Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

I was making the world as one big map. In my case I was doing 12000 x 12000 x 600 and then splitting that into 20 x 20 tiles of 600 x 600 x 600 each. This was to facilitate either streaming, or setting up areas. I am actually leaning towards areas at the moment for my current design for performance reasons. I may switch to streaming though at some point, I am designing something with a lot of complexity and streaming might increase that complexity by quite a bit.

Basically I am remaking my own game based upon a Module I made for Neverwinter Nights 1 many years ago that was pretty unique and had high replay value and people (including myself) still sometimes reinstall NWN1 just to play my module with some friends.

It requires a ton of between area pathing of AI, complex AI behavior and economy system, and a number of other things. I do know ways I could likely make all of that work with streaming but ultimately it might be more complex than the approach I am thinking of taking.

At the moment I am actually going to take close to the NWN approach... however, I plan on having the adjacent tiles to the current area always loaded for that area so they show an accurate representation of what the next area looks like, horizon, etc and if need be some images of some nearby monsters, npcs, armies if need be so people know there is trouble in that direction before they transition.

If I were doing this with streaming I'd likely attach an empty game object to every terrain piece that OnAwake would reach out to my server code and determine what additional things to spawn since many things would dynamically be there and all NPCs would by dynamic and unattached to a specific location. It is doable but there are many ways to do things and I am weighing options. A lot of which way I decide to go depends on TC2. I will participate in the Beta and depending on what it actually feels like and offers once I am using it there is a good potential of it totally changing how I decide to approach things. Thus, I am working purely on interior areas at the moment until I can mess with TC2.

My old NWN1 module was RTS - Harvest of Souls for anyone that is curious about what I was talking about.

There are people that talk about it on the net but it DID have some issues. I didn't add enough tutorial and hand holding so the majority of people never really tried it. It was VERY VERY different, pretty much a completely new game, and nothing that plays similar to this day. However, if you didn't spend a few hours running around you would never know and would likely uninstall it. IF you did play it most people got pretty addicted to it. I'd have people 5 years later emailing me saying "You know I was running around an X happened!!! It was amazing, when did you add that?" To which I replied "that one has been in there since the beginning." My goal usually is to make games that I can play as the developer and enjoy as well. Traditional RPGs (which I've worked on some professionally) have stories and puzzles and they are very well known to the developers. In fact we've likely tested them so many times they no longer are a surprise. you release it to the public and the story and adventure are great (or maybe not), but it is not really something you can play yourself and enjoy because you already know everything. With this in mind I focus on emergent style worlds. However, they are far harder to test, and the systems are far more complicated. Mix that in with Streaming Worlds and it even gets a little more complex though I still may end up going that route.

Sorry for the digression... there was some relevant information in there, not much, but some. This game does not exist at the moment so I am not trying to hype anything, sell anything, etc. Just got a little excited.

 

Great idea! Thanks for the tip.

 

Projector... another really good idea I hadn't considered.

 

Does Terrain Composer have the built-in capability to do what this tool offers?

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/

 

@eagle555 -- Not suggesting this for the first beta, but as a feature for "version 2.1" could you consider procedurally generating a PNG file with an empty tile grid like the red parts of @futurewavecs' second screen shot, based on the current settings of TC2 for tiling? This would make a workflow like "set up your flat terrains in TC2 at desired size and tiling quantity, dump out the empty grid to PNG, go edit that in GIMP or Photoshop, and then bring it back in as the texture base per @magique's post." The analog would be Blender's ability to bake UV maps to bitmaps for external editing.

Again, I don't want to suggest scope-creeping 2.0, but that could be a nice easy feature for 2.1.

 

You want to know one side effect I was working on with tiling and grid systems? You can theoretically work with heightmaps bigger than 4096 which is the biggest Unity Terrain supports as long as when the tiles created by the grid do not have heightmaps larger than 4096...

So you could have a heightmap of 8192x8192 if you were working with a 2x2 grid and each cell would be a 4096x4096 heightmap. May be irrelevant but it had exciting potential. You obviously couldn't save it out to a single terrain with such a height map, but you could make a tool that worked with bigger heightmaps as long as they were spanning multiple tiles.

 

As far as my post.... and the screenshots with the grids and such.

