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

That's Suimono - lovely isn't it!

Gaia's key strength is that it gives you massive control over your terrain via its stamping system. And then you still have access to all of the general tools provided by the unity terrain itself.

Check the stamper tutorials here : http://www.procedural-worlds.com/gaia/tutorials/

 

Yup, that is Suimono. Wonder if performance is better now?

 

They released a version 2.0 some time ago but I wouldn't count on it. I am getting barely acceptable framerates with Hydroform but I found a few key optimizations to get it to 200 fps on Pc. The Playway water demo allows fastest quality settings to be at 100 fps on my 5 year old video card as well.

The realistic water by kripto had the best framerates of them all but apparently has some issues with latest Unity and I have heard good news about the Aquas water however judging by the images it doesn't look nice at all to me even though everyone else is saying so but then again Aquas is a FLAT water system unlike the ones mentioned above.

P.S. The Aquas downloadable demo - the title screen and only that part of the water looks very realistic!

 

I love Aquas for rivers and lakes, but not for oceans.

 

I would say that is far above acceptable. lol

 

nice job with the landscapes @Teila ... keep the screenshots coming

 

Thanks! I will be back to terrain work again soon. BTW, the grasses in the last photo are from Turboscalpeur's rustic grasses asset. I love it!

 

Yess, this is truly a great scenery @Teila

 

I always love seeing screenshots from @Teila. She has an incredible eye

 

Awww, shucks. Thanks, Adam.

 

ROFL, yes. Because Gaia allows me to do amazing things with a few tentative button presses, I get such a strong illusory feeling that I know what I'm doing kind of a meta-immersion issue. And then it's so frustrating when I realise once again that I haven't a clue what's going on under the hood and can't figure out why it won't let me do X. Finding the limits is often the hardest (and most important) bit of the learning curve.

 

Since there has been some chat here about water, I'll presume to mention that I want to model PNW islands with a lot of fractal, heavily indented coastline... and so water, and especially water with fairly convincing wave trains and shore break, is a big issue for me. One of the things I've noticed with dismay about the water packages I've tried so far is that they don't honour landform interference fx. Maybe this would just be too insanely complicated to model? What I mean is:

Say you have a prevailing wave train in Suimono or Hydroform or whichever package, with waves rolling towards an island. Now imagine that the island has a central lagoon opening to leeward, with a bit of tree cover and some land height to windward sheltering it. I have experimented with these 2 packages and they are good 'uns, but in both cases the sea state to windward of the island continues identically into the lagoon and on the leeward side of the island. Here's a crude and sloppy sketch (via sketch.io).


This is so counter-physical... and for me, as a sailor and coastal animal, a major illusion-breaker. The prevailing swell should not continue into any water surface sheltered by a landmass. And the surface riffle on a protected body of water should be smaller and finer than the surface riffle (wind chop) on the exposed body of water, given the same wind. There should be a "tail" of flat water to leeward of an island, proportionate to its elevation. [Realistically, the prevailing swell should also curve around the landmass -- be it point, peninsula, island -- in the way we are all accustomed to. It should also bounce off the hard shoreline (reflection waves, additive waves) but hey, I'm not asking for perfect physics, just for a way to avoid the most jarring illusion-breakage ]

Hydroform doco iirc says waves will dampen in shallower water. This is of course, weirdly counterphysical as any sailor or surfer can tell you... wave trains get *taller* when they hit shallower water But it also means that you can't have a deep, beautiful diving pool sheltered by a peninsula or reef (not with Hydroform anyway); if there are ocean waves outside, they will not be masked by the peninsula but will roll right through your pool (unless you make it a shallow puddle? I'll have to try this).

It's a serious problem if you're trying to model real-life coastal regions. It seems like the water packages I have seen so far are not trying to model the behaviour of real water but instead to produce a surface, cosmetic effect -- unlike Blender's water models for example, though I have to admit those are horrendously expensive in processing time & that is probably why the Unity models are cheating. The only way around the "leeward" problem I can imagine is to create multiple water planes w/appropriate params, but I cannot imagine how to stitch them together where they intersect. If anyone has addressed this problem successfully I'd be intensely interested to hear what you did. S Pacific islands w/o lagoons, N Pacific scenery without peninsulae, fjords, bays etc, are not believable, but sheltered lagoons/bays with a big open-water swell marching across them are equally unbelievable, so I'm hoping someone has figured this out... or I'm just going to have to keep the wind at zero and the sea state flat all the time in my sim, which would be boooring. If this is OT and should have been posted elsewhere, just let me know where.

 

This is what I want too, but so far, it has not been done, or can't be done.

However, I encourage you to copy your post above and start a new thread in General. This really has little to do with Gaia, and the people who you want to see this might not be in this thread. I will join you in your thread.

