WorldComposer a tool to create real World AAA quality terrain

and also I need to know the height of the specific lat/lon

 

I am having a very frustrating issue with placing a vehicle on a World Composer terrain. I have slightly edited the SkyCar from Standard Assets, and endeavored to have it drive around on a terrain generated by WorldComposer. The Car works just fine on a flat or even sculpted terrain, but when I use WorldComposer to generate a geographically accurate area, I encounter a serious problem. For some reason, my wheel colliders do not acknowledge the existence of my terrain collider and just slide right through (See pic below).



My box collider stops the car from falling all the way through (although on some hills the whole car falls through anyway) but the wheel colliders are completely useless. I am rather new to Unity, so I could be overlooking something simple, but I have scoured Google for answers to this problem but have not found any. It seems that many have had this problem before, but none seemed to have been caused by whatever is causing my issue. Some more details about my scene that eliminate some these common answers:

• My wheel colliders are separate from the actual tire, they do not turn
• My car is not touching the ground when game starts, I have it a few meters off the ground
• My collision matrix looks good, there are no problems there
• Shrinking my "Fixed Timestep" did not improve matters at all
• I have tried saving the scene and restarting Unity, it did not help

Due to the fact that it is none of the issues above, I am starting to wonder if this could have been caused by WorldComposer. Any ideas on what the problem is?
Thanks in advance!

 

Since I bought the plugin a week ago I have been trying to figure out why the textures rarely update on my terrain.
What is the secret button? Refresh doesn't work.

 

Another thing : the viewport often freezes after generation. In fact it happens every 15 minutes after I regenerate the splatmap.

 

WorldComposer includes a script to convert lat/long to Unity units (meters) and vice versa. So this is possible.

Nathaniel

 

If you use RTP you need to use same texture resolutions and normal textures need to be set to readable. You can do this if you click the normal textures in your project (can multi select). In inspector click on 'Texture Type' -> Advanced. Enable 'Read/Write Enabled', click 'Apply' button.

This is probably Unity 5 enlighten lightmap baking, you can turn of 'Continues Baking' in Unity Menu -> Window -> Lighting.

Nathaniel

 

WorldComposer generates standard Unity terrains. There are issues with the wheelcollider in Unity5:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/un...ponent-is-unusable.307099/page-3#post-2039554

However it might also be your Unity5 version that causes the issue, there's a bug on Unity terrain that the terrain collider is not updated if heights are updated. This is fixed in the patch releases by Unity, so you need to try the latest patch:
http://unity3d.com/unity/qa/patch-releases

What Unity version are you using?

Nathaniel

 

I am currently using Unity 5.0.1 Personal edition. I will check out that patch! Thanks a bunch!

 

Hi Nathaniel, I would like to ask if you had ever had the chance to look into a real-time / runtime loading option from worldcomposer, so we can be in any part of the world at runtime? I suppose this would be really hard to implement but just curious. Would the main issue be computing the images/height maps to compress quickly?
Thanks,
Kim

 

Installed the latest patch and regenerated my terrain, still no luck

 

Hi, just a thought, does a Unity native cube with a box collider have the same problem? I was just curious if any other object shows the same behaviour

 

I just performed the experiment and got some very strange results. When I first dropped the cube it just fell straight through the terrain. I then tried increasing the scale. At first it kept dropping through the terrain, but when I reached a certain width it actually landed on the terrain. I scaled the cube back down some, and moved it a little along the Z axis. When I dropped it this time, it landed on the terrain, and then tipped and fell through (see screenshot, I paused it in the middle of tipping):



It appears as if there is almost a tightrope wire running through the terrain at certain points. It seems that the terrain collider consists of a wire frame. That's why my car wheels sunk into the terrain. My box collider caught the wire frame but my wheels didn't. It wasn't a problem with the Wheel Colliders, it was a problem with the terrain. Any ideas how using WorldComposer creates this mysterious terrain collider?

UPDATE: It seems that the Terrain Collider is only as detailed as the height map. When I increase the resolution of the height map in the "Create Terrain" tab of WorldComposer, the resolution of the invisible terrain collider "wire frame" also increases. However, I would have to almost use a 4k resolution to sustain my vehicle, and that is extremely impractical.
So the question remains, why does WorldComposer generate a terrain collider that acts like a wire frame? Or is this a Unity bug?

 

WC and TC have been great for me so far, but every now and then, this happens:



Any idea what could be causing this kind of artifacting of the height map? I've tried clearing out the area's files, and re exporting them but I'm still getting these weird results.

