Terrain Composer2 a next generation GPU powered terrain tool.

Thank for your help.Next time i will read it well.

 

Hi Nathaniel,
I'm going through the process of getting my terrains working with the new release of TC2. All of my raw images now seem to have squared repeating ridges over the terrain though. I've created it on a new scene with a fresh TC instance and its still occuring. Any ideas?

 

Can you check if it is already in the raw source file or caused by TC2? Like, import the raw directly into a high-resolution terrain (Terrain/Settings Tab). I guess that it's from stitching of the program you used to create the raw...
Seneral

 

Thanks Seneral, I've tried on a new unity terrain to see if their import has changed, and thats all working fine. I've had all the 14 levels built already and currently live on Alpine Ski VR and working fine in a previous version of TC2 and now after upgrading even on a new unity project, I get the grid lines on every raw image in TC2, which are completely fine when imported into a raw unity terrain.
There's many more issues I see with nodes, the scale of all the nodes have changed, if you look at the holes.png, a node that I used to dull down a mountains size on the right now carves a huge hole in the terrain. The raw image scales seem to be completely different, the ski assets at the top (not in TC2) are now floating below the terrain, whereas at the bottom are way above it. These are all seperate game objects and still in their correct positions, but the terrain is at a completely different scale.
Those are all things that I can fix over time with tweaking, but the grid lines is a complete blocker unfortunately as it means theres now mini jumps and ridges every few meters on the runs.
Any ideas will be greatly appreciated as I need to get an update own very soon!

 

Hello
Same problem here with the new update... all of my raw image previously imported are broken now
(multiple grid/squares lines)

Tested the blocky-ness fix but nothing :s

Working with 16K raw files in 16bit greyscale IBM PC very well before the update.

Help ! ^^

 

Hi, i'm new with Terrain Composer 2. If i want to make few Island around one, te correct way may be create a height map with photoshop for examplo, or an individual terrain for each island on the same scene for example?

thanks and sorry for my novice question!

 

I noticed this blockness as well, I tried to show Nath but it was corrected by then, I keep deleting the imports and re-importing, I think its an import issue... with certain Raw files...I made mine in World Creator 1 and standalone. So I suggest for now to delete the Raw's files and images and reimport.. This corrected it I know its a pain, but this happen to me a lot. Its not the RAW that is for sure, I tested in other tools, in the asset store and they all looked fine, so I believe its an import issue possible with TC2 that needs to be fixed.

 

I am very happy with this purchase but i did find a bug when applying trees or grass to "All Terrain Areas", it does not seem to apply. Thanks.

Edit: It also seems like if you have that setting chosen it freezes terrain settings.

 

hi
I uses vegetationstudio beta and multi-terrain is complicated to manage
Would not it be simpler to be able to create a mesh via tc2 with the splatmap and do the vegetation in vegetationstudio that manages better than tc2

 

Hm, also using VS with TC2, and manual set up for large terrains surely is a bit annyoing, considering VS needs a vegetation system on each terrain... I'm not exactly sure what you're asking for but it's definitely not TC2s fault. What might be possible in the future though, similar to how RTP is managed in TC2, for TC2 to automatically add and synchronize the VS vegetation systems on all terrains
Seneral

 

warning
I do not say that tc2 is at fault
I think to collect all the grounds in one with the splatmap (option mesh)

 

Yes seems to be a different Mac issue...

Maybe you can come on skype? My account is Nathaniel.Doldersum, then we can look into the issue together as I need to be able to reproduce it. I don't get the blockyness and probably is a rounding issue with certain terrain size.

Importing can't be the issue. As TC2 reads the raw file directly (it's not imported or modified by Unity importer, as Unity basically doesn't detect raw files as a usable extension).

Nathaniel

 

Can someone please direct me to the documentation, that goes over the IMAGE NODE?....specifically how to get color ranges to splat maps, from WC sattelitte images?..is there any documentation, tutorial....is it secret?

