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

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by AdamGoodrich, May 21, 2015.

  1. antoripa

    antoripa

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    Yes, you can ..... so far I use a third party asset for the road and that has many feature to customize the road..my output is just a bunch of Vectore3 with the coordinates of the track ...after I let do the work to others :) ...
     
  2. antoripa

    antoripa

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    I have recorded a short video .. I've added a bit more features ...
    I am trying to create something really easy and automatic ..I am posting here becuase you guys are expert and I a Gaia' passionate / fan ...
    I am gonna be happy to read your comments ...whatever you wanna write ...

     
  3. Xrystal

    Xrystal

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    Obviously a work in progress so you may have this planned already but I noticed the following that may work more useful.

    1. Allow track to be created in Editor Mode.
    2. Allow track points to be added and removed while in Play Mode.

    Other than that it is looking very good indeed.
     
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  4. pixelsteam

    pixelsteam

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    Looks fantastic, would be awesome if it could be modified for a river system.
     
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  5. antoripa

    antoripa

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    Yes .. .you can create a river as well :) ..
     
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  6. Mark_T

    Mark_T

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    Are you going to release it on the asset store? It looks really cool. Can you build junctions too?
     
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  7. hakankaraduman

    hakankaraduman

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    I would instantly get it even without junctions
     
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  8. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Very nice!
     
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  9. antoripa

    antoripa

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    Now I am focused on adding friendly features and high realism ..thinking to create a separate threads for the topic ...I am new in unity and gaming, just started in August . so feedback and features request are really important to enhance the tool over the top ;) ...
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2016
  10. antoripa

    antoripa

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  11. DominoM

    DominoM

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    Just got Unity and already it has me spending money :)

    This is from my first play around with Gaia and Tenkoku. I was waiting for a nice cloud pattern when suddenly the moon appeared in a cloud break and I took that as the signal to hit F12.
     

    Attached Files:

  12. Xrystal

    Xrystal

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    Very nice. As well as the building asset, the water and sky ones are on my list for when I am ready to get them.
     
  13. henmachuca

    henmachuca

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    Hello Everyone!
    I made a simple stamp in photoshop as I am trying to recreate a map from a game I used to play, but when I use as stamp im Gaia the terrain does not have enough resolution to get some spots right. Is there a way to change that?
    Thank you.
     
  14. Xrystal

    Xrystal

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    I'm not an expert on Gaia but I suspect it could be the difference in size between the stamp and the terrain. Some options you could try to see where the problem are as follows, but in no specific order :

    Try it on a small terrain and work your way up until you see what the maximum size terrain the stamp will work on okay.
    Try tinkering with the height and re ground the stamp to see if those missing details start appearing.
    Make sure you are fitting the stamp to the terrain.

    I'm sure the more experienced users will see straight away what the cause is but if you feel like trying those out while you wait for their suggestions.

    Good luck.
     
  15. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Hard to say whats happening with so little information - so will make some general points:
    • You want your image to be about the same resolution as your terrain and also your terrain height map resolution. A 1 : 1 correlation here will ensure that all the detail you create will be displayed. Just be aware that the higher the resolution the underlying terrain, the poorer the ultimate performance will be. You can change your sizes in the Gaia defaults file and then any new terrains will be created using the new settings.
    • Images are compressed - so you will introduce compression artefacts into the final result. If you used photoshop, try saving the heightmap as a 32 bit IBM raw file. This will ensure that no resolution is lost due to compression during scan / import process.
    I try lots of things when I am experimenting - and I also profile the results as well to see their impact on performance.

    For example - the last thing I often do is run a smooth on the terrain - this will remove any rough edges - and also increase overall performance because there are less triangles for your graphics card to render.
     