 

Now I am really confused.
I dropped a ThirdPersonCharacter from the Standard Assets onto my terrain and he was able to run around just fine. There are a few spots on the terrain where he seems to get stuck in a seam, but other than that the collider worked fine. I'm pretty sure this character uses a capsule collider. I'm not sure why a capsule collider works properly on this terrain when a box collider or wheel collider experiences major issues.
Any ideas?

 

No ideas; only the observation that it can be difficult to get controllers operating properly. If you look in the archives, there must be hundreds of threads in the forum with the title, "Help! My character is falling through the floor!"

 

I tested here with box/sphere/capsule collider. It all works fine, except the wheel collider. This is a Unity bug though the wheel collider seems to have many issues in U5 (it's upgraded to the new physics in U5).
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-5-wheelcollider-component-is-unusable.307099/

Can you show a screenshot of the 'Create Terrain' tab from the WorldComposer window with your area active?

Nathaniel

 

Hello Kim,

Bing doesn't really allow this, as it has a limited number of transactions that can be done in a day. Later if I add USGS satellite and elevation data, I can take a look into making it a runtime streaming. However there's comming a new streamer on the Asset Store where you will be able to render a large WorldComposer scene. More info on this later...

Nathaniel

 

This was a bug in the latest TerrainComposer 1.9, I made a fix for this, it's included in this update:

I will upload and submit a TC 1.92 today with this fix included.

Nathaniel

 

Hi, today I have purchased terrain composer and world composer.
I have a problem with heightmaps files. WC creates, for heightmaps, raw 8bit files that make the 3d terrain made by cubes minecraft style...they're horryble
Do you have a solution?

PROBLEM FIXED with the terrainComposer update to 1.9!!!

now everything is so smooth and sweet.
thank you Nathaniel! your tools are really awesome.

 

Same issue here. Latest Word Composer 1.45

 

Hi Nathanial, this is interesting reading! The Paraglider sim I am working on had been Greenlit on Steam so I am getting that more polished slowly but surely. One future feature I would love to see is the ability to allow players to choose where they want to fly in the world, if this would be something possible I would love to hear more if you have any further info. The streamer asset you mention, is that something you are creating? I'd be willing to be a guinea pig to test any alpha/beta versions
As always thank you for your most excellent help and creations!

 

My 0.0002 cent, try using terrain composer to smooth it out or increase heightmap resolution.

 

Looks like you are creating minecraft

 

Hi,i'm a Chinese users,of course,i had some of questions to ask if you could do me a favor.The first thing i want to know is that when i am going to export satellite images ,the time information besides the 'pause' button is nagative value getting start from -60:-60:00,and there seems to be nothing happen of the extract progress,i wonder whether it is limination from the bingmap that i need to wait for an hour to access the data?the screenshots is down below:



(i haven't got the proxy yet and can't watch your tutorial video,it would be appreciated if you could send me the viedo or the download website,my email is:378444182@qq.com)
Since this is the first time i asked for help in the foreign websites,i hope you could apologize with my poor presentation! Thank you very much ! Looking for your reply!

 

And one more suggestion if you could subtitle of your turtoial videos (Cause it would be a great problem for a foreign users with poor listening )

 

Well, it is table mountain, just not tables mountain.

 

It's not an issue in WorldComposer in latest or older version, you have to leave the heightmap resolution alone in the 'Create terrain' tab as it is detected automatically.

I explain it here and in the WorldComposer manual (trouble shooting at end):

http://www.terraincomposer.com/troubleshooting/
The heightmap of the created terrain is looking blockery.

Nathaniel

 

As for the streamer, no I didn't create this. But its on the Asset Store now:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/36486

Nathaniel

 

I will contact you by email. You can try to set the 'request timeout' in the 'Settings' tab to 20 seconds. And try to reexport.

Nathaniel

 

Dear Eagle555,

Please see the areas highlighted in red.
This happened when I first bought TerrainComposer and wanted to get myself acquainted with your excellent program.
After downloading the example scene it seemed to have glitched on me. Either that, or I did not set it up correctly?

What could cause this?

When I try to "create" terrain, all that is created is a sandy plane with a spike on one of its corners.
I find myself more then perplexed, considering I was depending on this to work while following the video tutorial. lol. ^_^;;


With kind regards,

Vyn

 

Many thanks for the link/info, much appreciated.

 

I purchased World Composer and I am having an issue. When I create my terrain, all of the grids have textures that is just a white background with a "no camera" symbol on it. It has a level 18 zoom on it and I can't figure out what the problem is. Any help would be appreciated.

 

@ Developers,

1) Can you use World Composer with Terrain Composer to create a complete planet of terrains - and do they have to be derived from Earth data? Can you rejig on World Composer to create other stuff?

2) Does that editor accessing world map data come as standard with World Composer?

