Gaia - Scanner - Importing Real World Terrain Into Unity 3D

This video shows how to import real world terrain into your Unity scene by downloading and ingesting heightmaps from a website using the Gaia Scanner. Be sure to open the description below for additional notes.
Terrain Heightmaps: heightmap.skyd...
Gaia - Basics - Creating New Stamps With Gaia Scanner: • Gaia - Scanner - Creat...
NOTE: 1. When scanning images to use as stamps, the quality of the image makes a big difference. All JPG's and most PNG files are only 8 bits per channel. When this gets converted to a stamp this means that you can only represent 256 possible height values, and the resulting stamp may appear terraced. You can address this by smoothing the terrain after stamping, but if possible use 16 bit textures as the resulting stamp will of better quality. RAW16 is better texture format to use.
2. Image compression will also cause artefacts in the resulting stamps. If possible, please ensure that your source image is not compressed, and regardless, make sure that you disable compression on the texture in Unity before you use the scanner to convert it into a stamp. Make sure you disable the sRGB setting on the texture so that it is imported purely as data.
3. Terrain scale is important. These heightmaps represent quite large areas, so in order to get a more realistic scale make your terrain 4 or 8km sq, and increase the Y scale as shown in the video. This is the type of scenario when streaming is important as well, so in Gaia Pro, make your terrain tiles around 512m sq, and enable separate scenes and streaming.
4. You can also use these stamps as the base for much larger environments using the world designer. To do this use the world designer, and then select Image as the Shape Input Type, and then your new stamp in the World Shape section. You can add more detail or not as you choose.
For version differences and detailed text based tutorials check out www.procedural....

[@Draconisrex1]

These recent tutorials have really, really stepped up the quality of the instruction. Something I'd complained about in the past when steps were omitted or GAIA had been customized prior to the demo without explaining how the customization had been accomplished. When you do something, EXPLAIN EVERYTHING. Start from 'right after GAIA is pulled in, we can skip the crap we know!!!! And, thank you. I really appreciate these new tutorials.

[@ssnightshadow]

Thank you, that means a lot! I have been trying to make really good content, and I will be making more soon!

[@johndouglas6519]

Finally been waiting for this for quite a while. Thank you so much for releasing this Bryan.

[@AdamGoodrich]

Bryan rocks!

[@mechanicaltimi123]

I like this. Lets also show how you can scan a small hand made scene and stamp it into a larger scene that is already finished. Then use GeNa Pro to take all the objects in the hand made scene and place them in one shot. This is something I do quite often. I use most of all tools available but I start "turning my clay" with procedural worlds, and sometimes that is all I need. Thanks Bryan, this is a good tutorial on features that Gaia Pro/2021 offers.

[@AdamGoodrich]

Nice!

[@joshmabry7572]

I think this sold me on picking up the bundle. This whole suite of tools is so incredible, I can't wait to start creating my own worlds. Thanks!

[@AdamGoodrich]

Awesome. Hope you enjoy!

[@akagami6113]

Thanks for your hard work.

[@ssnightshadow]

Thank you!

[@eranmeir90]

This looks amazing. Thank you so much for this! Cheers!

[@AdamGoodrich]

Our pleasure!

[@danielmarsh4612]

Another good video. Easy to follow along , very informative 👍 👌 👏 Keep up the hardwork.

[@Ptah1130]

Boomp!!

[@bruhhhh772]

Hi, Why shadows are weird at 20:11 ?...... like they are appearing and disappearing

[@AdamGoodrich]

No idea. This video isnt about shadow management :)

[@jeansb2087]

Its easy to replace the threes assets for low poly threes? I want to use a real world map but for a low poly game

[@AdamGoodrich]

Yes. I will have video of this in next day or so for Gaia 23.

[@erngkmn]

I open HDRP project I use Gaia pro 2021 3.2.2 but when I click the advenced tab there are no selectable menus (gaia tools,Gaia terrains etc) There are showed but not selectable. Also, even though I loaded the shaders, it continues to warn as "Install shaders". Please help

[@AdamGoodrich]

Hi can you please head over to our support & community platform and post your issue there? canopy.procedural-worlds.com/

[@erngkmn]

I Solve the issue thanks

[@BlackJar72]

It seems .exr files can be imported too -- odd they have to be even with in the correct format to begin with. I do wonder how large worlds with many terrains works, as I find things seem to hang after creating a bunch of very small terrains in a 32x32 grid.

