Modular Biome 2.0 Functionality

[krocs2k]

You make great packages and I can't say enough about the quality of your work. I feel that more attention needs to me given to the biome subsystem in terms of management and modifications. With all the different resources available in the Unity access store, it would be great if there was a simple yet elegant way to duplicate an existing biome and drag in custom prefabs to create a new biome using existing rules and apply it/save it.

Building a biome from scratch can be a little complicated, but replacing tree for tree, rock for rock, bush for bush, texture for texture would make it more simple while keeping the rules you have built applied to different prefabs. Lastly, it would be great to make sound part of the biome ecosystem. This way we can easily apply the appropriate audio for footsteps, ambiance and creature sounds based on the biome or texture relationships. That would really be a great for creating a total immersive experience within different biomes/natural environments.

I sincerely hope you will consider this as it will make Gaia Pro and Gena not only products but staples/frameworks that allow for infinite complexity in a more user friendly way.

Thanks for the consideration!

[Ben Black]

Hey @krocs2k what you are suggesting is already a possibility with our current system, here's how to do it: Ill be using the alpine meadow biome as an example, first you'll want to generate your world with the alpine meadow biome or if you dont care about testing you can simply add the alpine meadow biome in an empty scene through Gaia Manager>Advanced>Gaia Tools>Add existing biomes>Alpine Meadow>Add Biome. 

Once you've got the biome in your scene select it and and change the name located in the top of the biome controller to your desired new biome name. When you do this Gaia will give you a pop up asking if you want to rename all the child spawners as well, say yes to this. Now you have a perfect framework to add your own assets into, you can do this by going to any spawner (using textures in this instance) Textures>Spawn Rules>Sand>Resource Settings and switching out the textures/prefabs that are there. Once you are done replacing the default assets with your own or making any other modifications to your new biome, you can save it by going back to your biome(the parent object of all the spawners) and navigating to Advanced>Save and Load>Save Biome Preset. It will ask you if you want to overwrite the existing spawners in the project, you should not do this and instead press create new copys, otherwise it will remove all those spawners from the original alpine meadow biome. Annnd there you go, you now have a biome that you have modified that you can use whenever you like. To use it you can simply spawn any biome when you are creating your world and then navigate to Advanced>Save and Load>Load Biome Preset, then in the file explorer navigate to Assets>Gaia User Data>Biomes and open your new biome asset.

Let me know if you run into any issues.

~Ben

 

[Tikal]

On 3/24/2022 at 4:48 AM, Ben Black said:

Hey @krocs2k what you are suggesting is already a possibility with our current system, here's how to do it: Ill be using the alpine meadow biome as an example, first you'll want to generate your world with the alpine meadow biome or if you dont care about testing you can simply add the alpine meadow biome in an empty scene through Gaia Manager>Advanced>Gaia Tools>Add existing biomes>Alpine Meadow>Add Biome. 

Once you've got the biome in your scene select it and and change the name located in the top of the biome controller to your desired new biome name. When you do this Gaia will give you a pop up asking if you want to rename all the child spawners as well, say yes to this. Now you have a perfect framework to add your own assets into, you can do this by going to any spawner (using textures in this instance) Textures>Spawn Rules>Sand>Resource Settings and switching out the textures/prefabs that are there. Once you are done replacing the default assets with your own or making any other modifications to your new biome, you can save it by going back to your biome(the parent object of all the spawners) and navigating to Advanced>Save and Load>Save Biome Preset. It will ask you if you want to overwrite the existing spawners in the project, you should not do this and instead press create new copys, otherwise it will remove all those spawners from the original alpine meadow biome. Annnd there you go, you now have a biome that you have modified that you can use whenever you like. To use it you can simply spawn any biome when you are creating your world and then navigate to Advanced>Save and Load>Load Biome Preset, then in the file explorer navigate to Assets>Gaia User Data>Biomes and open your new biome asset.

Let me know if you run into any issues.

~Ben

 

This is really underrated. Could I suggest highlighting this somewhere? A video? Or perhaps a designated "Blank" biome? Because I just did this and it was so much easier than I thought it would be.

[Ben Black]

Ya @Tikal its definitely a really helpful and powerful feature, we can make a video going over how to do it.

~Ben

[krocs2k]

Ben.. you just made my week!!!!