P

 

dunno, that is what I seen, I would import a raw file and get really bad looking terrains that looked blocky, I would add same raw files into WC1, Map Magic. and they would look fine. So I thought at first it was the Raw itself, but they look fine in every other tool. But I keep deleting it and re-importing and it was fine. so that was just a guess. So who knows what the issue was, but I do notice this with other Raw I make else where and import it . Not all do it but bout 30% of them where. I got it working so I just didn't worry about it.

 

Can anyone outline the steps for setting up an existing terrain/heightmap in TC2? I have an 8192p terrain from World Creator, and need to set it up in TC2 as a 9- or 16-tile terrain. I understand I have to import the heightmap as a stamp, but I'm just getting familiar with TC2 and would really appreciate some tips on the procedure.

thanks
Dave

 

Islands basically means you have water that is on a certain height and terrain that sticks out of it is an island. You can use stamps for this, can blend stamps together or create your own shapes. TC2 also includes a complete noise library with many noises and erosion looking noises like 'Swiss' and 'Jordan'. So with mixing noises/stamps/shapes you can create your own heightmaps with TC2. Photoshop you can use to create shapes as well but it's tricky to make it look real with erosion, etc. For more control WorldMachine is a great program to create heightmaps. TC2 can directly use the heightmaps from WM.

I have a tutorial where I make some islands, also there's island examples included:

Yes you have to set it to 'Terrain Area' instead, then it works fine and applies it to all terrain tiles.

Nathaniel

 

It's super simple...Yes you need to import the heightmap as a stamp and create 9 or 16 tiles, then create a layer and yellow node and drag and drop your heightmap stamp preview image on it. Then in the size of your node you specify the size of the stamp. So if you create 4x4 terrains that are 2048 each, size X and Z is 8192 and y is the height of your stamp. This height also needs to be set as a minimum on TerrainArea GameObject -> Size tab -> Y, otherwise you run against the ceiling...



Nathaniel

 

Thanks for the quick reply! But I'm having trouble:

The stamp preview is 512x512. I changed the import settings on it to 8192, but no effect. So then when I assign the stamp to the node, the heightmap only affects a small area in the middle of the terrain. How do I enlarge it to cover the entire thing?

EDIT: Never mind: I had set the Terrain size on "Terrain Area" for the total size, not the per-tile size.

 

Well, now I'm having a different problem: TC2 won't generate the entire heightmap. It generates 1/4 of it, but then stops, the rest of the terrain is flat -- and even the Node inspector panel only shows 1/4 of the heightmap image, the rest is blank.

And it throws this console error:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
TerrainComposer2.TD.Init () (at Assets/TerrainComposer2/Scripts/Editor/TD.cs:214)
TerrainComposer2.TC_NodeWindow.OnGUI () (at Assets/TerrainComposer2/Scripts/Editor/TC_NodeWindow.cs:143)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)


EDIT: Hmm, I did a full reimport of all assets, and now the stamp generation works fine. Weird!

 

Yes the stamp preview is just a 'preview'. TC2 uses the actual raw file and converts it to a 16 bit image with the same resolution, you can see it here:

Hmmm strange indeed, yes some textures from the GUI seemed to be missing.

Nathaniel

 

The color range works by checking if the pixel RGB value of your image is between the ranges you set. I have a tutorial video for this for TC1, the color range still works the same for TC2, only can select the channels now.

Nathaniel

 

So first some good news: TC2 with Metal Editor works great on my new MacBook Pro, which has an AMD 560 GPU. So those flickering problems are caused either by an older GPU, or Nvidia vs AMD. Woohoo! (And WileE's problem with multiple splat layers turned out to be a layer blending issue, basically having Lerp on all layers -- I spent an hour with the same issue before figuring it out :/ )

Sometimes I do get that console error again, but reimporting the TC2 folder makes it go away for awhile.

So I'm finally trying to actually DO actual work now with TC2. Couple issues:

1) Blur creates dark lines along the edges of the terrain tiles and doesn't do much to blur the borders between control areas. Am I doing this wrong? Or is there another way to get blurry edges between the main splat areas? I'm using control maps, and having blurry color edges didn't work, as TC2 didn't seem to recognize the color gradients even though I set up color ranges -- I always gets these black borders around each control area, which you can still see here.

