GAIA - AAA terrain generator, procedural texturing, planting and scene creation

Adam, thanks for reply's and updates.

 

That lighting looks really good, I might try that. How do you find it's performance? I'm starting to consider Tenkoko alternatives, as sadly its just way too resource hungry for game-play

I read that UniStorm (I think it was) had hardly any performance hits so was thinking about that.

 

I always heard that UniStorm was very hard on performance but have read many recent claims by BHS that it runs a lot smoother after they cleaned up the code. I never purchased it so not 100% sure. I use Environment Gator and it has the same issues. I think almost anything you use that does as much as those systems is going to come at a cost. You have to look at which system does the most of what you need and how many of the fluff things it does you can live with out and then see how your game runs. Personally I don't think the same opinions hold true on these assets and match 100% from one game developer to another...

With that said, I know a few folks who are using Time of Day and are, for the most part, happy with it. But I don't think it does everything that the other time/weather assets mentioned do. Not sure if it does weather at all.

 

Looks fantastic. If you need support or testing, I am in. Will be buying regardless, so it would be lovely to get a little peek! Thanks for hard work.

 

TOD is very nice, and has always been designed with performance in mind. It does not have weather, but there is a free weather plugin that you can use with it.

My impression of weather is that unless you're thinking of doing weather simulation, it's mainly just dropping rain or snow particles from above the camera, which is not that complicated a procedure. Possibly you're better off getting specialty products like Liquidum or Snowify, depending on needs.

 

Please - just focus on what the USP is - AAA terrain generator

 

You have a sale here! Looking forward to the multi-terrains. Currently using 11x11 and generating everything manually to my needs so your AAA terrain generator appears to be what I'm looking for as a time saver. Keep up the good work.

 

@julianr from what I have seen, it is going to in many respects set the bar high for terrain generation tools
and it is going to bring some easy to use methods to the playing field that have not been seen yet

It might just become one of many people's favorite tools

 

Hurry up Adam! We all have mountains to climb and valleys to be lost in!

 

You are very kind - thank you

 

I find that i want to just explore and take photo's - its just fun

 

This should save you a bunch of time

 

But... But... But... Everyone else wants to do that too!!!!

 

It looks great! I like the way you can place objects to craft out text messages. Always handy when you have a survival game requiring an SOS or HELP carved into the terrain. Among many other uses.

 

I'm sure it will. This could be the tool to finish my game with a new quality terrain update

 

I'm dying to give you my money! Can't wait for it to pop up on the asset store

 

The spawning system is completely extensible. You can think of the Spawner as the conductor, and the various rules and resources that are being managed as the musicians and their instruments.

The conductor chooses a venue and then invites one or more musicians to do their thing at that venue. The musicians then rate that venue and choose whether it is 'fit' for them to play there or or not. The conductor then makes some pretty smart decisions on which musician gets to play and then manages their performance. You can think of the spawner rules as the musical score driving the entire orchestra. Hope that wasn't too esoteric an analogy

Out of the box you will get 80% of what you will ever need - including the ability to spawn any game object. However, because it is completely extensible, you can customise the way it works just by adding a GameObject / Prefab that implements either an IFitness based script or an ISpawn based script or both, allowing those functions to be overridden as you choose.

This means you can leverage the smarts of the spawner system to procedurally generate and manage any aspect of your game environment.

Super excited about it and can't wait to see what it will do in the hands of some talented developers

 

Just piping in to say this is looking really good, well done

 

We'll let you off just this once lol

 

@AdamGoodrich - sounds just what we need. Ideal for AI or item spawning at certain locations. Currently, we used wave spawning from a pool, but this you have to define the location by a sphere. If we can spawn AI on along a textured path randomly this would be neat.

 

Nice idea - yeah - you can overlay random locations on top of a texture as a way of choosing spawn locations.

 

Any ETA?

 

Sorry another few weeks. Everything but texturer is inside of spawner. Having texturer outside caused lots of confusion in beta group. Will take a bit of extra time to get right. Getting these rough edges sorted will make it better for you as well.

 

Few weeks! NOOOOOO!!!! But... But...

