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

A little randomness on plant height, width, and colour tint would just remove some of the same-i-ness, Otherwise, it could be a photo.

 

This was from a quick test I did last night using the latest Beta (the islands in the background are just duplcates of the terrain the player's standing on and there as a visual aid for something separate that I'm working on ). Adding in extra/vaaried vegetation is a simple matter and by some tweaking of the settings you can get some stunning results that you would spend a long time using the manual tools available to you in Unity (please note, I'm not saying that in now way am I claiming that this image is stunning lol)

 

Todays screenies - refined Spawner object placement algorithm. Rocks all done procedurally (Spawner) now. Had fun just wandering around my island

 

@AdamGoodrich
These screens looks fantastic!

 

Like I said previously, the results speak for themselves and they just keep getting better

 

Wow! +100

 

This will so much fun to play around with!

 

Adam previously posted an image of a new feature he's introduced into the latest beta version. With this, you can configure it to only spawn items if there's a specific texture used at that point on the terrain.

Take this shot...


I decided to put a path in here using another texture, so I cleared out all the grasses/plants, placed the path and then told Gaia to replace the plants once again, but this time to only place it on the grass textured areas, and it gave me this...



The centre of the path is clear of vegetation. Plants may appear at the edges of the path where the path's texture isn't at full strength but that's what we'd expect really in real life where plants start to encroach on man-made paths

 

very useful to define the world features with

 

Here's a quick video i did for a composer friend of mine - its missing the latest rocks but still nice. All of the texture and grass assets you see there will be included in the release.

 

Now if only we could persuade SpeedTrees to let Adam ship Gaia with the a selection of their trees as well

 

I have been following this thread and constantly stuffing my eyeballs back in my head...

I'm not sure if this is beyond the scope of this asset but have you thought about building in a ground cover clipping radius around the player so the developer can adjust the size to where it only renders ground cover within the radius of the player? Maybe like a spawner but attached to the player? Crazy...

That way we could have really lush grass, plants etc. without bringing our systems to their knees...

 

Thanks

The terrain object inherently supports grass rendering distance via the Detail Distance setting in the inspector - that sorts your grass out.

For other things like trees, rocks etc you would need to do some form of distance based culling - which is beyond the scope of Gaia - there are however some very nice assets that do this which you might consider using.

Gaia has the ability to Spawn any type of game object, and they should be fairly easy to integrate into a 3rd party culling system.

 

Thanks for the fast reply, I was mostly curious about the grass/plants... I am wanting to do a jungle scene and wanted to have a very dense forest, could I use the Detail Distance for that?

 

@Teila very kindly corrected my last response to this - i was thinking another thing completely

Detail Distance - The distance (from camera) beyond which details will be culled.
Detail Density - The number of detail/grass objects in a given unit of area. The value can be set lower to reduce rendering overhead.
Tree Distance - The distance (from camera) beyond which trees will be culled.
Billboard Start - The distance (from camera) at which 3D tree objects will be replaced by billboard images.
Fade length - Distance over which trees will transition between 3D objects and billboards.
Max Mesh Trees - The maximum number of visible trees that will be represented as solid 3D meshes. Beyond this limit, trees will be replaced with billboards.

SpeedTree seems to be an exception to this, and you can customise how SpeedTree does its rendering vie each tree's LOD settings.

 

Not sure if it's still relevant, but some time ago there was a discussion about rivers. There's a pretty good demonstration of how it could be done in this post.

 

Could one use something like erosion brush to cut rivers and paths?

 

Adam can clarify this, but I think an implementation for rivers, paths, etc. are scheduled for a later update once v1.0 has been released to the Asset Store

 

Yep a rivers update is planned post initial release. I have some ideas on how to do this already, and thanks @christoph_r i will check that tutorial out as well

 

Great news regarding rivers. That's the one I can't wait for

 

Adam, so far with vegetation on looks nice.

I am curious, can you control in any way terrain generation? By example, in WM you can draw exactly where you want a mountain or hill. Do you have any erosion types? Global or local? Splat maps takes in account erosion? Like hydraulic one?

 

@Teo from what I have seen, 100% control over what happens.
This is not a random, let's click a button and hope it comes out nice method.

 

Just some more screenshots for you all.