2) I did try putting a basic grass splat on the very lowest splat layer, as a base, but even when I reduced its opacity to 1%, that base layer showed up throughout the map, making all the splats too bright -- happens with that lowest layer set to Lerp or other options. Is there a way to do that?

3) It would be really helpful to have short, novice-friendly explanations of what those layer blending options (Add, Subtract, Lerp, etc.) -- I know some of them but others are mysterious to me.

thanks!
Dave

 

1). Blurring doesn't work well on multi terrain tiles for other outputs than heightmap, because each terrain tile is generated one by one, and there's only the result on one terrain tile in memory at the time. On the edge blurring needs to know the result pixel on the neighbor terrain. For the heightmap I solved it by generating each terrain tile with a bigger size then it actually is. I need to implement this for the rest as well which is on the roadmap.

2). Opacity doesn't work on the first layer, actually it shouldn't appear. Now that I think about it actually it could appear on all layers, not just on Lerp. What you can do to reduce it is adding a mask with shape -> constant and control the gradient. You need to enable 'Normalizing' in the Inspector of the main splat node, and shouldn't have anymore overbright splats. With normalizing the total of all splats will be 1.

3). I added this to the documentation:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/terraincomposer2-documentation/#node-blending-options

Nathaniel

 

Thanks for the reply. So:

1) Is there another method for blurring the edges of splat areas, when using masks?

2) Is there way to have a base splat layer, to prevent black areas, but which won't overbrighten all the other layers?

 

1). If you're using images, you can blur them in any image editor like Photoshop.
2). Yes like I explained, if you enable normalizing this solves it:



Nathaniel

 

Ah, Normalize, sorry, missed that somehow.

Okay....sorry, got another question: I'm trying to use Convexity on a Yellow Node: I have two splats -- Rocks and Gravel -- and I want the Rock texture to go on the convex areas of the terrain, and the gravel on the concave areas. But I can't figure out how to get that Node to do anything -- it's solid black no matter how I tweak the sliders. Hopefully something simple and obvious I'm missing, but I sure can't figure out what it is....

thanks
Dave

 

Nath
Thanks again for your effort
I finally found the time to test your fix.
When I Alt+drag my splat Texture down into the gras mask it is automatically translated by 292.9637 on x which makes it almost fit. Almost.

By translating it -2.555183 on z it fitted exactly.
Not the fix i was expecting, but as a quick and dirty sollution it'll do the job.
Btw. just dragging the image into the mask from Assetfolder (without any translation) as i did it with the splatmask seems the gras to be spawned far outside the map (i did not found any gras on the whole terrain)
But anyways. I am happy with the result. 292.9637 will be my magic number from now on.

Thanks again, and remember there are some ribs waiting for you near mannheim, germany

Greets, Sebastian



Edit:
I tried your fix with a completley new project. The mask doesn't translate here, but it's still a little shifted. Wired.
I have to finish another project now so I hope I'll find the time to dive into that prob later on.

Greets

 

For me that's more like Boohoo ... first it was waiting for TC2 to have a software workaround (issue invalidated ~ Dec '16); and then it turned out that was no longer needed because of Unity supporting Metal (issue fixed ~ March '17); and then there was this scaling issue with the Retina screen (issue fixed ~ July '17); and now it's waiting for Unity to fix that blasted Nvidia / Metal flickering bug. And that last one feels worse than the rest because it's completely unclear when "they" are going to fix it ... or, if this will even happen at all. I can't ask anyone about it, I can't see any status updates, nothing.

Sigh.

if you can, please upvote the issue for fixing: https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...ws-flickering-when-using-metal-editor-support

 

@__Luthien_: Sorry, yeah, this isn't a proper solution to the problem. I had indeed voted for that issue earlier and then added a comment about Nvideo/AMD/generation to hopefully help Unity track down the issue.

 

EDIT: Solved it -- I had the heightmap stamp set to "Image" when it should've been "Raw Image"

I was working in a test project, and now I'm copying all the relevant files into my main project. TC2 retained all the layer settings with the scene, and everything is working....except that the terrain has significant stairstepping. I've checked and compared all the settings and can't figure out the cause of that.

