Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

This sometimes happens with Bing maps. As the images are taken from an airplane, and such color difference is an indication that they took it at another day, where there's different weather/season. I will add Google maps in the second next update so you would be able to choose the best out of the 2.

Nathaniel

 

Hi Nathaniel,

We're currently having an issue where adjacent terrain objects have a visible texture seam where they meet. Is this something your product is capable of dealing with? We're doing a stylized, non-realistic terrain with lots of solid colors, so for our purposes simply being able to paint on multiple terrains at once would suffice, but actually stitching the textures together would be ideal. Does your product provide anything in either of these regards? Thank you!

Adam

 

Topic is loading terrains on demand, and curious if others have tried this and maybe run into issues I'm not thinking of.

So TC gives us the terrain neighbors script, which seems an easy way to track what domains you want to keep active. I was thinking just have a companion game object for each terrain that I use as a parent for holding all the objects/meshes associated with that terrain, and then most likely just keep the current terrain plus neighbors active as a player is moving through the world.

Any known issues with this approach?

 

Yes TC can stitch the heightmap of terrain tiles. And also it stitches splat textures for the borders. TC is not a paint tool like the Unity terrain brushes, but a terrain generator. But you can use the stitch features, to stitch the borders after using the Unity terrain brushes. Have to keep in mind to use a low 'Border Influence' and make backups of your terraindata's before stitching.

Nathaniel

 

You can parent the objects directly to each terrain, then if you enable/disable a terrain the objects will also be enabled/disabled.

I will include a script in the coming update that will use TC runtime to keep generating terrains around the player. I will include heightmap streaming as well. So the heightmap can be generated from a big heightmap file. The rest TC needs to generate, but it can do it in the background and it works very well for FPS. So TC will be able to stream any size of heightmap, I tried with a 8GB heightmap of the entire earth....

Nathaniel

 

Purchased World Composer with understanding it was a stand alone product but appears necessary to have Terrain Composer as well to get the editor to function. If it actually is a stand alone product would appreciate help on how to get it up and running. If it does require Terrain Composer would appreciate knowing that as well. Look forward to moving forward but pretty much stuck at the moment.

 

Thanks for the purchase. It does not need TerrainComposer, and with stand alone I mean that it doesn't. Maybe you have some errors in your Unity console of other scripts, these need to be fixed first before the compiler can compile WorldComposer. You should have WorldComposer in Unity Menu -> Window

Nathaniel

 

Hi nathaniel,

I'm working with world machine and would know if we can get a template of island from video tutorial to see the "device view" more in depth to know how to export grass sand or normal ?

 

How does this script work in general? Does it have seed for example so we save it etc. And when it is ready?

 

Thanks for he note. Obviously I have a problem to solve. Went back to my asset folder, downloaded WorldComposer again, imported it again and restarted Unity. In my asset folder I do show Terrain Composer and under that World Composer but in my Unity Menu > Window I have the expected folders but do not have World Composer. Downloaded the update to Unity prior to purchase/import and all my other extensions exist. If any suggestions on how to troubleshoot that would appreciated.

 

Solved my problem. There appeared to be a conflict with an iTween script that for reasons I do not understand kept World Composer from hitting my menu. I deleted that script and the menu now displays World Composer as expected. Appreciate the direction toward solving this concern.

 

Hello,
I have a very beginner question, how to add a custom splatmap ? (example generated from worldmachine) ? i searched arround on youtube and your website but didint find how :/

 

Wow. This sounds awesome. I'm $5 away from picking it up. Very excited to almost finally have this!

 

I don't have that anymore. There's lots of information and tutorials available for WM. You just type in what you want in google or youtube and you get the information you need. That's what I do too...E.g I typed worldmachine normal maps in youtube:

The script works by using tiles e.g. 4x4. Then it disables the tile that is behind the player and puts it in front of the player, generates the new terrain with TC runtime and then enables the terrain. You can use any TerrainComposer project for it, yes you can seed before hand, of course not after the player is on the terrains as then new generated tiles won't fit anymore. Heightmap streaming can be used and it would work very well with Horizon[ON], although it needs to be tested still. I'm still working on the update which is major so it takes a bit more time...

I'm glad you got it to work now .