@magique proposed stretching the initial texture over the scope of the terrain. So the map or grid would span the entire terrain. You could then raise, lower, stamp, etc and simply swap out with the correct textures when done.

@eagle555 had a cool idea of simply using a projector. I often forget projectors exist but that is a very elegant and simple solution.

So the answer to my question and apparently some of you is that THIS can be done with some simple steps on your part without requiring the tool to do it.

However, this is NOT obvious and thus why I asked the question and other people haven't thought of it. This means it is possibly LOW HANGING FRUIT in terms of making TC2 user friendly... have it configure and fire up such a projector. whether @eagle555 wants to do this or not is another issue. I'd say it is not important enough to delay releasing anything but it could be a cool thing to support so it does this and those of us that didn't immediately think of the above two solutions don't end up going down some very long and involved paths like I did.



I spent literally about 3 days of coding.... maybe 4.... to process:


To generate this...



Simply so I could spit out heightmaps to use as GUIDES to help me know WHERE to stamp....

and now we find out I could have simply accomplished all of that in about an hour to make the guide, and using either a texture on the terrain, or a projector.

I think other people might like if TC2 actually has something that makes these easy steps obvious. They are easy once you know how to do it but man did I go way down the rabbit hole for something simple.

 

Hi there !
Thanks for the reply.



Dear Nathaniel !

USERS SHOULD CHOOSE THEIR MAP LAYOUTS !
As What fits to one does not to other !


___

I Believe a picture Tell 1000 Words so ...

Bellow i Show a Better Example of what i Was talking About ...

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE SOURCE FILES : Photoshop / Drawplus

http://www.mediafire.com/download/nxv4n44kpmefpg7/2_-_TERRAIN_SYMPHONY_V0.2.2.zip

___
I Took a Professional tecnical Design School for 3 years you know ...
Were we even reskined whole Operating systems for fun ...

SO I tought i would do a Whole restructuring to whole TC Interface ...
From Were this come / There is more ... alot more I Would like to Show ...

( But It Took me nearly 50 hours just to do this litle thing ... as i am rusty as hell ... ; )


______

So i reaaly hope ( With this EXAMPLES ) After 3 years ... I can finally make my usually "Ahead Revolutionary ideas" a litle bit More "Visual Understandable" this time :/ xD

Either Way the Full of them i Restructured here: https://www.mindmeister.com/559729899/terrain-symphony

___

PS: Good Luck with the House Movings to Central Europe . In the center is were Art is and the best of living ...



Big Hugs / My very best regards !


3D|Dinis

__

A Option for a More Understandable layout !


http://i.imgur.com/8eHXKq1.jpg?1

It Actually Takes the Exact Same Space !


http://i.imgur.com/1Jv4IKU.jpg?1

EAGLE View Diversity & ZOOM Rus / Infinite Zoomable and "Inteligent Resizing Map trees" ...


http://i.imgur.com/mcQ6vAm.jpg

Soon To Come ... In the TERRAIN SYMPHONY UI Series ...

A Better Tabbed Folded Photoshop Like Clone System for Nodes Groups Favorites & Biomes & 3dTiles ...






...

 

Yes I think these are great ideas. Will add it to the feature list. I wonder if a projector would be could enough with an 8k image. The advantage of a projector is that it can spread over multiple terrain tiles. Or Magigue's idea, basically what I have in TC1 already with the colormap, and it's how WC works.

Yes with more terrain tiles can create a higher heightmap resolution then 4k, although performance needs to be taken into account. I tried a (4 x 4 terrain tiles with 4 k) 16k heightmap and it still performed quite well on my pc.

Its a link to the Asset Store homepage .

Nathaniel

 

I have no idea how that happened. Here's is the correct link:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28949

 

The quality can be managed, yes, but the data on the current terrain tiles are lost just as normal. But the same data can be regenerated of course, only manually changes will be lost.
Don't know if TC2 provides that feature of preserving manual changes (comes along with an idea I proposed previosuly where manual changes will be turned into masks automatically)

 

Hello Dinis,

Thanks for the feedback and wishes . Your design looks great , but where the tree node becomes way more tricky is if we add many elements to a layer (see screenshot, the preview windows are not 100% correct, also use the same tree type but it would need to be different kinds of the same type or another).

