Follow up to "moving project and moving Gaia"

[RightAndExactStudios]

To follow up on the above instructions.  What is the best process for ingesting these assets and generating the gaia terrain environment in the new project?

My goal is to:

migrate into a clean unity HDRP project>

-Terrain stamp

-Terrain textures

-HDRP time of day lighting/Sky/Weather (with the tools to configure the settings in the new project)

-Water

-Player

-Flora/Vegetation 

 

What I tried:

I copied the entire session folder as well as created and exported the "gaia scripts only" package.

I imported "asset>custom package"> (gaia scripts only" package. double clicked the imported package to run the install on "gaia scripts only" package and dragged and dropped the session folder into the new project's "asset>gaia user data folder". This resulted in a prompt to overwrite the existing session folder. The session folder that installed with the "gaia scripts only" folder had fewer assets in it. It just had "terrain layers & terrain data". When I proceed it overwrote those assets with the same two terrain folders, and added flora data, scene profiles, session operations, and terrain scenes. 

Once all of the above were imported and installed I had a blank new scene. My terrain and gaia environment didn't automatically generate. I went into the session manager and played my only session. It generated my terrain environment. It however lost its stamp.  The terrain was flat, but it had textures (except the textures that were previously present due to height rules, ie. sand, rock, etc) It came over with flora, trees bush etc. It had ski.

It didn't bring the lighting, audio, or water which were generated by gaia's world generator in the original project. 

As a work around I created prefabs of the terrain, lighting, and water from the original project then imported, and dragged them into my hierarchy on the new project. This worked partially. The terrains overlapped so I deleted the terrain generated by playing the session. The lighting however lost quality. it looks like a standard pipeline scene as though HDRP was broken. 

In conclusion I feel this obviously isn't the correct ingestion process, or the export process linked above isn't covering everything needed for my migration needs.

Any guidance would be much appreciated!

 

 

[Bryan]

Honestly, if you are still using Gaia systems in the new project and its just a clean project two things I think will help. 
1. Go back to the original project and use the terrain scanner. Then turn your terrain into a stamp. 
Then in the new project you can just stamp your terrain. 

2. If you have any custom biomes than you can just save your custom biome and export that biome / biome settings into the new project and start spawning those in. 
 

[sdonnet]

Hi,

 

I also need to transfer a terrain created by Gaia on a new fresh project, without Gaia. My ultimate goal is to create an assetbundle to be loaded in a light WebGL project. Just to display into it, the terrain or a terrain preview.

So, I applied your tutorial, with the method #1, and I was able to retrieve terrain data. But not textures nor any biome elements.

My question is surely stupid : how can I retrieve and export/copy/save all elements (textures and so on) involved in the terrain ? I am able to script into the editor any task to do that.

[Peter]

Hi  @sdonnet, I would use the following approach:

- In your original project with the source terrain, create a duplicate of the scene the terrain sits in

- In the duplicate scene, remove everything you would not want to keep / transfer in the target project.

- Save the scene and export the scene as .unitypackage with dependencies being included. (you can right click on the scene file to start the export)

 

The idea is that in this way e.g. if there is a tree on the terrain, it will automatically include the tree model, textures, etc. in your export as well.

In the target project, import the package and then open the scene additively to your target scene. You can then transfer the terrain over into your target scene.

 

[sdonnet]

Hi Peter,

 

Thanks a lot. I'll try this approach.

 

Sylvain

[GeneralK]

Hi, picked up Gaia 2021.

 

I was trying to do the above export method (right click scene file) and it puts so many dependencies that I wouldn't think are needed. For example I didn't use runtime audio but those were listed, all the scripts for everything in Gaia apparently too? It was a Tiny scene made with the Gaia Pro sample but I unchecked most of the biome and it was 420mb lol. I only had stones, trees, terrain. No farms, but the farm assets were listed as dependencies?

 

When I import in to a fresh project, it is locked up on the scene zoomed in. 