Well, from the looks of what you have been sharing, it will be worth the wait. Hopefully it will be as easy to build these "throwaway" terrains that you have been showing as you say! I'd rather you get things sorted now so we don't run into issues when we get our grubby mitts on it.. heheh

At least keep the screenshots coming so we can keep drooling in anticipation!

 

This looks really interesting!
Do you plan on adding a feature that allows users to 'paint' where they want the terrain to be generated or something like that?

 

Yeah, don't rush it on account of us. Make sure it's awesome before you release it, oh wait, it already is. Make sure it's even awesomeer...

 

Hmmm - yeah something like that. Will reveal how it works when I submit to the store. Initial feedback has been very positive

 

is there some video of the workflow ? im currently using Terrain composer but i would love to switch to something different

 

I'm really curious about this feature!
Will this feature make possible to define areas where the landmass will be generated,such as if i want to make 2 islands i just define the areas where they will be generated?

 

@Damien Delmarle
I think that you very likely will be switching to something else soon

 

@Rick-
From what I understand, you will have 100% control over the results, not a random method at all.
It will not be like a die roll and you keep rolling till you happy

 

I think 100% control over the results sounds very nice to me.

 

Is there any support for creating multiple splatmaps? I use "ats Colormap ULTRA Terrain Shader" which is similar to RTS ... to use more than 4 terrain textures it will need 2 splatmaps.

It's actually pretty tricky to create proper splatmaps as all color RGBA values at any pixel across both splatmaps need to add up to 1.0.

I started making a tool to do that, but prefer if yours does!

 

@AdamGoodrich - phenomenal work!

I haven't noticed but do you have any plans for a tunneling system, something that works off of splines maybe?

 

@AdamGoodrich

Does the terrains generated by this tool looks good for top-down games too?

 

I'm sure the terrains will be as good for top down as we can make them ourselves? Surely it's the design, layout and textures that are important here?

I just wish Adam had some new pics to show us what it can help create

Hint, hint lol

 

I am working on integrating texturing into the spawner at the moment. Then I want to show off true biome generation

 

We have been debating that - Unity terrain doesn't support it - but it would be possible with the combination of terrain and mesh - had added to list to consider for a future release.

 

Yep its tricky - i am manipulating standard unity splat / alpha maps to control texturing - all the texturing in the screenshots you see has been done this way.

 

I think like all tools - you can make lovely things and you can make other things It's creates standard unity terrains so you can choose your style based on the type of game you want to make.

 

No more talk. We want pics to drool over!

 

+1

 

I second that.

 

Still need a name for your tool?

What about Rich Terrains (as in you deliver very rich populated terrains and rich being part of your last name)?

If you want a more specific name, you good go for something like Rich Terrain Generator or Rich Procedural Terrains, but I still prefer my first suggestion

Looking forward working working with it soon!
Cheers, Anne

 

Just moved terrain texturing into the Spawner - Biomes now truly possible as every aspect of how the terrain is textured and populated is now Spawner controlled. Demoing both a faded in border and a stark border here to show the influence of the Spawner. Very cool!







Another major step closer to release

 

WOW

 

I've got access to a beta version of Adam's terrain system (it's a closed beta, so please respect him and don't bug @AdamGoodrich to try and gain access) and while Adam has said that we can show off images of landscapes we've created, I won't be going into any of the details of how they're done - he's keeping that for when he's ready to put this onto the Asset Store.

This image took me all of 5 minutes to create using this. In fact, it's taken me longer to put this post together (re-reading it over to make sure I'm not going to spoil anything that Adam wants to reveal himself)

 

Thank you

Totally enjoying the creativity of the beta group! Gaia is worlds (no pun intended) better thanks to their patient testing and is coming along at a rate of knots thanks to their awesome feedback!

 

Looking better and better! Its a shame its not ready yet, I'm under pressure to deliver a build by the 1st of August, so it looks like I'm going to have to finish the terrains using the product I have, but I will swap over to yours if viable, it does mean double the work but looks totally worth it!

 

Nope, doesn't mean double the work. I don't think you have a clue just how much time this saves. Think weeks/months of work in a day.