I have a tutorial video for that
http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials/
Help Video Importing from WorldMachine

 

Hello everyone,

For a limited time only, instead of $90, I’m doing a custom sale with 50% off for $45, for both TerrainComposer and WorldComposer! Make sure you grab your copy before they are back on $90!
Nathaniel

 

Hello Nathaniel.

Got 2 issues and 1 question:

Issues:

1. The trees placed on the terrain are NOT randomly rotating. I am missing something? A click somewhere?
2. Yesterday I was placing some rocks around my map, but for some strange reason the colliders went missing after TC did it's magic. Ideas?

Question:

1. Can TC work with meshes instead of terrain?

Thanks again.
F.

 

Hi Nathaniel

thanks for the hard work, just a simply question: there is any ETA for the update with the fix for the "flip-y" problem? thanks for your time!

 

Hello,

1). This is a limitation of the Unity terrain tree system. Only with U5 speed trees they can be rotated, but U5 speed tree billboards don't look as good as the old Unity tree system.
2). It might be that you have too many colliders in your Scene, Unity can handle about 64k colliders.

Yes TerrainComposer can place objects on meshes. I build in that feature in the latest TC version.

Nathaniel

 

It's a major update I'm doing, I hope it will be finished next week.

Nathaniel

 

Hey Nathaniel, I've got a question regarding the use of TC at runtime. I downloaded the runtime package but it appears as if you still need to create the Terrain first in the editor. Is there any way to create terrains of a variable size at runtime and then manipulate them using TC?

 

I'm looking for a terrain generator that uses procedural generation to create a high res terrain. Further, I also need to be able to assign all of the procedural variables to a single seed variable number which the player can fill in at the start of the game to generate a unique terrain.

Does your tool have that functionality?

 

I just bought this and I get a few warnings because I use Unity 5.x. Any estimated time for arrival on an update which will work with 5.x?

Thank you.

 

Yes this is possible, you can create terrains on the fly in runtime. If you look in the folder TerrainComposer/Runtime, there's a prefab you can drag into your Scene and in the Readme is the description how to use it. You just need to put everything into the empty Terrain in the TC terrain list as you would do normally before you click the 'Create Terrains' button.

Nathaniel

 

Yes you can do this with TerrainComposer runtime, with the same prefab I wrote about in the previous post.

Nathaniel

 

TerrainComposer already runs fine in Unity 5.x, you only need to run the Api Updater. Unity Menu -> Assets -> Run Api Updater...

Nathaniel

 

Neat, thanks. I think I'll pick this up then!

 

Hey eagle555. Sure it is mentioned somewhere but can you use this tool to place detail meshes or only grass planes?

Thanks

 

Hello, yes you can place detail meshes with TerrainComposer.

Nathaniel

 

Great. Thanks for the response.

 

I have a tiled 10x10 heightmap which was generated in World Machine that it output as separate tile files. Is there a way to load these into Terrain Composer? The raw heightmap filter only seems to accept a single file for input, and I can't see a way to apply a height map file to a single terrain. :/

 

Hi there,

Somehow I'm unable to add trees to any map generated.
The tree objects are assigned into the treecomposer window (like in the video), they are syncronized with the terrain, they are even generated, I just got (Trees Placed : 4296, Total trees placed : 4286), but nothing is rendered.
Any ideas ?

Thanks

 

You don't need to export tiles for the heightmaps with WM, as TC can spread 1 heightmap over multiple terrain tiles. In filter setting you have to put stretch mode to 'Multi Terrain'. TC can also import raw tiles, but in the current version there's a bug that flipping y doesn't work, so the terrain gets mirrored on the y. In the new TerrainComposer version I'm working on has this fixed.

For importing tiled from WM, I made this tutorial:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials
Help Video Importing from WorldMachine

Nathaniel

 

@eagle555 : Any help on my problem ?

Thanks,

 

This is how I have been doing it up until now, but unfortunately WM crashed on me and upon re-loading the project it had decided to untick the merge tiles box—a change which I only noticed this after the 27-hour render had finished running—so if it's possible to import the tiles as I originally asked then I'd be very grateful if you can let me know it as for obvious reasons I'd rather avoid having to re-run the build if possible. >.<

 

I think this has to do with tree settings on Unity terrains. You can take a look in TC terrain list -> Settings -> Tree Distance and make sure 'Draw' is enabled.