Once you export a scene can you not continue to edit it in another project with other assets? I don't understand what I'm doing wrong because it's said "unity in, unity out" in your ads.

 

I've also tried doing the method with sessions. It says " all you need to send is". 

Does that mean export? Copy paste in windows?

So Terrain Data and Layers + textures are the only files needed to get the same scene back in a fresh project is that correct?

How do you know which textures if it's a biome that comes with Gaia?

 

All in all this has been very frustrating. I bought Gaia to be an easy answer to quick scene prototyping for me but I don't even want to install it in anything but a backup so far lol. 

 

 

 

[Peter]

Hi @GeneralK,

the dependency system in Unity works by scanning the scene and looking what each object in there references. If one of the Gaia objects references a SFX file, that file will end up in the export as well as the exporter cannot know if that file will be required at some point or not. If you only want the terrain and the textures on it, delete everything but the terrain from the scene file before exporting, and strip all Gaia (& potential other 3rd party) components from the terrain. Here is an example how the export looks like when removing everything from the scene but the terrain:



 

23 hours ago, GeneralK said:

When I import in to a fresh project, it is locked up on the scene zoomed in. 

Can you please post a screenshot of that and elaborate that a bit more? What exactly is locked up? In a fresh project unity would not "know" that the imported terrain was made with a 3rd party tool so it should not treat it differently as if you made that terrain manually and export it over from a different project. It should definitely be possible to continue editing there.

 

23 hours ago, GeneralK said:

Does that mean export? Copy paste in windows?

Both would be possible, the session file would need to be inside the assets folder of the target project so you can import it. Note that this method would require you to have Gaia installed in the target project.
 

23 hours ago, GeneralK said:

So Terrain Data and Layers + textures are the only files needed to get the same scene back in a fresh project is that correct?

If you only want to export the terrain shape and textures on it then yes. If you want to include trees and terrain details, you would need to keep those on the terrains and all required files should be pulled into the export as dependencies.
 

23 hours ago, GeneralK said:

How do you know which textures if it's a biome that comes with Gaia?

You would need to look at the terrain layers in the terrain inspector to identify the texture files. This is where the recommendation for using the dependencies of the export system comes from - it can be quicker to remove everything you do not want to export and then let the dependency system figure out all the required assets vs. browsing all the required files manually.
 

[GeneralK]

Thanks for the help Peter I will give it a shot again.

 

That guide that says "You want to move just the terrains to a different project and you are done using Gaia. " and "1. If you you are done with Gaia but want to send your gaia made terrains over to a different project than all you need to send is: "

 

But what I'm understanding from you is that the session files method require Gaia installed in the new project, bit confused.

 

What I mean by locked up when I did the export is the scene view is totally stuck. I can see the water rippling in a lake but no controls work, can't move/pan/zoom nothing in the editor. I can click and highlight the terrain. I'm sure this must just be something I did to the controls and not Gaia, or botched the export files somehow, although this was where I right clicked the scene file and hit export and didn't uncheck anything.

 

A "clean scene export" button would sure be awesome in Gaia manager!

 

Appreciate you guys 

[Orchid]

Just wanted to list what worked for me.

 

I prepared a Biome (with Spawners, and detailed spawn rules) in one project.

I was able to get those spawn rules working on new terrain in A totally different project.

 

Here are the steps, as others have mentioned. With some notes.

 

1. Export the entire scene with dependencies.
2.  Go to your new project. Import the package.
3. (Optional) If you have errors, reimport Gaia and GeNa as needed. To make sure your scripts are updated.
4. Open the scene now in your new project. Everything should look identical to your previous project.
5. Now you can use the Biome Controller option mentioned.  "Advanced / Save and Load / Save Biome Preset".
6.  Now you can create a new scene. Create a new Biome Controller. Load Biome Preset.

 

That worked for me! Bringing the whole scene over from the other project. THEN within the new project, creating the saved preset. And loading that into other scenes.

 

Hope this helps someone.

 

[Bryan]

Amazing thank you for the insights!