[@paulonyeka]

I love the background music

[@CyberStudios]

Thank you for this excellent tutorial. Will Gaia be making an arid biome any time soon? Or is there any other examples that could be used to get an Egypt type desert environment

[@AdamGoodrich]

If you check out the tutorials series we show how to import content from Quixel.. and the next part will talk about how to make biomes from it... so you can make any environment you want.

[@CyberStudios]

@@AdamGoodrich oh wow thank you so much, I actually installed Quixel yesterday so this is exciting!!! Thank you for the excellent work!!!

[@adamoversteet4557]

Was going to use magic map for a big enough terrain for a animal simulator I'm working on but this should work better

[@cank4286]

Is this only for heightmaps, can we use colormaps too?

[@LanciaSiluri]

is this all possible in the standard edition? terrain sizes like 250km by 250km possible in de standard version?

[@AdamGoodrich]

no. this is a manual tool. it would take you forever.

[@gregoryhoward7594]

Great video!!! I want to see if you have a 3rd person controller tutorial as well. I'm not into 1st person only games. I'm curious to see weather effects as well. I like the tunneling that you mentioned because I would definitely need that for a game OR illustration animations. The one thing I would like to see that these do not afford is dynamic environments where you can dig into the terrain where the mesh dynamically adjusts to what you are doing. I'll have to check out some other videos. This GAIA looks like it would do the trick. The heightmap only does a small section. If you don't have a tutorial on it yet, it would be nice to see how a person could use an area that is 2x2 of 4 different heightmaps to be used to expand area covered.

[@AdamGoodrich]

Gaia can easily stamp over multiple tiles. We do not have something that is ready to release that matches multiple of these imports though. This video made merely to show people what can be done.

[@jithendtk9381]

Great video, I started trying these steps with Unity 2021.3.711 Personal Edition, which is the correct Gaia to use, should I go for Gaia Pro 2021 - Terrain & Scene Generator or Gaia 2021 - Terrain & Scene Generator I am exploring this not for commercial use is there a free version of Gaia that I can use, please suggest

[@AdamGoodrich]

You can grab Gaia ML for free at Canopy. Then upgrade to Gaia Pro 2021 if you want. canopy.procedural-worlds.com/files/file/32-ai-game-development-toolkit-gaia-ml/

[@mikeha]

once you have your gaia terrain all done and all spawned up with trees and vegetation, etc, is there a way to "bake" the terrain out to another clean unity project so that your main game project doesn't have to have Gaia pro installed in it?

[@charlespierro8048]

Terraced, not terraNced. LOL Great video though. You do an exceptional job of explaining the processes and offering tips and tricks.

[@SmartLearningAI]

Interesting. I tried it with Gaia Pro 2021 and my own scan. Works fine. Question. In the build, I noticed the mouse cursor remains visible. This was not the case before. Will Gaia Pro 2021 allow an option to disable it, please?

[@alegrjavd]

Hey, it´s a great video. But I have some problem... I don´t get a texture on my terrain.. and I can´t find a problem. Can you help me?

[@AdamGoodrich]

Sorry for the late reply, if you are still having issues can you reach out to Bryan on Discord. We will get that sorted for you. discord.gg/TggjQNN

[@tbunreall]

why are shadows flickering everywhere?

[@AdamGoodrich]

its a cunning plot!

[@yifengchen5274]

the PNG result is good in a way

[@AdamGoodrich]

better than nothing

[@erngkmn]

How can I paint another existing unity terrain with Gaia? I searched google but not found. I have an already terrain I want just texturing and terraforming it with GAIA but when I do that my terrain is gone GAIA is created an another terrain

[@AdamGoodrich]

Just click on a biome, and select the button add to scene.

[@zanispleve1777]

Hi! How to do same thing on Germany? IDK why but for Europe it is not working

[@AdamGoodrich]

You would need to contact them and ask. We have no affiliation with them.

[@KIXEMITNOG]

GAIA PRO IS NOT FREE! BTW THE BEST VIDEO ON THIS TOPIC!

[@ssnightshadow]

I'm confused by this? What do you mean?

[@FeedMyKids1]

Why would it be free.

[@calebdoise683]

If one wanted to match the real world terrain height and scale, is there a built-in way to "calibrate" the Unity terrain size and height to match the exported RAW file from that website so that horizontal and vertical distances in Unity match their real world counterparts.

[@AdamGoodrich]

No. We will be releasing a GeoSpatial product, but it won't be with Gaia.

[@GYWang-j2d]

@@AdamGoodrich When will it be released? Will it be like Microsoft flight simulator?