 

BTW, that lagoon has a very small fetch. Most waves would be dampened by the berm and would not collect past the opening to the lagoon. You would have relatively smooth water except in the most windy of circumstances and the regular waves lapping at the shore would be more lake like than sea like. I could go into the geological reasons why, but I don't feel like typing so much. lol

 

Screenshot party !
a little quickie using only the defaut Gaia package and settings ... and the random generation tool.
5 mns to create the whole scenery .. 30mns for the post FX and color grading

 

I'm in, your colorgrading looks amazing, very vivid!!
First Gaia Session today, with Realistic Water and Fog! Its amazing, i also like MapMagic very much but Gaia seems more versatile!

 

the new free tools that Unity has released lately for color grading are just plain awesome and a real pleasure to work with .. if you have not try them yet, make sure to take a look
post processing stack
cinematic image effects

 

I love them as well - and @sarum also has an amazing eye. He made a scene with Gaia that I played with quite a long time ago - and it was gorgeous as well. In fact, I collect some of what is posted, and this is another one of his!!

 

Speaking of awesome artwork...

I am thinking of holding a competition for my web site - which I am rebuilding - and I really want to show off what is possible with my tools. In the hands of real talent it is breathtaking!

The competition - submit screen shots of stuff that Gaia and or Gena has had some part in the making of. Best Screen shot wins a copy of all my assets (if you already have it you can gift it), bragging rights, and free upgrades to all the GPU compute technology coming with Gaia 2.0.

The caveat is that you would have had to have used Gaia or Gena to help build your scene in some way. From that point on you are welcome to use whatever you want.

So I was wondering ... is there was any interest for this in the forum ??

 

You bet! I love this idea. What are you looking for in the screenshots though? Just pure terrain or other assets in combination with gaia and Gena?

 

this one was one of my very first worlds with Gaia ... i still have the video on youtube

+1 for the screenshot contest , but many of us have all your assets already

 

Yeah, how do we win something we already have? And if we don't have it, how will we use it to make a terrain to enter the contest?

 

If you don't have it and buy it, and then win, then I will refund your purchase. If you don't like the tool, I will still refund your purchase

Alternatively, I will purchase vouchers to assets to the value of Gaia + Gena + Pegasus which you can use instead

I think the magic comes when people combine many things together. So the only criteria is that my tools must have been used in some significant way in the construction of the scene.

 

Done! BTW your savannah (above) with scattered deciduous tree cover and (vernal?) pond really is gorgeous.

 

Nice of you! However, the best award I could ever get was your comment above about my scene.

You are a friend, and I will buy everything you sell, whether I need it or not, remember?

Good luck to the participants!

 

Thanks! It was actually a quick scene for one of my team members to use in his Unity User group talk about ICE. Unfortunately, his laptop couldn't run it. I look forward to using Terrafirma with Gaia and then maybe he can use it for another talk.

 

You get the paid add-on for GPU. Worth it I would say. Go for it, Sarum. Your stuff is gorgeous.

 

The new GPU stuff is pretty awesome - you get virtually instant feedback. Additionally, going GPU allows me to explore more processor intensive techniques, and my intention is to do much more with this in the future.

 

N00b would like to Kn0w: I looked on the asset store for a packaged called Realistic Water and Fog, no hits (but several interesting fog-only packages). For modelling the PNW as I hope to, fog is rather important could you share a link please, if you are happy with the tool? Or did you hand-code your water and fog?

 

instant visual feedback makes such a difference .. and you work so much faster .. when do we get some sneak peaks of Gaia V2 ?

good thinking, it made me laugh

 

He has been posting some over the past week or so. All of the multi-tile images he has posted are Gaia V2.

 

With regards to the GPU upgrade, do you have a rough estimate on what you are planning on?

 

you are right, but since we all know that multi tiles is coming, it's not really a surprise .. i am more interested in the things we have not been told yet
i wonder for example, what the Gaia V2 spawning systems looks like

 

Hehe, yep there is a lot of stuff I would like to create. Some of its at the ideas stage, and some of it is further along.

For example I have designed and prototyped a new procedural system that can create anything from fences to cities. I have also prototyped an instanced spawning system, which will probably make sense with the release of Unity 5.6 and the support for instancing that is now provided in the standard shader.

All of the new stuff will sit on the foundation I have created for Gaia 2.0 because it supports both multi threaded and GPU compute as an approach. This support has been implemented as a nice simple interface, so if you have the skills you could bolt your own stuff into it to take full advantage of the power it delivers for your own projects. I can not tell you how cool GPU compute is - wish I had explored it a long time ago.

My intention is to get Gaia 2.0 out first and then release new things over time. Some will be paid plugins, some will be new assets, and some will be updates to the base version of Gaia. No promises or real detail as I know that some people will feel like they have been misled.

I do have one potentially massive project that would bring something very special and new to the space, but am waiting for some feedback before starting on it. It will be a bit of a game changer I think, and depending on the feedback it will come either sooner or later, but either way its very high on my priority list.

