Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

It all depends on what you're doing.

If you open TC and go under the Help menu there is the manual.

I have never used it, but there is an "export raw" button in the settings tab of unity terrains, that should give you whatever TC generated, and whatever changes you made to it yourself to plug back into TC. Not something you should really need to do all that often.

Does that help?

 

Yes, I think I will take the plunge and check TC out for myself. I guess a lot of question will answer themselves then, for example this question:

I would really like to create "non regular shapes" instead of just rectangles with my terrain tiles (example below), but I will check if TC will let me do that (or use "dummy tiles")

Example:

Instead of this

X X X
X X X
X X X
X X X
X X X

(3 x 5 Terrain Tiles)

I would be looking for this

X X
X X
X
X X
X

(Where 7 tiles are missing to form some kind of a long irregular shaped path of terrain tiles)... to save both on memory and time to create the terrain.

I guess this might not be possible?

 

Even if not possible, you can make the performance impact trivial by either making the unwanted tiles flat and single-textured, or simply by disabling them in your startup code. Remember, Terrains are GameObjects and can be disabled just like any other GO.

 

I recently bought the product, and I love it. I am developing games for mid-range mobile devices, I have 3 questions;

1. Are there average settings for terrains for mobile devices ?
2. I converted terrains to unity meshes, however trees are lost, how can also keep the trees.
3. I converted terrains to unity meshes, however textures are lost, how can also keep the textures on terrains to meshes.

Regards

 

When I try to populate my worlds with objects (in this case, forest ground scatter, rocks, tree stumps, etc), the density is so low and I' m not entirely sure how to get it a point where these details are at a sufficient density to make them seem realistic. I'm generating from a random filter, masking to a splatmap. Grass and trees all scatter with reasonable density, it's just objects that seem to be my problem. Any ideas?

 

post a picture of your object layer showing the filter and mask. It's usually way too much stuff for me, there must be something subtracting a lot of possible output.
The "strength" at the top of it all is the main density controller.

 

Sure thing. It looks like this:

 

Tree and object resolution can be changed in TC terrain list -> Local Area tab, shift click >Set All button to apply it.

Nathaniel

 

@kaamos Try increasing the 'Position' slider or adjusting the height of the curves (above one)

 

That sorted it out!

Thanks.

 

It appears that TC2 receives a number of improvements. In particular, the terrain generation seems to make progress, for example with erosion. This raises a question: Is TC2 possibly a replacement for world machine?

 

Advanced filters will not be in TC2 (by default or from the beginning on). Nathaniel is working on an erosion filter though, just as I am, and that means we'll probably get one in the future, one way or the other
There still some filters missing that WM has, like very advanced, complex natural effects. The WM devs had the time to implement these for their tool, but I don't know if you'll ever get a similarily wide toolbox in TC2.
Besides that, TC2 has some major advantages, like in-engine and thus faster iteration time and also (probably) better interactive editing.
So IMHO, it will be a replacement for WM, once the most important natural effect, erosion, is provided

 

I hope that you can implement such filters promptly, because it seems that wm dies slowly but surely. For a long time nothing happens at WM...

Sure - TC2 will not become "the same" like WM. But... after I watched the latest videos, I thought, you can replace WM with it... almost.

So then: implement it. Please!

 

When I export terrain to unity mesh, is there a way to keep textures and materials just like it was in terrain ?

 

My scheduling destroyed! you said before TC2 demo could be release in a week latter and I'm waiting from that day and still nothing! how long passed after that week?

 

patience young Jedi... ) I would rather he take his time, I don't want a broken tool. Lol I plan on using TC2 for my new game terrain. So Nath will release it to us, when it's done i'm sure) be patient.

We are working on other elements for our game and put a place holder terrain..Maybe do the same?? I have for months now... and something I hate doing,but I know it will be worth it, and we are not making it in Unity either... and we are a company with an investor, so we told him he needs to understand and has because of some of the features we want in TC2.. I believe are worth waiting for, and will a great tool long term for everyone.

 

my brains is really not on topic for that right now unfortunately, but yes you can. I think I've only ever really done it using RTP which can input control maps, etc. You can create those with code or with TC for use in RTP. I'm really not an expert on it though.

 

I'm sorry about that. It's all about estimating which is very hard to do, I'm only one guy programming on TC2, then with all the traffic I get by mail about TC2, etc.

