Gaia Pro 2021 components - what's required and what's not?

[mroshaw]

Hi!

 

I'm using Gaia, GeNa, standalone version of HDRP Time of Day and Scene Optimizer in my Unity 2021.3, HDRP 12.1.7 project.

 

I am, however, looking to use Microsplat for its terrain shader and GPU Instancer for terrain details, terrain trees and game object instancing. I currently plan to use a modified version of the PCW General and Foliage shaders with GPUI. I do plan on using Gaia for water rendering.

 

My game is an open world game, and I have a single scene with a single 1024x1024 terrain, generated using Gaia Tools.

 

With that in mind, I'm trying to work out which Gaia and GeNa components I need, what I don't need, and which ones might interfere with the others.

 

So far, I've encountered the following components. Can you please help me understand what these do, whether I can remove them, and whether they might interfere with the other PCW assets in my project? Totally understand that you can't comment on GPUI or Microsplat, just looking to understand dependencies in the PCW assets:

 

• Gaia Global - do I need this? Is it required for Gaia Water or HDRO ToD to work properly?
• Gaia Scene Player - I've turned off Auto Depth of Field, Location Manager, Player Culling Settings (culling managed by GPUI). Do I need this enabled for Gaia Water to work?
• Command Buffer Manager - do I need this? Something seems pretty insistent on adding it, even when I disable or remove.
• Terrain Loader Manager - do I need this? I only have a single terrain, single scene. Again, something is very keen for this to be in my scene!
• Gaia Audio Manager - is this required if I'm using standalone HDRP Time of Day?
• Gaia Scene Water - assume I need this for Gaia Water, so definitely a keeper!
• All Flora Components - I've turned Flora off in Window > Procedural Worlds > Flora. I've unchecked all "Use Flora" in spawners, and re-spawned the biomes. Assume I don't need any Flora components enabled.

 

Many thanks in advance for your feedback!

 

• Unity 2021.3.11f1
• HDRP 12.1.7
• Gaia Pro 2021 3.3.0
• GeNa Pro 3.3.20
• HDRP Time Of Day 1.1.0

 

Oli

[Bryan]

Hello, 

All good questions, and really depends on what you are and are not using. 
This is a bit easier to understand through the Gaia Manager - Runtime Tab. 

For the components you don't need you can set these to none: 
Water - None 
Player - None 
Skies - None 

etc, and then the hierarchy components would go away for the items you don't need. 

Any Gaia system you would need to use the Gaia player, for example, if you are using the water than you need to have the Gaia Custom Player if you are using your own controller. Or you can use one of the Gaia players if not custom. 

The Flora Components you can remove from flora, that is not needed if you are using another system. 

If you do not wish to use the Gaia Audio Manager than you can remove it as well if you plan on replacing that with another system. 

You can use Microsplat as a lot of people do use that asset or you can use GTS our new Terrain Shader, totally up to you.  

The Terrain Manager needs to be in the scene for the Gaia components to work but the World Streaming components are disabled (so its not going to hurt your performance) having that in there. 

Hopefully this helps explain some things but all things can be modified from the Gaia Manager - Runtime Tab. 

Cheers. 

[mroshaw]

Great, thank you! You hit the nail on the head - if there's stuff that won't hurt performance, I'm not too fussed. 

[Bryan]

No problem.
Glad I can help!