Once the terrain was put in place, everything else you see here has been placed according to the configuration setup in Gaia - even the texturing. Nothing has been manually placed or adjusted

 

This could be really interesting, I would like to see some more details about customization.

 

Hi @Teo ,
I am 100% sure that he moment @AdamGoodrich gets to wrapping up and submission stage he will have the honors of revealing all the A's he has up his sleeve

 

Latest work on Spawner - now simulates natural growth and a lot more.

This scene textured, planted and rocked with latest Spawner - all rules based and all procedural!

Btw.. the rock formation - is just one rock - rotated, scaled and placed automatically.

 

Wow! Nice work!

 

This is looking great. We would love to pick this up to test it out with our Emerald Animal AI system. Our system is a dynamic wildlife system with prey and predators.

Will your system support Unity's NavMesh system? From my understanding, this alters Unity's standard terrains, right?

We will definitely make sure this system is fully supported with Emerald Animal AI.

 

BHS, Adam's tool allows you to add terrain details, texture the terrain and put in trees/vegetation. It doesn't alter the Unity terrain. You can still add a Navmesh and use it just like any other terrain. You add your own shaders too.

I use Emerald already on terrains built with this tool and no different from any other Unity terrain. The beauty is simply that it blends together everything so nicely and places objects so naturally. It makes it look like it is some super duper miracle maker, but the miracle is that anyone, even if you have failed at making your terrain look beautiful, can do it with this tool.

So..nothing you need to change to make your tool work with this one. I imagine Adam will agree....and add to this.

 

It creates standard Unity terrains.. And like Teila, I have used Emerald AI with terrains I have created in my beta testing as well.

 

I've tried to create natural looking terrains on my own before and failed miserably - nothing looked natural at all. After playing around with the first beta release for about 30mins I got something that looked magnitudes better than anything I could have done myself. With the latest beta release this got even quicker. (Okay to be honest it probably took the same amount of time but that's because I forgot where I'd stored my textures )

As for navmesh baking - it's still a unity terrain that you end up with I'm the end so it'll just work as expected

 

Additional - here's a link to a quick video I put together to show my AI wandering around to give some semblance of life - nothing special but it's on a terrain built with the first beta release and with a baked navmesh

TestAIwalk:

 

Lovely, Smada. The "goddess" and smiled down on you and helped you create a beautiful world.

 

Gaia does the heavy lifting to create your environments. What you are left with at the end of that process is a vanilla Unity scene - no custom shaders, no custom anything, just raw Unity.

This means that you can then do whatever you would normally do to make things more interesting such as adding animals, baking navmeshes etc

 

Looking really awesome!

Does that mean its limited to 4 terrain textures?
And is there any control over how those splatmaps are blended? (ie sharpness depending on type of terrain etc)

Is there any way to get more info from it in order to create splatmaps for more detailed terrain? ... ie. in tools like WM one can create channels to output erosion values, rocky areas, etc describing different topography, then create those as two splatmaps (to use up to 8 textures in Unity), using something like "ats color map ultra shader".

Below is an example of a current problem I have. The beach is all terrain textures using splatmaps to paint different textures with better control than just blending. The problem is the black "tearing" I'm getting. I think this is because I use 2 splatmaps (as each can only handle 4 textures in RGBA channels), but the problem is the color-values across all RGBA splatmaps needs to = 1. So R1 + G1 + B1 + A1 + R2 + G2 + B2 + A2 must = 1. As I mentioned I started writing some tools to handle that, but its a bit tricky as they are post-process, and would be better if it is done at source. Is there anything you have that can help with this? Else i need to plod on.

Thx

 

Limited to what unity terrain can handle - 4 or 8.

Yes - the full power of the Spawning engine sits behind them

You can use texture / splat coverage as another input into the Spawning system. So it can in turn drive what gets put where.

I don't currently export the splats that control texturing - but full terrain export and an intelligent resize feature is on the roadmap. I have never used the ATS colourmap solution, so am not sure if that's what you need.

This is handled automatically by the texture capability in the Spawner I have never seen that tearing issue before.

 

Hello there !

Im a Merchant from the 3DD.us Team ...

Just to Say im very interested in this System Further development.
Even to develop Assets Templates, to sell at assets store out of it.

