Gaia Pro 2023 Programmatically Generate World

[dudesss]

Hi 🙂 I'd like to programmatically create worlds and to import different biomes or use different spawners depending on the scenario. With Gaia Pro 2023 out, is there an easier way to do this? Is there documentation anywhere for this? I seen the GaiaAPI Class can be used programmatically, but is this good enough to create worlds programmatically as well?

[Peter]

Hello @dudesss, Gaia 2023 has not changed much in terms of API / accessing its capabilities programmatically. Please note that the terrain editing / creation is not possible during runtime - Gaia requires too much functionality of the unity editor which is not available in a standalone build.
In the editor it might be possible to code a system that uses Gaia to automatically generate worlds, you would essentially need to automate calling & execute the world designer for this. Can you tell us a bit more what you want to achieve, e.g. is the world creation supposed to be available for the player as well? Or do you want to create a lot of ready-made levels during design time which should be included in the build?

[dudesss]

Hey man, I'm looking to allow the player to use items in order to be used to populate their world. For example, types or trees or mushrooms. Then use Gaia to populate the world. Maybe I'm over doing by trying to use procedural generated worlds for this? Maybe I should have the user place things down themselves?

[Bryan]

You can use the spawners from the biomes and then use something like the distance mask to control your spawning. 
 

[aldaluin]

...but having players do that at runtime would be more of a Gena thing than Gaia, right?

 

[Bryan]

Yeah with the runtime spawning. 

 

[stonstad]

I'm also looking for a programmatic solution. Would I be able to generate terrain procedurally using API calls?  i.e. playable areas are generated from a unique seed. 

[Bryan]

2 hours ago, stonstad said:

I'm also looking for a programmatic solution. Would I be able to generate terrain procedurally using API calls?  i.e. playable areas are generated from a unique seed. 

No you would need to make them in editor. 
The only thing I could think of would be to make them using the random terrain generator. 
Then use GeNa Pro API to create a runtime spawner and them spawn them. 

 

[stonstad]

Thank you for your response. I think there is a real need for a runtime API solution.  If this ever becomes available, we'd love to use it.

[Bryan]

Yeah that is understandable. 
We have some enterprise solutions coming that will. 
Gaia products are meant to be design time. 

[stonstad]

On 10/11/2023 at 12:14 PM, Bryan said:

Yeah that is understandable. 
We have some enterprise solutions coming that will. 
Gaia products are meant to be design time. 

I am looking into using Gaia stamps (without Gaia) to create terrain at runtime.  But it would obviously be great to use Gaia, if it's technically possible. Does the stamping logic for Gaia and subsequent conversion to Unity Terrain live in an editor only DLL, and this is the limitation? 

I'm trying to figure out if I would still be able to use Gaia for partial generation --just the terrain.  I'm hesitant to purchase Gaia Pro without knowing whether I'll ultimately be able to invoke needed API calls at runtime.  

[Bryan]

So you can use an "outside" project to create the stamps and then export those stamps outside of the project. 
One thing I could see is if you make a secondary project to create stamps or terrain meshes and then export those out.
Then use the multiple terrains that you have created and exported out and do runtime spawning with those and GeNa Pro.