Issues with multiple duplicate texture / terrain layers being generated

[Asset Glue]

While working on a tiled terrain where there are 4x4 tiles of 1024, I am encountering an issue where after texture spawning, I am left with multiple of the same textures. Something curious happens where certain textures are not added at all to the terrain layers.

 

This is originating from this texturing setup :

 

I have manually deleted the terrain layers and alternatively created a script to do this for me, because of 16 total tiles. In both cases the output is always a giant mess of not the right texture. My assumption is that it also creates the spat maps for each of these, as the splat map data indicates this.

This is very similar to an issue I have with Gaia Pro from a year or two ago where duplicating anything, or copying anything leads to behavior such as what is described. 

I believe that my original issue was not fully realized or addressed at all.

Duplicating, copying and pasting rules. I do not currently have a lot of time to spend more time to go over the particulars as I have already gone over how to reproduce this on the old system. The way I was able to get around this in the past was to never use the duplicate, copy or paste rules functionality. Which sucks because there are rules that you would want to copy and paste so that you can exclude them from other spawner rules.

Unity 2021.3.2

GaiaPro 2021 3.3.5-c5

 

[Asset Glue]

A fix that I found is to redo all of the work to make the texture spawners, by hand. =( That is also why I have been using other methods of texturing. 

[Peter]

Hi @Asset Glue,

Sorry to hear you are having repeated issues with textures duplicating on your terrains. Could you please check/answer the following questions:

• Do you or another tool create the terrain layers initially, or are they created by the spawner upon the first spawn? (It is possible to have terrain layers on a terrain first, then "ingest" those layers by Gaia in a spawner)
• Where in the project hierarchy are those duplicate layers being created? (You can select a terrain layer on the terrain object, and click "Open" to get it selected in the Project Hierarchy)
• Is there an additional terrain shader involved, or is this the default unity shader for this pipeline? (Also anything that could have to do with terrain rendering/improving that might add or remove terrain layers could be relevant)
• Do you use any source control solution?

In a nutshell, Gaia should not create duplicate terrain layers by itself. Each texture spawn rule has a reference to the terrain layer it utilized last for spawning. If that terrain layer still exists, it is being used and added to the terrain if not present on the terrain already.

It may happen that not all terrain layers are applied to every terrain - layers are only placed down if they appear on the terrain tile. If you e.g. have a snow texture that only spawns on high mountains, and the terrain tile is flat underwater, the snow texture will not be added to that terrain to preserve resources.
If you prefer a uniform terrain layer setup where the same layers are applied to all the terrains, you can copy the layer setup from one terrain to all other terrains with the "Copy Resources" tool found in the spawner:



(There is also a "Remove Resources" which will help you to clear terrains of resources similar to your script)

I just tried to deliberately create the issue by duplicating and copying spawn rules within and across multiple spawners, but I cannot reproduce the issue yet. I suspect this might be a bug triggered by a certain workflow or a cross-asset issue because the terrain layers in your screenshot seem to be named after the diffuse texture files they are using. Gaia does name all terrain layer prototypes it creates after the following scheme:
Gaia_<Date>_<Time>_<LayerIndex>
It is possible to rename the layers afterward or add layers to the terrain first and then make Gaia use them. So it could very well be that a bug creates a duplicate of that layer with such a name, but normally I would expect the duplicate to be created with the Gaia_..... naming scheme.