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  16. jaimepollard

    jaimepollard

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    Thought i'd post some pics since its been i while, Gaia & Gena running side be side make adding things a breeze to the Island :)

    r257.jpg Grab 20161130021931 w2560h1270 x1082y73z860r116.jpg Grab 20161130022058 w2560h1270 x813y89z1043r60.jpg Grab 20161130022159 w2560h1270 x807y91z1034r205.jpg Grab 20161130022406 w2560h1270 x853y86z854r259.jpg
     
  17. jaimepollard

    jaimepollard

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  18. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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  19. trilobyteme

    trilobyteme

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    In a comment on my review, you'd asked for what could be done to earn that extra star (I gave Gaia 4 stars). Having used it for a little while now, here are some of my thoughts...

    First, even though there were a bunch of stamps included, it felt like stuff was missing because there were empty categories. Nothing for Bases, Villages, only one Lake, Plains only contained one plains stamp, the others were sand and dunes, and Waterfalls only had two stamps for Niagara Falls.

    Next, some kind of gradient masking would be great. That way there wouldn't be hard edges and corners to try and smooth out or fix.

    Another thing that's really challenging is smoothing and flattening out areas. I'm not sure if that's something that can be done within Gaia (since the terrain editor tools look like a function of Unity's terrain object), but maybe some rounded and flattened stamps that users could raise/lower and apply as needed. I know the idea is to strive for natural, but in creating spaces I'm finding myself needing a specific patch of ground to be flat (for building, etc).

    I also noticed that even though Scanner can work with rectangular areas, Gaia can only apply square stamps. I had been working on a rectangular region, and Gaia didn't return an error but instead just hung at 0% complete when I tried applying a rectangular stamp.

    A fix for the asset serialization issue would be great, as well. Unity 5.5 has a collaboration feature that I'd like to try and use so that my gf/partner could add some of the buildings and pieces she's making in C4D while I work on terrain and other buildings, but it requires asset serialization to be set to Forced Text. I was testing the 5.5 beta when I purchased Gaia and that's why I'd gotten all that garbled text when I first installed it.

    Overall though, I really do like this add-on. There is still a lot to figure out and get the hang of, but I'm having fun and turning out much better results than I would have just using the stock tools.
     
  20. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Thanks for taking the time to respond as requested :)

    Gaia can do all of the things you have commented on and hopefully my response will give you a sense of how.

    Gaia contains 160 stamps - some are high res satellite scans but the majority were made with some very expensive 3rd party software and took a lot of time to create. They represent outstanding value for money. You could pay the full price of Gaia and more just for these. There is nothing else like it in the asset store. Additionally, unlike other asset packs Gaia allows you to mix and match and blend these stamps in an unlimited number of ways to get exactly the environment you want for your game. You can also scan in your own and there are tutorials on how to do this.

    The empty categories were made as placeholders for another set of assets at the request of Backwoods Games and other users - you can check out some amazing additional stamp kits here - they are pretty cool and very reasonably priced @Shawn67

    This is done using a Distance Mask. Set the left hand side to 1 (this represents how strongly the stamp will be applied at its center), and the right hand side to zero (this represents how strongly the stamp will be applied at its edge). Change the curve to get different effects.

    Gaia contains a smoothing function - check out the Smooth function wherever you see a Terrain Helper section - e.g. in your stamper.

    You can use the "For Masked Stencil" stamp in the Adhoc stamps directory, with the stamper, and select Stencil Height in the Operation Type in the stamper - this will allow you to precisely raise or lower the height of which ever section of terrain that stamp covers.

    Additionally, you can combine this with a Distance Mask or Area Masks to blend them perfectly at the edges so that you don't get ugly transitions from one terrain formation to the next.

    Personally, I will often take a hills stamp, set its height to say 1 or 2 so that it has a slight undulation, use the Distance Mask to blend edges, and either stencil, raise or lower height to precisely raise, lower or add detail to the area I want to work with. By not making it perfectly flat i can add detail into the terrain to give it some character.

    The stamping system is incredibly powerful if you take the time to master it. There are 3 separate tutorials on stamping here: http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/

    I have never seen this but its quite possible - Gaia only stamps square things. You can embed a rectangular object within the square if you need a rectangular stamp.