I was intending to release it with the GUI how it is in the video, then I would have released it already. But when I showed it to Peter (from Horizon[On]) and Tom (RTP) my protype GUI confused them a little, and I want to avoid that as much as possible. So I decided with Peter that we should implement the official GUI before releasing it, so it took a bit more time...

When it comes to making a game there's so much to program and put together so I hope you can work on another aspect until I release the first beta. But I think the new GUI was worth the wait...I'm really very close to a release just need to make the final things working and its good to go.

Nathaniel

 

@eagle555

I am but a single customer, but you will never hear a complaint from me that something is taking to long if the reason is that you are making it better. I'd rather it work then, than not work now.

 

@eagle555 I've a question regarding object placement. Is it possible to do some post-processing on their final generated position? Not necessarily by attaching scripts to the objects (like you would do with procedural structures), that would be horribly inefficient in some cases. Imagine rocks, is it possible to make them slide down slopes to their final position? I've seen something similar in MapMagic and I think it's a good feature to have, to not only rely on fully procedural generation based on masks, but also some simulation. It's simply really realistic to see rocks collecting below a cliff
Similar thing with other kinds of post-processing - imagine rocks collecting in piles

 

Please don't rush, being someone who has done UI Design for over a decade, please do it right and do not worry to much about the dely's we are developers we should understand about delays more than anyone else in my opinion.... I want the tool badly to, but if the UI is not right, then the tool won't do as well, and it will piss people off....

So please take your time, people here just need to understand, since they are developers them self.... I do this for a living and have deadlines so I do understand..... and we are waiting patiently .. Thanks Nath for all the hard work..

Again I would be happy to look at the design if need be....

 

If Peter and Tom, with all their expertise, were confused, then yes, please wait until you have the official GUI...because if you did not, many of us would be even more confused!! LOL

 

How is it they say? Anticipation is the greatest pleasure.
What if TC2 is not accessible? What if TC2 has too much bugs? I hear it: "What a bad asset!"

Hm... yes, it's right: We all have to be patient. Come on, all. Sit down! Breathe in and out slowly.

 

I am trying to use this hightmap image I have that I exported from Gaia Terrain Engine to generate the heightmap within Terrain Composer but it seems that for this single terrain its only stamping it to one section of the terrain. You can see what I mean in this video I captured.

I am using a regular image as well instead of a raw file as I am using the heightmap exported image from Gaia Terrain Engine and then trying to get that over to Terrain Composer for other work. The image I am trying to use is a 1024x1024 png.

If i change the terrain size to say 500x500 it works perfectly fine. In this video my terrain is 2048x2048.

The reasoning behind all this is just the stamping of terrain works better for me personally for creation of terrain details but your product supports multi tile which i need for performance optimization.


EDIT* Well I found that If I split the terrain into 4 using the slice tool it shows properly. But I would still like to know why when its just a single terrain tile and at that size of 2048x2048 and no matter what setting I seem to pick it still only seems to generate on part of the terrain tile.

 

It's probably the local area set to something wrong when only parts of the terrain generate. You can find it under the terrain and local area tab

 

The only fear I have with this is that I and others don't necessarily think RTP's GUI is all that clear either. So, what does that mean when a GUI confuses someone who makes confusing GUIs?

 

Yes, but it is Peter who is helping him fix it, the same guy who did Horizon[ON]. Take a look at his manual here, particularly page 6 which shows the GUI menu. Extremely professional all-round and perhaps the best GUI I've experienced from the store.

 

I'm not familiar with Horizon[ON] so I'll take your word for it. I do want to get that someday though. I'm sure TC2 will turn out great.

 

One of the biggest irritants is the endless fold out tabs when you have to keep clicking a title which opens up another set of options. It's so easy to get lost in endless fold out tabs that you forget what you had actually set out to do, or even end up changing the values of the wrong prefab. I've done this countless of times and it just ruins the experience of using it. Potentially TC2 could have 100's of different prefabs such as trees, rocks and plants, and so the best thing would have them neatly organised in coloured folders like what Peter has done in Horizon with his menu. Another good GUI is Easy Scatter which I bought recently, a good GUI really makes or breaks a program so it will definitely be worth the wait.

 

From what i understand, we need a bunch of heightmap to make terrains.
How do you guys get the heightmap data ?
I know TC provide some examples,
But how to get other than that ?
Is there any heightmap generator ?
I heard its from World Machine or World Composer.

