faster this way. What you can do is create a steepness/slope image (with colormap feature) and use that as a mask.

First you need to generate the heightmap that you want to use the slope from, then:
1). Enable Color output.
2). You can choose your image resolution in TC terrain list -> Local Area -> Colormap resolution.
3). Add a color layer (yellow '+' button).
4). Click on the yellow 'Layer' button -> File -> Open -> Output Maps -> Slope map.
5). Choose a path and filename and click 'Export .png' button.
6). Now you can use this image in a mask, with mask input on 'Image'.

Nathaniel

 

Yes you can do this by just creating 1 terrain and use the same size as the 4 other terrains have, and then regenerate. This will give the exact same results unless you did some manual painting with the Unity terrain tools. Can you explains what goes wrong if you try to do this?

P.s. be sure to save your 1 terrain under a different path, so you don't overwrite your 4 terrains and lose your original terrains.

Nathaniel

 

Hello Toni,

You just need a simple image editor that can paint white with a brush. With brush I mean the line has to have blurry edges. Another way to make rivers you can do it with EasyRoads package on the Asset Store.

If you did manual sculpting you would lose that if you regenerate the heightmap on a bigger terrain. The workflow is to fist be sure on if you want to use the terrain as you made it with TerrainComposer, then do manual sculpting and painting adjustments. However you can export the heightmap and splatmap with TC, but if you want a bigger terrain area you cannot simple use the old heightmap again, what you would need to do is import it for only the old tiles in the middle. If you can give me exact details on the amount of terrains you use and the resolutions I can give you instructions how to do it.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

Yes TerrainComposer can do this, with the object generation mode. Object placement is very advanced with TerrainComposer and it uses the TC's layer/filter/mask system. In each layer you can add an unlimited amount of objects, and for each object you can choose placement rules like scale, rotation, poistion, mininum distance (related to other objects) and much more. Then with a filter you can make rules to choose which object to place and with a mask where to place those objects. With filters and masks you can use rules like height, steepness, splat texture, perlin, random, based on image (very advanced) and even raycasting.

Nathaniel

 

hello, seems like the data I currently have is "blocky" even though it is allready LIDAR based 1x1m (highres) DEM data:


Nonetheless for me it seems like these bulks are more visible in Unity than by viewing the source in other apps:

DEM in ArcGIS without interpolation renderer

DEM in Unity3D without smoothing

And I have some strange artifacts/height clamp:

Seems like my height values are not correct for the terrain... But which values are correct? Maximum height/ height diff between lowest and highest point in DEM?


Here are my updated files:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yd1mpg10sdh45lj/AABLB050u7jNG7TUjGtW7VCla?dl=0

(input .tif file with statistics; gdal_translate command; .raw heightmap as output)

 

Try the smoothing option in TC heightmap layer right below the Output.

 

Firstly, fantastic package, totally amazing, i would never be able to produce landscape anything like what i'm getting from this package if i tried doing it by hand... now, my question....

I have a multiple terrain landscape (5x5 at about 3000x3000 size) and i'm stretching a few heightmaps over these multiple terrains, smoothing the finished result but still getting the below, where the terrains meet (stitching is set to the lowest i can get) but i still get these lines

any ideas how i can stop this? i know adding grass and objects will hide this but not totally and i want the terrain stitching to be seemless!

 

Hello,

As toxtronyx suggests, you can smooth the terrain heightmap in TerrainComposer. You can do this is Quick Tools -> Smooth tab. Another way to smooth is to use a lower heightmap resolution, this will also increase performance.

Here a quote from the TC manual page 35:

Smooth Tool
There is also a Smooth Tool located in Quick Tools, this is for smoothing the terrain. You can select the smooth strength, this can be a decimal value like 0.1. The repeat is the amount of times the smooth is executed. For example if you choose repeat 3 it will smooth the terrain 3 times with the smooth strength. In the heightmap layer is also the smooth toggle. If you enable this it will automatically smooth the terrain after generation, with the value from 'Layer Strength' in the Smooth Tool.

Nathaniel

 

Hello,

In the Unity editor there's always seems and visible borders, you have to test in runtime to see if it's still there. Let me know...

Nathaniel

 

thanks for the help i got i working thank you.
is it possible to make really big terrain and load another part of map when player is near it?