We looked into a tree node before doing the shelf based layout, think I even tried a prototype of it. But TC2 need such functionality as in the screenshot, and I don't think it can be solved with a tree node system.

About being left to right or right to left. Since the order goes from right to left it, it is actually right to left,
e.g. For a node group it is 2 + 3 + 1 - 4 = 2, so this is read from left to right...so no Arab

P.s. the new GUI is without any buttons (just prototype buttons), etc. I'm working on that at the moment. It will look much more pretty...

Nathaniel

 

Yes TC1 basically already has since the early first version. What the quality manager Asset can't really do is putting a higher resolution, probably you can put higher the resolutions, but result will be the same as the lower one. TC1 you can change the resolutions anytime during the workflow, also higher resolution setting will really give a higher density of all, but not directly with manual changes like Seneral explains. Manual changes you can all export with TC1, can export heightmap/splatmap/treemap and grassmap, then you can change the resolutions and just regenerate those. For manual changes as a heightmap would need to take a snapshot before and after the manual change, then it would be after - before is the manual change.

Nathaniel

 

Looking at the screenshots, all I can say is that tools like Terrain Composer, Behavior Designer, and Shader Sandwich (all of which I'm using) have made me very glad I invested in a second monitor!

 

It's possible to use TC2 in one monitor, like I show in TC2 trailer. But having 2/3 monitors helps a lot in general . I use 3 and have documentation/skype/internet on one and then Unity and visual studio on the other 2.

Nathaniel

 

I initially went from 2 to 3 monitors for my flight siming and while I lose where my mouse is every once in a while (lol) I would never go back to less then 3 voluntarily. Worth every penny!

 

Hmm, I would probably do better if I replace Skype and Slack with documentation on my second monitor.

 

My primary machine is a Macbook Pro Retina, and while it can drive 3 monitors, I don't really want to get used to 3 because then when I travel it's too much of a brain-shift. Right now I have a second permanent monitor at my work desk, and a rolling stand in the family room with a mounted second monitor so I can have a two-screen setup in the evening. When I travel, the hotel room's LCD TV becomes my temporary monitor, because what else would you do with a TV anyway?

I'm seriously looking at getting on of the new tablet-sized HDMI travel monitors.

My usual Unity setup is to do most of my editing and all of my coding in the main laptop screen. On the second monitor I put one spawned Unity window with tabs for Game, Shader Sandwich, Behavior Designer, and (soon!) TC2, or whatever subset of those I'm using in the project. Since I use Script Inspector 3 as my C# code editor, I don't have to deal with Monodevelop at all.

Documentation goes on the main laptop screen for me, but in a different virtual desktop. (Windows 10 finally added those. Mac has had them for several years, and Linux/UNIX had them in the 1990s. Once you try virtual desktops, you'll be addicted, though IMO Microsoft did a rather clumsy implementation.)

 

I have two monitors... one of them is a 43" 4K HD TV... which is effectively 4 1920x1080 screens in a 2x2 grid... I could use it that way... but I tend to maximize and be able to read tons of code and write longer comments, see more items on the screen at the same time, etc. It is useful with unity though as you could have the Scene View and the Game View at the same time in essentially 1920x1080 mode and still have space left for the hierarchy and inspector. I also have that side monitor for various browsing, slack, skype, etc.

 

I was going to "like" your post but then decided I am far too jealous for that.

Unity 5.4 apparently does a better job of Retina support, which should help me work better.

 

Can someone help with looking for normalMap in last version TC?



This is what I've seen in tutorial. But now normalmap window is dissmiss) Also colormap resolution was in Local Area

 

If you're using RTP you should access textures and texture settings through RTP.

 

i'm a newcomer to Terrain Composer
Should i wait to TC2 or getting started and go in-depth with TC first?

I tried TC tutorials, using the examples and made this

 

Looking nice already Reminds me somewhat of The Long Dark!
I'd personally wait for TC2 as it is completely different and better, as you know, and it also isn't that far away anymore. Also, the beta should be ready soon

 

Great! Looking forward for the beta.

 

I have some problems with applying colorMap + normalMap with TC + RTP. I can't set colormap for each terrain tile (1 video). Also normalMap with nearest lod have strange bug. (second video). Can something explain what I'm doing wrong?

and continuation...