* Heightmap raw file (from World Creator) is 8193. (I reimported it, no help)
* Terrain Area>Terrain Setup>Resolutions: Heightmap is 2049. (thought topography looks the same at 513)

With the latter, it seems like the heightmap is being reduced to 256 or something....but I sure can't figure out how/where. Anyone got an idea?




thx
Dave

 

Sigh, me again: Spent a couple hours trying to get rid of big black areas for one splat layer, and just realized that the textures assigned to that splat layer are all ones I recently added to Terrain Area splat list -- they're 9, 10, and 11 in the list. (I confirmed that by switching around the texture assignments.) But those new splats are shown on the individual terrain tile texture inspectors, so they're definitely assigned to the terrain (I can manually paint them on, but TC2 won't, just shows black there.)

Is there something else I need to do to get those to be recognized? Or is there some limitation that means only 8 splat textures can be used?

EDIT: Also weird is when I switch to the MicroSplat shader, those splats (# 9, 10, 11) do show up....but they have hard edges, rather than being faded around the edges like splats 1-8. If I manually paint with one of those splats, it does have a faded edge, but somehow when TC2 lays down the splat, it does so with a hard edge. Anyone got any ideas on this?

thanks
Dave

 

When I loaded up my project today, all of the input Nodes didn't fill their entire squares anymore (black on two edges), so EVERYTHING was offset. For some reason, the only fix was changing the Transform Position of every single node to -822,0,-837.5. This includes both heightmaps and even Perlin noise Nodes. Is this a bug, or what might I be missing?

 

Thanks for your answer! please, can you add a video tutorial where you learn step by step how we can put object manually, i can't get the same result as the showcase video

Thanks again...

 

I'm still struggling with this problem I described here:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/t...red-terrain-tool.151365/page-119#post-3209324

In short: Textures #9 and higher in the Terrain Area splats list are not being applied correctly.

* With the default Unity terrain shader, they are black -- but with faded edges.
* When I switch to the MicroSplat shader, that splat IS rendered -- but with sharp edges, rather than blending.

If I manually paint one of those splats, it looks fine with either shader (renders correctly and with soft/blended edges).

So it seems like TC2 is having trouble laying down those splats, and somehow the actual textures are not even recognized by the Unity shader, while the MicroSplat shader does recognize them but in a crude way, simply the pixel location without any blending aspects.

I'm on a Mac with Unity 5.6.3 with Metal Editor enabled. Can anyone help?

thanks
Dave

 

Quick question is cts supported?

 

About the stairs, maybe you can show me this on Skype? As on my side I can't reproduce it...Also splat 9/10/11 work fine here. My account is Nathaniel.Doldersum

This is probably not a bug. TC2 is using GameObjects for the position/rotation/scale of the nodes, probably you have the main TerrainLayer GameObject moded, or did you change the generate offset in the TC2 Settings?



Nathaniel

 

I explain it here:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/terraincomposer2-documentation/#manual-object-placement

TerrainComposer2 and WorldComposer generate standard Unity terrain and CTS works on standard Unity terrain. So yes it is supported.

Nathaniel

 

As I saw "needs directx11 or metal", does this limit affect to the build itself?, can I build for ps4 or other consoles?. Cause I understand that directx11 will be used for the editor to work.. or is it a runtime requirement as well?

 

Hi @eagle555,

Just started working with TC2 again after I finished some freelance work. I updated to the latest version on the Asset Store from 2.54ish and switched to Unity 5.6.3p3. All seems to work as its should BUT I am getting this warning messages.

Invalid AssetDatabase path: /GUI/Buttons/arrow_right.png. Use path relative to the project folder.
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:LoadAssetAtPath(String, Type)
TerrainComposer2.TD:Init() (at Assets/TerrainComposer2/Scripts/Editor/TD.cs:118)
TerrainComposer2.TC_NodeWindow:OnGUI() (at Assets/TerrainComposer2/Scripts/Editor/TC_NodeWindow.cs:143)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

With all the GUI buttons (154 warnings). So something changed since 2.54ish.