And if there is anywhere we could buy a Beta . I Will be there the first Day !
Because this is a "entrepreneur" project that should be supported and financed fully

My tool of choice to make terrains ( better than world machine or any composer ) iv been working with

Is QuadSoftware Grome
http://quadsoftware.com/index.php?m=section&sec=product&subsec=editor

A Very amazing good unknown tool from a very small company ...
A terrain Tool very used at Ubisoft and Eidos that im sure mister @John Riccitiello and mister @Joachim_Ante themselves one of this days could take into the Unity Board as subject to buy Grome SDK And Integrate it "inside" UNITY ....

And that Would be a Spectacular ROAD-MAP Chance ...
https://unity3d.com/pt/unity/roadmap

As the terrain development is So so Deep down in the Road Map And Still just in research... is a shame.

Because of the lack of better Default terrain tools, all the other Terrains Extension developers are stuck in the UNITY Mud .... because they can only work with what Unity offers as default.

Those Kind of Changes As bring QuadSoftware GROME Sdk Tools Working inside the editor ...
Is Something that We all need .. would make a great change ...
But Just UNITY Board of Developers can make ...


In all the rest ... GAIA Can be A Global Landscape "Assembling" Generations Software. Like no other
If done in a Right way We could get from here in Next 1 year or 2 a VUE or Bryce in UNITY Just With GAIA

You See the Most Powerful ( Innovative ) Part Of all the GAIA Road Map i believe Are "The Blueprint templates"
Because if you See "Vue or Bryce" Workflows are just made of "templates" ...

That people do in "Many editors" .. The "terrain Editor" the "trees editor" the "Ecosystems Editor" the "Material Editor", the "Sky Editor" , The "Water Zones Editor" .. the "clouds Editor" ... Then is just Drag And Drop from the libraries ...
That we can Paint it, Spawn it procedurally, Or even just scatter it exactly were we want with Splines ...

If you see the whole VUE 2015 "thing" ... Is nothing more than that ..
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_2015_complete/?page=2

Many Modules Editors, plugins ... To do "Templates" That we can Save ...
Then the most important part ... "THE LIBRARIES" of each editor that we just drag and drop into the scenes.

And they even have a Marketplace site http://cornucopia3d.com Just to sell and merchant this "templates" ...

And that is the BASIC but most powerful Easy concept, of the "best landscape software" there is ...
Concept That Sure should be applied into Game development ...

That Gladly i Already See A LOT of it Being Translated in the GAIA Roadmap ... My Congratulations

Even today just as As landscape Spawning and Natural Growth Solution Sounds Amazing ^^
Especially bundled with a "blueprints templates" System were we can Save "terrains", "Ecosystems" Templates ... that we can save into user made libraries for everything ... Which is Easy revolutionary.

And this GAIA LIBRARIES Concept .. Is something that Can Even be made on other Plugins or Extensions And Brought Into GAIA to be a Easy Drag and Drop The GAIA Template to make the many Worlds ...

That Base Concept of GAIA .. that VUE has ... is Quite Unbeatable ...
In all the rest is just up to us to Conjugate with Others So many Extensions that Do whatever we want ...

Mister ADAM ! Thanks So much for developing So openly this Revolutionary Extension !

This is Exactly all that the community needs ... And we actually were long ago Expecting from UNITY.

By the Communitarian way you are doing this ... UNITY Should Hire you Sir.
And Make GAIA Development the Default Procedural Environmental Solution for this engine..

Exactly As they made the UMA Procedural System The default For Characters ...

I believe that to easily raise those limits ... and ...
To do this: I think is just to Aply the Same way the "ultimate swissknife" Terraincomposer does :

That is JUST Integrate RTP into GAIA
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/5664

To Allow up to 16 Textures And Fix Therefore all the natural variance one need to have in a terrain ...

I Believe Should Not BE that Difficult right ?

If you Study how TC Does it ...
Its just a small process on the Multi Terrain Generation it just Applies The RTP Setup to Each Individual terrain ...

And for that i believe there is also the possibility on Using the Same method TC Does and Take the opportunity that RELIEF Terrain System was modded to do Exactly that ... and do it the same way ...

The RTP Developer @tomaszek Im sure will be delighted to have "one more" Terrain Solution Covered on its Universal terrain Shader System and im positive it will even help on the integration ... If we users request it and if you both Developers talk about it ...