 

l3dt is also an option, aswell as simple image programs (you can draw heightmaps also)

the way i understood it though, is that TC has some basic functions of heightmap generation aswell

 

Hi,

I export splats ( 8 splat textures ), however there are 8 splatsmaps exported, not 2 splatmaps ( 1 for 4 textures ) which is supposed to be due to documentation, I cannot assing it to mobile shaders which requires 2 splatmaps.

I also try to use mobile shaders to exported unity meshes from terrains. However 8SplatTerrain material and shader makes the meshes invisible. Any idea ?

 

What exactly are you looking for? Real world data? Randomly generated?

 

Can you please mention a new release time for demo version? I'm really tying to hold myself from using Gaia! it doesn't support multi-Terrain and because of that I don't like Gaia. But also I'm in a hurry

 

I'm just looking for how to make heightmap in my own.

 

I understand that. But based on what underlying data?

All a heightmap is is a greyscale image file. That's all. Nothing special. If you can open Paint and make a black and white image, you have a heightmap essentially. But this is practically worthless.

So, 99.9999% of the time it depends on whether you want fictional or realworld terrain. Depending on what you want there are various workflows to create them.

If you want an example, try terrain.party.

Or RTFM and use the perlin noise generator in Terrain Composer itself.

 

Hi @Tinjaw,

When you say greyscale image does it not need to be saved as a raw file. No matter i do in gimp to export as a raw file it does nothing on import to terrain???

 

Yes and No

A "heightmap" is a generic term and describes the content/intended use of an image file. That image file can be in any format -- png, raw-16, tiff, etc.

The next question is what are you going to do with it? If you are planning to use it in Terrain Composer it reads in from a raw 16 bit grey scale image. But other products use different formats.

 

Ah! just noticed this part. The issue is that there are several RAW formats. Gimp (to the best of my knowledge) doesn't support the format used by Unity3D/Terrain Composer.

I suggest getting a trial version to Adobe Photoshop online. You can then tinker with usable RAW files. If you feel it is necessary, you can continue the subscription for $10USD per month.

 

Thanks for the reply. $10 per month is a last resort at the moment. There is probably a way to get the correct format using open source. I will have to have a look.

@eagle555, Hi Nathaniel, Any plans to make it so TC2 can read other formats in to convert to heightmaps or is this a big ask?? Thanks

doc

 

I have to correct my earlier post. It appears you can use GIMP.

Follow these instructions.

That will get it into Unity3D (as an 8-bit file). Then export it from Unity as a 16-bit file.

 

You are a star Tinjaw and so is that fella who posted that info. Great help. Thanks

 

Cool, didn't know that! But... 8-Bit to 16-Bit is esentially still 8-Bit and thats crap; often unusable... Well, atleast an option:/

 

Yeah, i'm just curious the workflows you guys did to create them. either fictional or realworld terrain.

 

If you have Terrain Composer, then I highly recommend getting World Composer to go with it. It is a very easy way to get realworld heightmaps and is fully integrated with Terrain Composer.

As for making up fictional terrain, I'd say wait until Terrain Composer 2 comes along. It will be easier to use than TC and have more functionality. And everything will just work together.

Other options take more effort and (usually) more money.

For example World Machine will do a great job of creating fictional terrain. You can also use something like Vue or Terragen. All very capable, and costlier.

For real world terrain, there are several online databases that will provide you with heightmaps. They will be in various different formats, so you will need to do the work to convert them to what you need. And this means more work/effort/time. And, at least for me, time is money. So, once again, more expensive.

But for just starting out, from scratch, and building *something*, experiment with the heightmap generation capabilities of Terrain Composer itself. It will be a good introduction to the subject.

===BONUS=== I forgot to add that World Composer is on sale. So a good time to pick it up.

 

I build 3x3 terrains with terrain resolution at 513, and build it for android. The apk size was 135 mb it is extremely large. Is this beacuse multiple terrains ? How to reduce it, I normally develop android games under 50 mb size ?

 

It could be a thousand things. Get a tool, like Build Report Tool, and see what all is in your app. Then you will know what is taking up space.

 

I just bought the tool you suggest, I will see the results. Thank you.

 

This kind of tool is very useful. Picked a similar one up in a sale ages ago and very helpful.

I also recommend maintainer - https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/32199. The dev provides very good support. This is very useful as well.

 

I really loved the tool ( Build Tool ), I already found couple high res textures and optimized them. However I think my issue relis with terrain composer and terrains. I have still having 120 mb apk file after terrains included.

You may see my last posts in Build Tool forum
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/bu...project-that-need-slimming-down.178279/page-7