Trouble trying to spawn a row of houses along a spline

[muppster]

I want to spawn a row of houses along a street. I've been trying to do it with a spline + spawner extension, where the spawner prefab has a decorator to flatten the terrain under the house. It's sort of working, but:

• I can't seem to get the flatten decorator to align to the spline with the prefab ? I've tried align to spline and align children but these only seem to affect the prefabs not the decorator...is there a trick I'm missing here ? (I'm using a square brush rather than a circular one because I'm trying not to flatten more than the ground under the house itself)
• iterate/undo etc does not undo terrain operations, so it's kinda borked my terrain with house-shaped-stamps I have to paint out by hand, losing the cool real-world terrain I originally stamped out. It'd be really helpful if there was some sort of preview like the carve extension's preview that would show where the prefabs along a spline are going to do their thing before I hit spawn if I'm going to be stuck with the results. Is that an option somewhere?

I'm trying to avoid flattening the entire village when I just want the terrain not to poke up through the floor of each house.

[Manny]

Hey @muppster,

Thank you for bringing these issues to our attention. So that we can get to the bottom of this matter as timely as possible, could I please kindly request the following information be provided:

• Unity version
• GeNa version (can be found at the top of the Spawner)
• Steps to replicate the issue
• (if possible) Screenshots of the matter at hand

Thank you in advance!

[muppster]

Unity 2020.3.43f1

GeNa 3.4.8-c5

Steps:

1. created House prefab for the spawner with prefab unpacker, & flatten + other decorators using a square brush
2. right click in hierarchy, add new gena spawner, use existing palette, add the House prefab
3. right click in hierarchy, add new gena spline, ctrl+click to add some points to the spline
4. add spawner extention to the spline, drag in the above spawner, click align to spline & snap to ground
5. hit spawn
6. House orientation and the decorators orientation do not match.

Also happens if the spawner extension is set to align children & snap children. House orientation seems right when align to spline & align children are ticked, but flatten/clear details/clear trees decorators are always wrong (but all the same amount of wrong. The decorators only seem to listen to the spawner's placement criteria, not the spline: if I set this to fixed orientation the decorator is always aligned with the Z axis regardless of the spline orientation or align to spline/align children options. Meanwhile the prefab in the spawner obeys the spline's overruling of a ranged or fixed orientation.

Also when you un/check align to spline or align children the house prefabs automatically reorient but the terrain decorators do not (I'm guessing that's intentional; it feels like a more intuitive answer would be that the prefabs don't automatically realign if the decorators can't). 

Screenshots:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u139ozlkaso7nbj/prefab to spawn.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4tis1onl49ngr84/spawner.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p05xu4jsns7mci8/spline with extension.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8wooyzs0kmncqz/flatten and house not aligned.png?dl=0

[muppster]

Also not sure Flatten is doing what I expect it to with snap to ground on the spline: seems like all the prefabs spawned on the spline are placed at the same height and "Flatten" is levelling to that common height, rather than (expected) each prefab is placed at the terrain height of it's spawn point, flattened locally so that the prefab bottom is flush with the terrain (not on an entirely raised-up platform or sunk down hole)

I'm seeing houses planted in 0.5m holes at one end of a spline when placed on locally very flat-looking bits of terrain, because elsewhere on the spline the terrain is at a lower height (and the houses there are sitting plumb on the surface or with just a smidge of flattening going on).

[Manny]

Hey @muppster,

Thanks for reaching out and for providing so much detailed information - this really helps with understanding the issue. I'm currently investigating the misalignment problem between the house orientation and decorators, as well as the behavior you've observed with the Flatten tool and "snap to ground" on the spline.

In the meantime, could you please make sure you're using the latest version of GeNa, which is 3.5.3? There have been numerous updates and improvements since version 3.4.8-c5 that you're currently using, and it's possible this issue might have been addressed in one of those updates.

Thank you for your patience and understanding while we look into this matter further.

Best,
Manny

[muppster]

Updated to 3.5.3 in a fresh scene I still get the alignment issues, but the flatten seems to be working as expected: deffo have two houses at different heights that are locally-appropriate:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/05jq7q1m5l3cejv/spawn height seems good.png?dl=0