Im a customer of RTP and Relief terrain pack for us has been a Major Global Solution / and the best there is for Terrain Shader ...( Not Even Unreal Engine Shaders can beat it ) ... And its been spread with compatibility across many Extensions Beside terraincomposer, and Voxeland, and That other "Planetary terrain" Extension ... Even the new Ultimate terrains Voxel Solution has it ...

RTP Should have Integration with GAIA Procedural Terrains Spawning and Natural growth Solutions ...

I Believe All this it will be a Litle Step for one or two Genius Mens ...

But a Great Step for our community ^^

THANKS FOR LISTEN.​

Dear Adam !
THANKS SO MUCH FOR LISTENING OUR MANY WISHES ...
In this Amazing GAIA Extension features, and be so open in all we can dream and request.

My best Regards.


3DLABS
The 3DD.us Team

 

I have been looking for a good terrain tool for a long time. I tried Terrain Composer, but it's so hard to use I only use it for certain things related to textures. Something like this could help me out a lot. Will definitely be taking a look at it when it releases. Do you have some video on how to use it or some tutorials to get some idea about functionality?

 

I think he plans on having that stuff for release. He did video tutorials for beta but so much is changing during development, they will need to be redone for release. By the time he releases it, I am sure he will have resources ready to support it. The beta team is not only giving feedback on bugs and features, but also things that may be somewhat confusing that need to be addressed in documentation/videos. So hopefully by the time it releases, even the few things that could be confusing will be easily figured out by checking out support resources.

 

That's good. Making good terrains for my top down game has been incredibly difficult. We've pretty much done everything by hand, but it's a time consuming process. If I could save a little time, that would make our lives soooo much better.

 

Thanks for reply.

Look forward to inputting some data files and see what it can do with them

Cool - unleash the Kraken

This sounds really useful ... but thats not to sculpt the terrain I assume .... it sounds more like for positioning objects etc.

Its very similar to RTP, similar results, but I've found more efficient in my tests. A lot cheaper, think its under $10 ... https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/4722
Similar to any terrain shader, to get best results, one should create custom splat-maps (normally in WM etc). I suppose its pretty straight-forward to export them from Unity.

 

This looks super sharp! I'm sure people keep asking, but what's the timeline to launch?

 

Within the next month I hope I may be a beta tester but I still want to get my hands on the full package

@AdamGoodrich - do i have to get the whip out to force you to work faster

 

I think it will DEFINITELY help you with that! To do what was taking me a week just to get started with in Terrain Composer, I was able to do that and more in less than an hour the first time I used the beta.. And things have improved since then. And while my terrains may not look production-ready (at least they don't to me), a lot of that is more due to my learning curve with the Unity 5 lighting and other stuff more than it is Gaia. Someone with a good working knowledge of the lighting and all of the other stuff that effects the terrain and environment will be able to do wondrous things with Gaia. At least that is my opinion. And that is in its current state. We are currently waiting for the next beta release to test which has a bunch more changes/additions that will make things even easier. By the time it is released, I think people will be totally amazed at just how easy creating awesome terrains can be.

 

I am pushing as hard as i can to release ASAP. I balance this between work and family as well, and even with that I probably put 4-8 hours a day plus weekends into it.

Latest update is end of this month. I want to release it when its 'right' and as you look through the forum you should be able to notice an increase in the sophistication of the environments it is generating. Whats not so obvious is that the usability is also improving.

Thanking everyone for their patience.

 

Take your time to polish it

Even though people are anxious to get there hands on your product, I think they rather wait a little longer to get a stable version, than a 'buggy' version. And you don't want to waste time with too many bug notifications, when releasing something too quick

I know how it is to work on something you love in your spare time and balance it with time spend on work, family and friends!

It is looking better and better ... Keep up the good work!

 

Been doing a lot of work on the Spawner - here are some 3D Forge Exteriors Kit blueprint buildings procedurally placed.

 

Now that is awesome. So you can pick buildings and kinda layout a town/city and Gaia will automatically deform the terrain for it?

 

For those wondering - is it ok in top down - check this - this is all procedurally done - very happy with it!!!

We have organic tree growth - scattered sparse grass - and clustered village, but with distance and clean terrain option selected..

 

Planned but not implemented yet - in the scenes above Gaia is conforming to the basic terrain and using rules to populate it.