    Gaia reflects the name of the asset - and when Unity mangles it there is nothing I can do about it. Here is the workaround from a few posts back:

    "@trilobyteme - You have asset serialization set to Force Text. Set it back to Mixed and it should work fine. There is a workaround if you need to have it set to Force Text... I think if you import it when you're set to Mixed then switch back to Force Text it will work."

    I would hope so - there is a year of full time work in Gaia ;)
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2016
  21. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Hey everyone - I just got a pretty interesting advanced question about editing splatmaps for masking - and it turns out that what I thought would be simple in Photoshop actually wasn't.

    In addition to terrain creation and manipulation, Gaia comes with a whole set of useful utilities - and you can then use the output that is generated by them in lots of ways from modifying the way that Gaia stamps and spawns via smart masking, to using the outputs for external shaders etc.

    2016-11-28_10-01-49 - Splat Export.jpg

    In this example we export the terrain texturing splats as a PNG image, where each channel of the image contains a separate splat. Because there are 4 textures in the terrain and 4 channels in the PNG we write 4 splats.

    The problem comes when you want to edit them - Photoshop automatically assumes that the 4th splat is an alpha / transparency - and you don't get access to the original information.

    Here is what Unity shows:

    2016-11-28_10-03-19_unity.jpg

    And here is what Photoshop shows - not very useful as all the good stuff has been killed by the 4th channel:

    2016-12-01_6-20-07_orig.jpg

    So I created a tutorial on how to get access to the original splats here: http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/how-to-edit-png-transparency-in-photoshop/

    And here is full access to the splats in Photoshop - much better!

    2016-12-01_6-23-30_full control.jpg

    You can do lots of things in Gaia with these - in fact its even possible to apply masks from individual channels!
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2016
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  22. Teila

    Teila

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    If you have spent time with the stock terrain tools, you know that some of your complaints are really the result of bad Unity brushes. There are some custom ones out there on the asset store that can help you smooth better although I am thrilled with Gaia's smoothing compared to most things I have tried. I flattened areas buy using the flatten brush, hitting shift to select a height and then flattening the area. I then added a noise filter in Gaia to the area to make it not look perfectly flat. It works pretty good.

    You have to think outside the box and after you do this for a while, it will come naturally. :)

    Oh, and buy Backwoods Gaming packs. They are really cheap and they work great. I love the choices.
     
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  23. antoripa

    antoripa

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    @trilobyteme .. I have been using GAIA for months .. sometime I would have more but starting to explore the features I always find the right features ...in the last few weeks I have been even using GeNa as spawner ... and I would say that when people see the result of terrain they get ashonished by that. . From quality point of view is the best tool on Asset store and great support from Adam and Gaia's community ...Last but not least .. package from Backwoods Gaming are excellent ...I use that as base for my projects .. ( I have all but two their packages ) ...just need to play with the tool, look all the video from Adam .. and play again .. learnign curve with that apporach is quite fast ..
     
  24. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    I ran a very hands on two day course just on Gaia at TAFE St Leonards (in Sydney Australia) where I teach game development a couple of months ago, and thought I would be lucky to have enough content to fill up a day with it.

    In the end - two days was not enough time to show all the nuances of what is possible with Gaia! I plan on bringing some paid environmental and level design courses to the community in the new year that show off how to get the best out of Unity using my tools. The courses will also cover things like lighting, post FX etc i.e. everything that you need to do to create beautiful environments.

    Am curious as to whether there is an interest in this from the community as a lot of effort goes into putting these courses together.
     
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  25. millefoliumink

    millefoliumink

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    Hi Adam, awesome product you've made! Quick question, is there any "obvious" way to make roads or paths or is the simplest way to make a height map and stamp it down?
     
  26. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    Hey guys.. Thanks for the mentions on the stamp packs! Still working, in between health issues, on getting the arctic/polar one released as well as a couple others. Soon... I promise!

    As Adam stated, a lot of variation can be gained blending stamps, using many stamps to create your terrain. There are times I may go through and stamp upwards of 20 stamps when creating an environment. I'll always stamp one as my base stamp but then I might go and use stamps to both raise and lower terrain in specific areas to get the exact look and feel I'm trying to achieve to build out a game environment. That is one of the cool things about the stamping system is you can keep stamping and adding layers with additional stamps using the different blend methods Adam built into Gaia. Super powerful!