Nathaniel

 

Hi Nathaniel,

We have a problem with TC on U5b21 & U5f1. As you can see on the attached screenshot there are weird names and values in TC. We tried to reinstall Unity, rebuild DB, we tried on different PC and previous versions of TC, unfortunately nothing worked.
Any idea how to fix it please?

 

Hi there,

Thanks Nathaniel for the answer you give to me previously.

I have an issue with realtime shadows. The issue is not from TC or WC but it appears to me when a tried to have a big terrain.
I did a multi resolution terrain like in the video tutorial Nathaniel have made, in order to use TC for architectural visualization.

I made a house and a multi resolution terrain of 515 x 515 km. I set the far clipping plane to 150 000 and have add a directional light. I'm in defered rendering path.
But, the more I enable the far big pieces of terrain, the more creepy the realtime shadows become.
They act like they are Peter-Panning weirdly hard. Tweaking the light parameters doesn't change anything.
It's not a problem with terrain, I made tests and it act the same in a scene with just a few cubes and a big object, even if the big object is not on the screen.
I really need accurate shadows for the house.

Does anyone knows how to fix that ?



PS: Still sorry about my terrible English.

 

Hi, im not sure of this is capable and ive just not worked out how yet, or if it could bea feature.

Basically, Im having "some" luck at creating an ok looking terrain using splats and different textures but I then want to use the ATS shader for close detail textures. But this cant be done as the texture slots are filled with the splat textures.

So what would be nice is if you could export the splats as one texture, and then re-import it as a basetexture.

Thanks
Andy

 

Hello Andy,

Close detail textures are splat textures. You can read in the ATS shader documentation how to use it. You need to assign the AFS script to each terrain then setup the splat textures in there. You can use a global color and normal map. These you can make with TC. How to do that you can check tutorials:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/tutorials
Help Video Making normal maps with TerrainComposer (New)

(making colormap, it works a little different as this is one of the first TerrainComposer versions. You can set the colormap resolution in TC terrain list -> Local Area, then it will directly export the colormap image). It working the same as exporting the normalmap...

Nathaniel

 

If you contact me at my email Nathaniel_Doldersum@hotmail.com and tell me which Unity version you are using, I can send you the new TerrainComposer that has this fixed.

Nathaniel

 

HI, yes I understand that but for some of the splat textures I am tiling quite big so for long distance viewing they look better and not tiled.

Also, in the terrain im doing now, I am using the the first splat as a "base texture" like you do if you use sat imagery from world composer. But the base image i am using is tilable and so I am tiling it aswell. When I go to place trees, i place them using this base image and select my color range but when generated the trees do not match? IS this because the base image is not stretch 100%?

Thanks
Andy

 

Did you use it in an empty project or do you have more Assets in there? It has to do with prefab compatibility from 3.5.6. I think it's the default setup prefab that is broken. There were 2-3 other users that had this issue, but in an empty project it worked fine.

I made a package of the new setup.prefab from U5f1, can you try if importing this solves it?

Nathaniel

 

Does disabling cast shadows far all far away terrains solve it?. This can be done in the terrain settings...

Nathaniel

 

Yes for example rock textures this is needed. For best results I recommend to use RTP.

In TC the default image mode is that it stretches it over each terrain. So if you want tiling you need to reduce the scale in image settings. So if your textures it tiled 4 times over 1 terrain, the scale needs to be 1/4 = 0.25.

Nathaniel

 

I thought so, what does "auto scale" do?

Could this be made any easier as its a little difficult to work out.

My terrain tile is 26670 my tiled image is 6000, what is the scale i need to use?

Thanks
Andy

 

Auto scale is that it automatically stretches over 1 terrain with scale on 1. As for tiling it depends a bit on AFS, can you show a top down screenshot of your terrain, where tilling is good visable?

This might work:
26670/6000 = 4.445 times tiled
scale = 1/4.445 = 0.224971878

Nathaniel

 

Ok thanks.

For some reason it still doesnt want to align up, Ive used the image editor to pick the colors and that seems fine, i save and load them in, i have auto scale off, import max size is 2048 (size of image), i set scale to 0.224971878 for x and y. and the trees are just scattered around all over the shop?

Do I need to be doing anything else?

Thanks
Andy

 

Hello Andy,

You need to leave auto scale on. Can you show me the screenshot I asked for? I can see how the tiling is then.

Nathaniel

 

Ok, ill try but its as a lot of the tiling is hidden from other splat textures?

Andy