Sci-Fi Slums Spawner Pack Manual

Introduction

The Sifi Slums Spawner Pack helps you to create awesome environments out of the modular Newgen Sifi Slums pack from Reversed Interactive. We automate the generation and placement of many of objects and structures provided by Reversed Interactive and then use GeNa Pro to generate completely new and unique structures for you.

Tutorial Video:
 

Be sure to check out the GeNa Decorators section for examples of how you can use the GeNa Pro decorator system to add even more procedural capability to your system.

NOTE: This document will provide some advice on how to start, however for a more detailed understanding of GeNa Pro you can read the documentation provided in the Documentation folder of your GeNa installation.

Installation

Ensure that you have installed the following packages from the Unity asset store before installing the Sifi Slums Spawner Pack. This will ensure that all object references are correctly maintained:

NewGen Sifi Slums By ReversedInteractive
GeNa Pro - Terrains, Villages, Roads & Rivers | Terrain |

It should still be possible to install the assets in any order, but you might see errors & warnings when e.g. the configurations from the Spawner Pack cannot find the original prefabs from the Sifi Slums asset.

Please make sure to use GeNa Pro version 3.3.21 or higher, the spawners in the pack might not function correctly otherwise.

After those prerequisite packs have been installed, you can install the actual Sifi Slums Spawner Pack from Procedural Worlds. It will be installed into the following directories:

Procedural Worlds

     Content Packs

           Reversed Interactive

                    NewGen Sifi Slums

                              Content Resources - Resources used by the pack.

                              Prefabs - Prefabs that were used for constructing the spawners.

Render pipeline support

Per default both the Newgen Sifi Slums pack and the PWS spawner pack are configured for the built-in rendering pipeline. When installing into URP or HDRP you will also need to install additional packages for rendering pipeline support. The Newgen Sifi Slums asset comes with installation packs for both URP and HDRP by default. They can be found at the root of the installation folder here:



Double click the package for your render pipeline to update the Reversed Interactive assets.
 

Within the spawner pack, there is only one single material that needs to be updated for the correct pipeline manually:



Please select the “Asphalt” material found in the Content Resources folder and select the correct shader for the current render pipeline. The shader names for the respective pipelines are:
 

BuiltIn: Standard

HDRP: Shader Graphs\Road

URP: Shader Graphs\Road

Using the Sci-Fi Slums Spawner Pack

Typical Workflow

The Sifi Slums Spawner Pack is designed to be used with Gaia and GeNa. A typical workflow would be to 
 

1. Create a Unity terrain with Gaia;

2. Populate it with GeNa;

3. Optionally finish it off with a full Biome Spawn with Gaia;
 

Please note: While this is a suggested workflow you do not need to follow it. With GeNa  Pro you can quickly enhance any Unity scene. Most of the spawners will work on both  Meshes and Unity terrain, however you will lose access to some features such as terrain  flattening as this only works with Unity terrains.
 

You could decide to use all, some, or none of Gaias Runtime system for lighting or water.
 

Asset Layout

Here is a brief overview of the more important content directories that you would browse  to find the Gaia and GeNa spawners to apply to your scene:

GeNa Spawners:

Gena Spawners to spawn variations of buildings and props.

GeNa Spawners / Sub-Spawners:

GeNa spawners that are not designed to be used by hand, only by other spawners.

World Population with GeNa Pro

Spawning

To use the GeNa spawners, drag one of the GeNa spawner prefabs into your scene. Hit  Shift+Left Mouse click to sample your terrain or mesh. GeNa will also give you a visualization of  where the structure can be spawned.

Press Ctrl+Click in any valid area to spawn. GeNa will child any prefabs or splines it spawns  into your scene underneath the terrain or mesh of the scene it was spawned on. This is so that things like Gaia’s Terrain streaming system can manage object loading and unloading  correctly.

A 2x2 building asset was automatically assembled out of different prefabs. Note that  usually you would need to assemble the building out of individual pieces yourself– adjust the terrain so it is flat underneath – all by hand,  while here you can spawn a random new house with a single click.

Iterating
 

Many of the GeNa spawners offer multiple variations on the same basic structure, so you  can have fun ‘iterating’ the spawn result until you get the one you want.

To do this, first hit Ctrl+Left Mouse click to spawn, and then without de-selecting the  spawner Iterate the spawn by hitting Ctrl+Shift+I to get another version of it. Keep Iterating  until you get what you want. 

GeNa will switch the visualizer off while you are doing this in order to make it easier to see  the final result. 

Undo

You can undo any GeNa spawn or spline operation by hitting Ctrl+Z.

Fixed Rotation Spawning
 

Some GeNa spawners are set up to operate in Fixed Rotation mode. Fixed rotation allows  you to change the direction that the object will spawn.

Fixed Rotation is indicated with a blue arrow that shows the direction that the object will be  rotated in when it is spawned.

Hold the left Shift key, and click and drag the mouse to change the direction that the object  will spawn in. The blue direction pointer will update to show you the new direction.

When you have selected your rotation then spawn as usual with the Ctrl+Left Mouse click.

This technique enables precise orientation of your structures easy to achieve. It is also very useful when used in conjunction with splines.
 

Paint Mode

Some GeNa spawners are set up to operate in “Paint Mode”. 

With these spawners you can hit Ctrl + Left Mouse Click to spawn, and then drag your  mouse to continue to “Paint” your objects into your scene. The flow rate is the distance in  meters that you need to move before the next spawn iteration is executed.

If you do not like what it did, you can then hit Ctrl+Shift+I to Iterate and get another version  of the paint operation, or Ctrl+Z to undo it.
 

GeNa Decorator System
 

GeNa comes with an exceptionally powerful decorator system, and this allows you to  exert a high degree of control over how your content is spawned into your scene.

You see how many of the prefabs used in the spawners were configured by looking at them in Procedural Worlds/Content Packs/Reversed Interactive/NewGen Sifi Slums/Content Resources

Study how these prefabs were configured and use the ideas to set up your own content  decorators.

For more information on Decorators, please read the GeNa Documentation.

Runtime Spawning
 

GeNa Pro can be controlled via API to spawn at runtime. Please check out the GeNa Pro documentation to lean more.
 

World Finalization with Gaia Pro

In some scenarios you will want to use Gaia Pro to finalize your world. This will fill out all  the areas you did not design yourself with GeNa & other tools. To do this select your biome  under Gaia Tools and hit Spawn Biome.

NOTE: You can add Gaia biomes to your scene at any time by selecting the biome and then  clicking ‘Add Biome To Scene’. Please note that the Sci-Fi Slums Spawner Pack does not contain a custom biome since the  underlying asset pack does not contain any nature / terrain assets.

Scene Finalization
 

When you are finished creating your scene the following things can reduce the size of your  build:

1. Remove Gaia Tools. They are used only for creating environments.
2. Bake and then remove all your GeNa splines.

3. Delete your GeNa spawners.