Sorry for being so coy. I can definitely confirm that Gaia 2.0 will bring more than just multi-tile to the table.

 

Initially stamping and texturing will be available on the GPU. This is very close to being complete now.

The generic spawning system I am not so sure about, as there is a lot direct interactions with Unity and Unity limits this to the main thread. Where I can get away with it I will also push as much of that out to the GPU as i can as well. I plan to launch this in phases over time.

There are other things like erosion that will probably only be implemented as GPU compute type plugins. Am actively exploring this now.

 

No, no thats way beyond my capacity, i'm happy if i can manage to use them.
Its the Volumetric Fog & Mist Package from Kronnect -> https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/49858
It is an amazing asset and also supported from Gaia, so you can use it just with one klick with gaia.
For the Water i used Realistic Water -> https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/33434

 

Yeah great idea when it will start?

 

Yeah thank you, i also discovered them yesterday because Adam mentioned them in the Tut video and so i used the PostProcessingStack on the pictures as well,
but i'm not experienced with image effects and have to learn how to use them properly.

 

That all sounds pretty sweet, especially if it ends up working out as you envision. What are you thinking about price wise?

 

So here are a couple of my screenshots.
- Unity 5.4.1
- Landscape is 4km x 4km (8km x 8km cripples even really good systems)
- 100% object based (no terrain objects of any kind
- 60+fps with Desktop PC specs shown below. HD1980x1080
- Culling is both Frustum and a custom Spherical Distance Fade method
- Camera Post FX is mainly standard Unity 5.4 and filmic tonemapping with a couple camera fx components.
*these are not the Unity 5 'New' camera post FX Beta that are available nor the latest Post FX by Unity.
- Weather and GI Lighting is controlled by Genesis Weather (my custom weather available free)
- Gaia (Terrain Creation) and initial vegetation placement (object based)
**GeNa was not really available at the time and I already had my own custom prefab painter
- Erosion Brush to touch up landscaping (including textures)
- Terrain Shader is Colormap Ultra Shader by forst (not the latest)
- Water is Aquas (not very visible)
- Trees are TreeIT trees with my own custom branches/leaves as well as some converted SpeedTree branches
- Tree movement is a simple vertex shader on the Branch/Leaf material and responds to Genesis Weather
- Grass/Flowers are 50% turboscalpeur and 50% my own converted to 3 plane overlapping triangle meshes.
- Grass movement is the same as the trees.

I look forward to actually making a complete rebuild using Gaia and GeNa with Unity 5.6 once it fully releases. I will be sticking to that version for quite some time. The next build will be also using the new Post FX stack by Unity....seems to be a lot less tweaking for really great results that seem to be faster.

 

Two warnings on the latest release of GAIA and Unity.

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/ExtensionSystem/Extensions/CameraAndLight.cs(54,28): warning CS0618: `UnityEditor.PlayerSettings.renderingPath' is obsolete: `renderingPath is ignored, use UnityEditor.Rendering.TierSettings with UnityEditor.Rendering.SetTierSettings/GetTierSettings instead'

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/StampingSystem/RuntimeStamper.cs(25,22): warning CS0649: Field `Gaia.RuntimeStamper.m_currentPosition' is never assigned to, and will always have its default value

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Utils/Utils.cs(230,31): warning CS0618: `UnityEditor.TextureImporter.grayscaleToAlpha' is obsolete: `Use UnityEditor.TextureImporter.alphaSource instead.'

Assets/Gaia/Scripts/Utils/Utils.cs(231,31): warning CS0618: `UnityEditor.TextureImporter.normalmap' is obsolete: `normalmap Property deprecated. Check [[TextureImporterSettings.textureType]] instead. Getter will work as expected. Setter will set textureType to NormalMap if true, nothing otherwise.'

 

+1 on the contest. None of my scenes will be on par with the others I have seen ( rofl nearly spelt that as scene) so may or may not partake, it all depends on how my spontaneous stamps work out with the base Gaia

 

I believe those will be removed by Adam in the Gaia 2. They only appear when you first import the asset and as long as you let unity adjust to their new code it will fix itself.

 

Hey Xrystal.
Nah it does it on every compile.
I think i can fix two of these my self.


Edit: Actually apparently i can't

 

Just gorgeous!

 

So, when you say you're leveraging the GPU, does that mean the CUDA library for NVIDIA hardware? Interesting!

 

That is stunning, Teila. Love it

 

Is there a way of making all tress the same size instead of random? I'm able to do it on the standard terrain editor by checking-off the random Tree Height box and using the "mass place tress" but i would like to do this in Gaia. For some reason Gaia checks the Random box every time i run the Gaia tree spawners.

 

Go into your Gaia.Resources file and set your trees to use a constant scale:

 

thx. That did the trick