    Unfortunately, as powerful as a tool that Gaia is, it is still held back by some of Unity's terrain limitations. I've always had issues with Unity's terrain brushes on my machines. But as @Teila said, there are some great brush options out there. Once you find the right brushes, flattening areas shouldn't be an issue. Or worse case scenario, you could always use a solid stamp to either raise or lower a small flat area in your current terrain. There are a lot of methods you can use to flatten an area. Or if you are having issues placing buildings, use a model pack like 3DForge's Village Exteriors Kit that has foundation type pieces (plinths within the exteriors kit) so your buildings can successfully sit on slopes.

    Gaia, like other tools, has a learning curve. Luckily for me, not as steep as some of the other tools that I had issues learning. But there is still a lot to digest. Adam has a lot of tutorial videos on his site and is top notch when it comes to support of his products. If you have issues, don't hesitate to post here and contact him directly. He may not always see posts here immediately but there are quite a few of us who read and respond here as we can. I haven't been here as much lately as I have in the past, but hope to be present a lot more in the future. Been a rough ride the past year. lol

    If you are interested in additional stamps, check out my forum thread (link in siggie) and feel free to throw any questions / suggestions for my packs over there. And again, to everyone who thought to mention the packs above, thanks again for the support! You guys rock! :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2016
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  27. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    I think at this point the only thing within Gaia to assist with roads/paths is the stencil stamps. Correct me if I'm wrong @AdamGoodrich. I guess you could create height maps to stamp roads, but that sounds a bit harder than just using a third party tool.

    I'm currently watching the development @antoripa is doing with his track builder. Other tools I have in my toolbox include EasyRoads3D, Terrain Mountain Road Maker, and Ramp Brush although the last two I haven't had a chance to play around with yet. For me, Gaia gives me my foundation for my terrain (probably 80-90% prior to GeNa's release and 40% with GeNa taking over the remaining foundation work with more detailed spawning after GeNa release) and then I use more specialized tools to refine the terrain into what I want my end result to be.
     
  28. millefoliumink

    millefoliumink

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    Thanks for the info @Shawn67! I'm in the process of putting my own toolbox together as a recent grad, and although I don't need to put down paths on the project I am making *today* I'm going to need to put down money on something in the very near future. @antoripa your project looks like it's exactly what I need, any chance it will be hitting the asset store soon?
     
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  29. antoripa

    antoripa

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    wow .. @vonbetelgeuse I am happy to read that ... currently I am full time on this new track builder, but I would release a solid and easy to use asset with even a smart UIX and integrated with GAIA. So at the moment I cannot give any answer about asset store, but I will do my best to have a beta version in the next few weeks ..further we can discuss on the thread I created.
     
  30. James-Williams

    James-Williams

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    How do I make a stamp out of a obj mesh?
     
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  31. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Put a mesh collider on it and drag it onto a scanner. You will need to orient it so that the side you want scanned is on the top.

    As Shawn commented - use a stencil stamp with an image mask. The technique is :

    To create image mask:

    * Export terrain as a heightmap image
    * Import that into photoshop as the background layer
    * Create a new layer and paint the path in with a white brush using the heightmap as a guide
    * Add a new layer between the background and the path layer and fill it black
    * You should now be let with a white path on a black backgound
    * Export as a PNG and import into unity.

    Then stamp it into the terrain:

    * Create a new stamper
    * Set Operation type to "Stencil Height"
    * Set Stencil Height to say 10 - this is exaggerated just to show the technique
    * Select the "For Masked Stencil" stamp
    * Select Image Grey Scale in the Area Mask
    * Drop the mask you created into it
    * Set smooth mask to 0 (you can experiment with this - it smooths the mask which makes for gentler edges)
    * Select Normalise mask (will enhance the strength of the mask)
    * Fit stamp to terrain
    * Apply stamp

    Hit Undo to undo stamp and experiment with settings until you are happy.

    You can use the same mask to also texture the path / road.