 

Thank for your reply and i've fixed the previous iuuse,but i'm afraid that it seemed a little bit tough for me to creat a satisified terrain like your screenshots.First of all,i'm confused that the terrains are always flatter than i expected,for i've choosed the region with high altitude difference.And the gap between every tiles looked distinct with deeper zoom. Here is the default region named "FrancsPeak",and i will show you my options

 

Hello,

It's a serialization importing bug with prefabs in Unity5, names got replaced by random numbers (or the names are not deserialized). It's more prevelent if there's a lot more in the project. What you can do is import TerrainComposer again on top of the other. It will reimport the prefabs and fix the issue. If that doesn't work let me know...

Nathaniel

 

It means that Bing doesn't provide zoom level 18 for the area you're trying to export. Not all area's in the world have the same detail and coverage. The more important an area is like USA/Europe the better quality the imagery/elevation. You can check if an area has the zoom level you want to export by zooming to it inside the WC map. You can see the map zoom level in the 'Map Parameters' tab.

Nathaniel

 

WorldComposer/TerrainComposer/Unity terrains are not really made for planet renders. As Unity terrain is square and 'flat' (it's not possible to curve it like a planet). You can create a very big terrain though with WC I show in this video:

To extend it even futher, I recommend to use Horizon[ON]
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/31861

Nathaniel

 

It looks like you are using a very old WorldComposer version, before I build 'Raw' export and shadow removal in. Please update to the latest version with the 'Update' tab.

Nathaniel

 

Heey, i get this error:

You are trying to load data from a www stream which had the following error when downloading.
401 Unauthorized
UnityEngine.WWW:LoadImageIntoTexture(Texture2D)
Map_tc:Update() (at Assets/TerrainComposer/Editor/Map_tc.js:3913)
UnityEditor.EditorApplication:Internal_CallUpdateFunctions()


Please, i need help

 

@ Nathaniel,

Understood. I was rather thinking of taking the topology say of the British Isles and slicing it in to various terrains...

On that score, where do I get the data for that topology? Is it in a tutorial(s)? Either way, could you direct me towards it/the tutorial bit? (thanks in advance)...

 

Don't see anything! Upgraded to Unity Pro 5.1 and bought World Composer today. So I don't know if the cause is due to 5.1 or ....?? X the unknown I got the Bing key but the display is blank. See image ...

 

I deleted both, then reinstalled TC then WC and now it works. Odd...

 

This happens if your Bing key is invalid, there might be a space at the beginning or end. You can check this as the key is displayed next to the key textfield. I will automatically trim for spaces in the next update.

Nathaniel

 

For taking topology, it's the first tutorial (second video) on the WorldComposer webpage:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/worldcomposer/

Nathaniel

 

It's probably because the Bing key was invalid, maybe a space at the beginning or end...

Nathaniel

 

Hi Nathaniel

We need to skip whole image downloading and we just need world file for each tile. We can use the world file to cut images from offline images. I have tried commenting some part of your script but no success.

We only need the heightmap file and worldfile (jgw) for each tile. We can extract images from another image source and can then put it in the folder and can create terrains.

Urgent help required.

 

I've a problem with World Composer. I've got two areas I've defined in World Composer each several kilometres apart from each other. When I export them by clicking Create Terrain they are both generated, but appear in Unity in the same location. I expected to see them in their relative locations as per the set outs I had done in the World Composer map.
I am attempting to have two small areas of high res, enclosed by one larger area of low res. A twist on the multi res tutorial you gave, except there are two detail areas in different locations, instead of one high res area in the centre.
Thanks.
Currently running latest WC and Unity.

 

The heightmap is exported as one big raw file. The best is to use photoshop or global mapper to get the images fitted then. You can see the center/upper left and lower right lattitude/longitude of your area in WorldComposer and use that to cut your images.

Nathaniel

 

Yes they appear at the center of the world origin (0,0,0), this is because it gives the best floating point precision. If you go to far away from this center point in Unity, positions become inaccurate and objects start to jitter. You can however manually drag the terrain parents to any position you like to separate the 2 different terrains. It's easiest to do this from the top Scene view in orthogonal and getting them to match with your bigger terrain.

Nathaniel

 

OK ..first ..thanks for sending me the link to the new version of World Composer .... I figured I would do this tutorial for multi-resolution terrain .... I am getting like 999+ errors when exporting all images to .raw as it says in the video..

<--the video I watched

below is the error im getting:

it seems to be stuck there, even if I click on stop..it just keeps going...here is a pic: http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=89802

Unity Engine Version 5.1.0f3 World Composer Version 1.45

Yeah I don't really know what to do here ...is it an error I made following the video?