world generated very different from preview

[Roi]

Hi

i just bought the gaia pro 21 and i am trying to use the random world generation.

i created a preview by clicking the randomize stamps button and then clicked the generate world button

and the final outcome of the terrain is very different than the preview :

here is the preview :

 

and here is the result :

 

am i doing something wrong ?

thank you

[Roi]

After making a few more tests I saw that the preview looks closer to the outcome result only on smaller terrains,

and the terrain size in the above post is 20X20 tiles of 1024m.

is it possible to generate a helpful preview also with large terrains ?

[Peter]

Hi @Roi, in general the preview should match the generated world 1:1, I think in your case it only looks like it would not because there are some specialities with larger worlds that come into play: 
When you generate a larger world with multiple terrains, the preview will by default display only a small portion of the world - this is because rendering the full preview with hundreds of stamps can take some time, so initially only a single terrain tile will be previewed:


When clicking the full preview button the entire preview area will be filled, this can take a bit to render:

 

Note that it is also possible to zoom in on single terrain tiles to view them in full resolution. The screenshot you posted originally was such a zoomed in preview, indicated by the "Zoom Out" button. This means you were previewing a single terrain tile up close from the entire world to be generated.
Another level of complexity comes into play with Terrain Loading in large worlds: If you create a world with 3x3 terrain tiles or larger, Gaia will automatically enable the options for Terrain Loading. Terrain Loading will only load portions of the world both during design time and run time to save performance and system resources.
After generating a large world, only a smaller portion will be visible initially, usually only the terrain tiles at the center of the world.
I think what caused the confusion in your case was that ysou were initially looking at the zoomed in preview of a single terrain tile of your world, and were comparing that against a different part of the actual, generated world (depending on which part was loaded at that time.)
As long as you have no trees, objects, etc. generated on the terrains yet, it should still be possible to load in all terrains at the same time without causing an issue. You could try to render the full preview first, and after the initial world generation, visit the Terrain Loader Manager under "Gaia Runtime" in the scene hierarchy. In the "Terrains" section there should be a button to load all terrains - if you do that and compare all loaded terrains vs. the full preview, the shape should be identical between the two.

[Roi]

Hi thank you for replying.

I understand all about the partial preview thing, what i am trying to say is that the partial render does not look anywhere near the final result also at the correct view scale.

I did another test with 10X10 1024m each tile :

 

full render preview :
 

 

all terrains rendered :

 

the result will be even less accurate as the terrain gets bigger, like my first post

thank you for helping

[Peter]

Hi @Roi, thanks for the clarification and the additional screenshots, from your first post I assumed this was just a misunderstanding how the preview works, but the issue is clearer now.
This is definitely not the default behavior of the world designer, there is some issue at play here. If I compare your preview with your actual result, it looks to me that the overall terrain shape still seems to be there, but it is almost like there is an additional noise pattern layered on top of that as well.
I tried to reproduce this behavior with generating a 10x10 @1024 world as well, but I do not seem to get this noise pattern & the preview matches the generated terrain as expected:



To make sure the "Deep Desert" biome does not play into this (unlikely but possible if the spawners alter the terrain shape), I added it to the project and gave it a try as well, but here I'm getting the same result:

 

I currently cannot really tell why this is happening for you - if it is not too much trouble could you please try if you get the same issue in a brand new project without any additional other assets installed? If it works, it would be a project-specific issue, if it does show the same issue in a brand new project, it would be something in the hardware / graphics API  /computer configuration corner potentially.

 

[Roi]

Hi

I started a new project on 2021.3.9f1 and created a 40X40 1024m terrains. the outcome generated matched the preview.

so creating a new project (on a different unity version) sorted that issue for me.

in the earlier version the project crashed somewhere at the process of generating a terrain so I had to close it with the task manager and restart it.

maybe that was the reason for my problem ? an old cache or irrelevant saved session data or something I don't know.

so thank you for that, but if it will happen again do you have any suggestion of how to clear a scene / terrains without opening a new project ?

in my case it was a new one but if it already had some content in it, creating a new project would be a pain.

and another thing : after importing the deep desert biome from the packages window I got some red messages about a missing script :

Error while saving Prefab: 'Assets/Procedural Worlds/Content Packs/Deep Desert/GeNa/Layouts/Formations/PW_P_Stylised_Formation_Pebbles_01.prefab'. You are trying to save a Prefab with a missing script. This is not allowed. (86 messages about different objects)

i wonder what that missing script is ?

maybe i should have imported gena first ?

thank you very much, Roi

[Peter]

On 12/31/2022 at 8:37 PM, Roi said:

so thank you for that, but if it will happen again do you have any suggestion of how to clear a scene / terrains without opening a new project ?

Normally it should be enough to just create a new scene within the same project. I do not know what might have caused the issue in the other project, I currently cannot think of anything in terms of a cache etc.  that would be kept between scenes that could influence the generation result of the next.
I would predict that in your new project it should work now to create a new scene without having the same issue again. If you get the issue again, especially if something larger changed in the project (e.g. new asset installed, configuration changes, etc.) then it would be great if you could notify us again so we can take it from there.
 

On 12/31/2022 at 8:37 PM, Roi said:

i wonder what that missing script is ?

maybe i should have imported gena first ?

That error message sounds like it is indeed coming from the GeNa-specific scripts on those prefabs. It is expected that you see a warning message if you try to select one of the GeNa spawner prefabs for example, and GeNa is not yet installed in the project. It is unusual that you are seeing an error related to saving a prefab when importing the package, normally there should be no saving of a prefab at that moment.
As long as you can use the spawners correctly after you install GeNa in the project, these error messages can be ignored.