    This technique is ok for simple paths and roads, but is not as sophisticated as the prototype @antoripa is making.
     
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  32. millefoliumink

    millefoliumink

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    Many thanks! :)
     
  33. TeagansDad

    TeagansDad

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    @AdamGoodrich - do you have any tips for setting up the spawning criteria for additional textures? For example, if I want to have an extra grass texture and an extra rock texture to have blended with the primary ones. I've tried using the settings for the grass and rock textures as a base and tweaking the fitness curve and min/max values, but I only seem to get one of the grass textures and one of the rock textures visible.
     
  34. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    Have you tried looking at the video's on this ? Pretty sure I describe how to set this up.
     
  35. TeagansDad

    TeagansDad

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    So RTFM... er ... WTFV then. ;)

    I'm sure I watched it a while back but I don't remember that part. I likely wasn't looking for that info at the time.

    I often don't go back to the video tutorials because there isn't an easy way to search a collection of 20-30 minute videos for specific information. But I'm one of those weirdos who generally prefer written tutorials.

    I'll watch the relevant video(s) again. Thanks!
     
  36. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    If you get stuck then PM me - we can do a Skype session.
     
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  37. Assembler-Maze

    Assembler-Maze

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    Hey, if someone is interested I, finally, managed to fix all the issues with my SpeedTree system I've been talking about. It is release as 'final' (maybe even production ready) for Unity 5.5+.

    It goes absolutely great with Gaia, tile-able terrains, hundreds of thousands of trees, multiple tree types, smooth lod transitions, instancing, lod transitions working in instancing too, CullingGroup API, 300M+ view distance for mesh trees, with infinite billboard view distance, and all free + open source!

    Check out the forums and the demo/repo if interested!

    Our results with this system and Gaia, for our upcoming open-world game have been far beyond our expectations for Unity.

    ForestFor.png
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2016
  38. virror

    virror

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    Looks amazing!
     
  39. antoripa

    antoripa

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  40. JBT27

    JBT27

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    Yep, I'd be keen on this. Obviously they'd need to be above and beyond the 'how-tos' on the Youtube channel, which they would be, but absolutely - I'd pay for these.
     
  41. JBT27

    JBT27

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    I've hit a problem spawning on a 4K heightfield. It's a heightfield generated in World Creator, exported from there as RAW16, put through the Gaia Scanner, and then stamped to a 4K terrain in Gaia - I created my own data file with 4K heightfield res. Thing is, if I stamp to a 2K terrain in Gaia, the texture spawner runs through in about a minute - fine. But the same heightfield at 4K, when texture spawning, seems to get stuck at the starting gate. I gave it a quarter of an hour, just left it, but after that time it had not moved off 0%. I moved the mouse, and it went to 1.6%, then stuck there.

    I've been wrestling with this all morning - tried different things, kept the scene plain with only Gaia running, no additional assets. This is the first time I've hit this problem spawning to 4K maps. I expect it to be a lot slower, but not glacial like this. Any ideas what can upset the spawning speed, or is 4K pushing my luck? Thanks.
     
  42. JBT27

    JBT27

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    I have tried my same data file, creating a 4K terrain purely in Gaia, with Gaia included stamps, and that both stamps and spawns fine - slower, obviously, but efficient at easily under a minute to spawn the texture. So maybe it's something to do with that RAW16 file from World Creator? Raw maps out of World Machine, conversely, don't seem to give Gaia any trouble.
     
  43. JBT27

    JBT27

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    OK - I seem to have found a couple of things. If I apply the smoothing feature to the terrain a couple of times, it will take texture spawning at a more normal speed. If I come out of Unity while its spawning, it goes from a crawl to its usual relatively speedy finish - I seem to recall Adam mentioning something about something speeding up if you move focus off Unity. Sorry for the multiple posts - bit of a head banger. Smoothing kills some of the nice crinkly bits, but that's nothing too terrible. Still curious what these speed differences are being caused by though.