[@ralfsmarkusslans8035]

Hi! There is a little problem, i can't do it if you are selected part of EU. Do you have idea how to copy EU map

[@AdamGoodrich]

No. We have no control over the data source, we just show you how to use it.

[@ralfsmarkusslans8035]

@@AdamGoodrich i know, but you can take part from US but i cant part from EU

[@s_Parker]

Is there any way to increase the size that the Map tool will capture? That square is so tiny

[@AdamGoodrich]

They don't seem to have a way of doing this.

[@tbunreall]

@@AdamGoodrich they do now, in the settins icon top left

[@scan7374]

Hy Guys! i Whant to now if its possible to insert this type of terrain on a project for VR, Did anyone can help me with this question? Im from Brasil and i work for a geoprocessing enterprise,

[@AdamGoodrich]

This would be expensive. You can export in Gaia to a mesh, and GTS will shortly have mesh / VR support for rendering, and next Flora will be ready soon as well.

[@daryladhityahenry]

Hi! This is quite crazy.. How to optimize it? Can we make it into so much chunks of object for occlusion culling? Thanksss! Great vid!

[@AdamGoodrich]

Optimization is a wide and deep subject. You can do terrain tiles / streaming / instanced indirect rendering / mesh baking etc etc.

[@flyingcat3170]

can you do it with cities?

[@AdamGoodrich]

Nope. We will have something new that has cities before end of year.

[@flyingcat3170]

@@AdamGoodrich niice!

[@henryqng]

This tool takes way too much time to prepare and create real world terrain. I went back to the asset store and bought TerraWorld. It is cheaper and I can create “real world” any where on earth in just a few mouse clicks.

[@AdamGoodrich]

We don't claim to support real world terrain. This video shows how to source real world height maps, and also how to leverage them in Gaia. You could just as easily use the Unity brush tool with the ideas we describe here.

[@Lonelyweirdo96]

Ok so what if I wanted to take the entirety of Houston Texas and import it into unity. Would that be possible?

[@AdamGoodrich]

If you wanted to put the effort in you probably could.

[@Lonelyweirdo96]

@@AdamGoodrich but I mean how would I even get started? Does the map data exist in a format that's compatible with current game engines? Or is this one of those things where I have to go around with my own high definition camera and map out the city myself

[@mrnobody2873]

Can it tile heightmaps on a sphere?

[@AdamGoodrich]

No

[@ApexArtistX]

What is the grass pack asset used ?

[@AdamGoodrich]

This grass comes with Gaia Pro 2021

[@Instant_Nerf]

The issue I’m running up against in creating these large landscapes is we don’t have ai to help us with placing, vegetation, grass, trees. Separating the roads and vegetation also along rivers etc. I have a project 17mi. x2 if we look at Microsoft flight simulator it’s the whole earth. Ai is being used, trained to build those billions of houses. Even in my case there over 12,000 houses that need to be built. It’s not possible. And I’m not interested in procedural. That’s just too lazy and also not what my project is about. ..Especially if we want to build a digital twin “earth” there are technologies but these companies like black shark ai and Maxar imaging are only giving access to big corporations.. for a large fee of course. It’s out of reach for the smaller guy. But maybe someday soon we can all have the same tools. These Pipeline lines are being Made right now

[@AdamGoodrich]

Can you please email [e-mail] and we can have a chat about what you are needing.

[@mein-biedenkopf]

It works an it is the terrain but not the dimensons. Thats much smaler as in reality

[@AdamGoodrich]

Not everyone needs 100km sq, and this is not designed to solved that. We have a new system coming soon that can do earth sized environments.

[@mein-biedenkopf]

@@AdamGoodrich I use the maps in this tutorial. The maps are 17.28x17.28km. After "import" an 80m high hill looks like 20m Hill. So thats NOT the real Map - maybe the real terraon. I feel like Guliver on Island.

[@AdamGoodrich]

@@mein-biedenkopf Then change your scale. Do the math and make the conversion manually. This is how I have done it in the past. We provided this capability in Gaia purely as a handy helper. As mentioned, Geo accuracte environments are coming ... and you will be able to export them in Gaia 23... but that's still 3-4 months off (guestimate)

[@vuilbaardgames3280]

Gaia 23 will be available in the subscription model you guys offer on your website?

[@AdamGoodrich]

@@vuilbaardgames3280 Yes. Thats the idea of it... it keeps you always up to date.

[@AbdulHayee-y2x]

Bro, how can i capture stamps in 4K