 

Looks great , thanks for sharing...This stylized look...planet nomads comes to my mind .

Thanks for showing your issue with a video.

1) I see you get an error in console about RTP terrain shader having to many registers, which means that the are too many texture samples that is allowed for a shader in the used platform. So basically RTP doesn't render correctly, that's why you see a pink surface (means that shader doesn't work). It's best to ask Tom about this on RTP thread.
2) The normal splat textures shouldn't be assigned before shift clicking <RTP> (but after). As you notice they will disappear, this is because the normal textures are assigned to Unity terrain shader. While in RTP mode TC switches to an RTP splat texture holder and I don't copy the normal textures from Unity terrain shader.
3) With more terrain tiles you need a global colormap/normal map for each terrain tile. What I can see in the video is that you assign only 1 texture for each. Not sure though what you probably do in another screen, that you use select window to assign more tiles textures for each. But if you only want to use 1 colormap/normalmap then should only use 1 terrain. But probably the entire issue is due to 1).

Nathaniel

 

@eagle555 Is there any update on when we can expect to have a beta for testing?

 

I would very much like to know also and if it's in any way feasible to start learning terrain composer 1 now or if that knowledge of TC1 is kind of getting obsolete with TC2

 

I would wait. TC1 is very difficult to use compared to TC2 and you will spend a lot of time figuring it out. When TC2 comes out, that time will be wasted because TC2 is very different.

 

do you have some secret insider info ? or just figured that out based on his latest screenshots?XD

 

I spent a long time using TC1 and then I watched all his videos and read what he said on these forums. It is going to be set up very differently. TC1 was so difficult, I learned it, and then didn't use it for a few months, and then had to learn it all over again. It is why I stopped using it.

I think if you read the reviews for TC, you will see I am not the only one. lol

TC2 is going to be awesome!!!

 

thanks for your insight I had just bought it yesterday and when I found out that coincidentially there would be TC2 kind of coming out this week I really was wondering if my time is currently better spend on creating the assets for my game, instead of trying to learn TC1 now ^^
You answered my question it's itching me to try TC2 out I'm crazy for terrain generation and I want to see what l3dt and TC2 + RTP together are capable of (with my limited understanding XD)

also I wonder if the tree placement is same as in normal unity, which means they become part of the terrain or if it's it's own solution

 

They become part of the normal terrain. I used to use L3dt. It should work fine as long as you pay attention to the resolutions.

 

I spawn trees without collider then spawn meshless colliders based on tree coordinates, and interact with the colliders for harvesting. You can also interact with trees without removing the colliders. You can also remove them or one specifically, and spawn an exact copy at the same position/rotation/scale through code.

 

Or you could use Elroy's tree manager, which does a similar thing, plus more.

 

I went onto building other systems and working on internal areas until TC2 is available. I have plenty of other stuff besides terrain to do, I just forgot that for a bit and let the terrain hold everything up. Which was my own fault.

 

From what I remember Nathaniel said that TC2 allows you to spawn not only buildings but objects inside buildings. May be worth checking with Nathaniel. Could save you even more work

 

The first time I tried TMS I thought Elroi had just hacked the unity FPS counter as I am not used to performance jumps like what I was seeing.

 

Thanks to you and Teila for suggesting a tool I had not noticed before. Added to my wishlist, though I don't need it in my project yet.

 

You are welcome! Elroy is a fabulous developer and very talented. I have beta tested and purchased a couple of his assets. Very nice guy. I would buy anything he makes.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. That looks like something I'd like to buy and check out! So much on the Asset Store!

 

@syscrusher Sorry about that . My wishlist is 10 pages long now! Lots of individual art assets though.

On his thread he said there may be a promotion before release of the new version.

 

Talking about fine beta products.....TC2??? Is the silence a sign of an impending arrival?

 

Nathaniel,
how long we have to wait for TC2

 

According the product description we still have 11 months to go

 

Really? This is what is on the website.

Yeah, that week is past, but I suspect sometime in the next month or so.

 

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/7065

 

http://www.terraincomposer.com/

 

That was this past April. He missed that but didn't change it on the asset store. lol