    4K_HeightfieldGaia.JPG
     
  44. Toadill9114

    Toadill9114

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    Running Unity 5.5 Plus
    I am having some problems with the object spawner. For some reason the farms and villages only show widgets and most of them spawn under the terrain. Only 2 rock piles seems to spawn out of all the object spawners.
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Dec 3, 2016
  45. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

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    I have not actually used world creator, so its hard to make any useful comment.

    Sounds like you sorted the raw 16 issue. You can also just export the raw file from the terrain itself.

    Running on a 4k height field means Gaia will do more work - as there is more data to crunch. I tried a bunch of techniques to keep unity responsive while also crunching lots of data. Unity does not really support background processing very well in the editor, so I made quite a big hack.

    With trees and villages for example, the slowdown comes from adding colliders and re-parenting objects. I found a substantially better and faster way to do this in Gena and will retrofit the technique to Gaia in the next update. Anyways - clicking away from unity and coming back allows you to avoid the multi update slowdown this causes.

    With textures though, there is lots more data being crunched as it runs multiple rules over every meter of your terrain. Not sure why texturing would be so much slower on really rough terrains.

    I think world creator's erosion is pretty cool - it looks great - but have always wondered about the cost of running such a rugged terrain as this inherently means more polygons get pushed to the gpu and there might be issues on slower machines.

    Sounds like something got broken.. try deleting and recreating the texture spawner. Without more information its hard to make any useful suggestions. Feel free to PM me if you want me to take a look at it.

    Gaia will create empty place holders for all types of things being spawned - even if nothing spawns - and thats what you can see there.

    The reason why things don't get spawned is that your terrain didn't have the right features for the thing being spawned. So for example, Gaia will only spawn farms on areas with an overall slope of less than 10 degrees. Try creating some flatter areas and you will get lots spawned.
     
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  46. JBT27

    JBT27

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    Many thanks indeed Adam - much appreciated. Once I tried the smoothing in Gaia, I realised that all those fine details were likely the prime culprit - Gaia doesn't normally choke on 4K terrains; slower, but not slow. Yes, World Creator produces these dense fine detailed erosion models, and they look great, but they are not optimal for game or any interactive use. It's only because I was using Unity here for cutscenes and going for max detail that I was pushing that level of detail through, aside from seeing what I could do with it. World Creator's 8K maps are superb, but in a different universe to optimal! I spent the rest of the day gradually reducing the detail, using Gaia's smoothing too, and in the end got the texture spawning on 4K down to under a minute. World Creator is great for some things, though it doesn't have the luxury of stampers, nor procedural texturing/spawning. I tend to use it for real world heightmaps out of GS, via WM, and use WC to add some fine erosion detail and break up the crudity of some of the regional level GIS data I'm using. It's pricey for that, but it's still a nice tool. Thanks again.
     
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  47. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

    Joined:
    Feb 12, 2013
    Posts:
    3,780
    Nice! I sometimes think that people forget that most trades people use more than one tool to get the job done, and that each one adds different types of value to your workflow :)
     
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  48. MrIconic

    MrIconic

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2013
    Posts:
    239
    I apologize if this has been answered before but I'm assuming if I want to interact (smooth, flatten etc.) the terrain under (or near) an object at runtime, Gaia can achieve that. Is there an API or something that can use the Gaia system for that? (I own Gena too but to my knowledge it is not meant to modify terrain)

    The objective is to place objects down (in a non-Gaia method) and modify the land so they're not clipped or oddly positioned on slightly uneven terrain.
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2016
  49. AdamGoodrich

    AdamGoodrich

    Joined:
    Feb 12, 2013
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    3,780
    Gaia is not designed to be a runtime system, nor documented as such, but there is a class called runtime spawner. If you look into that you can review the code and adapt it for your own runtime flattening needs.
     
  50. novaVision

    novaVision

    Joined:
    Nov 9, 2014
    Posts:
    515
    Hi,

    We started to use GAIA in out project and looks like it's same good as was described. What I wish to ask is about grass placement techniques. Here is an bad example in our case. How you see grass texture is too noticeable and looks like in old games. Is there a way to "hide" that sharp textures and make it more smooth?