Also getting this error which I guess is related as its in the same code block.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
TerrainComposer2.TD.Init () (at Assets/TerrainComposer2/Scripts/Editor/TD.cs:214)
TerrainComposer2.TC_NodeWindow.OnGUI () (at Assets/TerrainComposer2/Scripts/Editor/TC_NodeWindow.cs:143)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)

I deleted the TerrainComposer2 folder and reimported a couple times with no success. The message doesn't come up right away but after a few minutes of working. The extra GUI buttons are new additions I assume as they weren't in the previous build I had.

Using Unity 5.6.3p3

 

I just got TC2 and I have an issue. All of the building's capsules have a white ground. I'm just trying the samples right now as I am learning the system, but need to know why this is happening so I can correct the problem.

I'm seeing this both in the editor and at runtime. See picture.

Thanks!
David

 

Hi,

I may be wrong as been too busy to use TC2 but I vaguely remember seeing those white bases, If remember correclty they are just the meshes used to flatten the area so can be removed from the hierarchy. The ground underneath should be fine. Sorry if it's different problem.

doc

 

Thanks for the reply!

I agree. I tried that, but in a multi-tile terrain, that is a lot of meshes to have to search out and remove. When I see the video tutorials, the meshes are not colored, so I wonder if I am missing something in a material or if the download did not come through correctly.

Hopefully, someone has a fix that doesn't involve trying to delete them all. But if that is how it is designed, then I guess I'm stuck with it.

Thanks again!

David

 

Here are the results...it didn't work.

I tried deleting and tried change the material to a see-through material and both returned as soon as TC2 refreshed.

I hope someone can find a fix to this.

David

 

I'm not sure if this is a problem that as recently arisen but unless someone knows a better fix the only thing I can think of is do a hierarchy search for the meshes and delete them in batches when the levels finished and TC2 isn't needed. Re them reappearing when TC2 is refreshed it may be that the mesh is part of the prefabs used and are being reintroduced when refreshed.

I'm still quite new at all this but I'd definitely avoid adding transparant materials to obects just to make them invisible. They can be a heavy performance hit.

 

That's a good point. Thanks!
I'll write the creator and see what he thinks and take it from there. That would be the best avenue, just delete them before I build, if I haven't done something wrong to create this problem.

I appreciate your input!

David

 

Hi @eagle555 , is there a fix upcoming so you can work on the splats without TC affecting terrain height map? There seems to be an issue relating to using rtp and the global map for tessellation.

I am happy with my terrain now so would like to leave it and just work on the splats but it does not allow.

 

@eagle555 or anyone else who can help,

I have a question about the noise nodes.
I am getting an underlying noise on all my noise nodes. No matter what settings I have there's a noise UNDERNEATH the noise that changes with the settings.
Please see the images below.
Is this intended for some reason? I've been working at a small map scale so never really noticed it but its a huge issue if you're using mainly noise instead of the stamps (I don't use stamps at all).



Standard Perlin noise node above. ^^^

Below you can see when Persistence is set to zero there's still a noise there. This noise is the noise I am referring to. Its static doesn't change with the settings and is always there.

 

Question for anyone?

How do you navigate inside the TC2.5 window?
I seem to only be able to use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out and point my cursor to zoom in points. It is very hard to get from height to grass for instance.

Is there a key to press to switch the scroll wheel from zoom to scroll in the TC2 window?

I apologize if this is documented somewhere, I am trying to get a handle on it but can't find this solution.

Thanks!
David

 

I heard from Nathaniel on the buildings issue.

They are set up so that the white capsule is under a "ignore raycast" layer.
Layers were set to show the ignore raycast layer. I hid it and now we are back and looking good. I must have reset my layers to show all, but now it looks like it should.
Here is his reply, in case anyone wants his explanation.
"These are a sphere mesh that are a child GameObject of the building. They are on the a Unity Layer (think it is the Ignore Raycast layer) and I hide the layer in the culling mask in the Scene Camera. You can do this in the top right of the Unity menu with 'Layers' (this is the culling mask of the Scene Camera). You can do this on the main camera as well."
Just in case anyone else did this too, it's an easy fix.

Now all I need is to know how to scroll up and down in the TC2 window, my scroll wheel only zooms.

David

 

Hold down Middle mouse button and drag.