Migrating a Gaia 1 scene to Gaia 2 / Pro

Gaia 1 and Gaia 2 / Pro are not directly upwards compatible - but it is possible to migrate scenes that were created with Gaia 1 into Gaia 2 / Pro so that you can continue working on your terrain with the advanced tools of Gaia 2 / Pro. This guide details the necessary steps for the migration.
 

General Information

Gaia 2 and Gaia Pro can not simply be installed over Gaia 1 - while some of the tools in this software follow the same principles (Stamper, Spawner) they are very different on the inside and can therefore not be upgraded automatically. The same applies to the general lighting and water setup: The newer versions of Gaia contain a more complex setup for lighting and new water shaders which are structured differently in the scene hierarchy.
The content (assets, textures, trees, etc.) between Gaia 1 and Gaia 2 is similar, but Gaia Pro also contains a lot of additional assets in the biome presets that come with Gaia Pro.

If you would simply install Gaia 2 / Pro over Gaia 1, you would run into the following issues:

- The installation files would be split up across the new Gaia Pro directory and the existing Gaia 1 directory, creating issues and making it difficult to tell the two applications apart
- The existing Gaia 1 scene setup can create a lot of issues when interacting with the newer Gaia2 / Pro Tools
- Remaining code fragments of Gaia 1 can throw errors when the code of Gaia 2 / Pro is present
- Gaia 2 / Pro require a higher unity version (2019.3) as Gaia 1.

It is therefore absolutely not recommended to install Gaia 2 / Pro over Gaia 1 as this can and will not work.

1. Cleaning Asset Folders

To prepare for the migration to Gaia 2 / Pro, you should ideally delete the entirety of Gaia 1, but this can create problems if you are using the asset content of Gaia 1 (Textures, trees, models, etc.) Those you can't delete since you would still need them after the migration to display on the terrain. 

If you are not sure if that is the case, you need to inspect the terrain / scene to see what assets it uses. You can check the following Asset types in the unity terrain inspector:

Terrain Textures
Terrain Trees
Terrain Details (Grass)

Game Objects can not be found in the terrain inspector, but are rather grouped in the scene hierarchy below the GameObject spawner(s):



Once you have identified which Gaia asset you are using in your scene, you can decide which Gaia 1 asset folders you can delete. Since some folders are supplied by Gaia 2 / Gaia Pro as well, you can delete some folders even IF you use assets out of them - the same content will then be supplied by Gaia 2 / Gaia Pro again.  Use the following table to determine if you need to keep or delete a Gaia 1 asset folder.

If you are using Assets out of the folder.....
 

If a folder is not listed here, it is safe to assume that it contains files that would interfere with Gaia 2 / Pro and therefore must be deleted. After you deleted the folders, only folders marked with "Keep" above should remain in the asset hierarchy (+3rd Party and your own assets of course).

While you delete the files you might see some assets on the terrains disappear - this is normal since the assets were just deleted from the project, but they will reappear once import the Gaia Pro / 2 package.

After you went through these asset folders, delete any other Gaia folder in your project.



Create a folder (e.g. Gaia 1 Legacy) to organize the assets you need to keep under it, so you can also delete the root Gaia folder and "3rd Party Assets" itself:

2. Cleaning the scene file

As mentioned earlier, leaving remainders of old Gaia Tools in the scene can create issues when trying to migrate the project. You should therefore completely remove any GameObject directly related to Gaia and only keep your Game Object spawns and the terrain object itself alive. 

If you have a full working project you most likely have other GameObjects related from other 3rd Party Assets or which you made yourself in the scene. (Things like NPCs, Cars, Weapons, Inventory Systems, etc.) These you should be able to keep, however it is difficult to predict how these assets will behave if they have any dependency to Gaia or one of its tools. If you notice any issues in this regard, you might need to set that certain asset up correctly again after the migration is finished.

Here is an average Gaia setup with the elements that would need to be kept in the scene:

After deleting everything, this is what should be remaining (+ your own and other 3rd Party GameObjects):


 

Save the scene and close it.

3. <Optional> Upgrading to Unity 2019.3

Gaia 2 / Pro require Unity Version 2019.3 to work correctly. Since Gaia 1 still supported older Versions of Unity as well, you might need to lift your project to the higher Unity version. This can simply be done by closing the Editor and opening it again in the higher Unity version. Doing so might take a bit as Unity will reimport all assets for the new target version.

4. Install Gaia 2 / Pro

Install Gaia 2 / Pro from the Asset Store (or as Package from the Procedural Worlds Store) as usual.

5. Setup your scene with Gaia 2 / Pro

Open your scene in the project, you should notice that the assets on the terrain should now be fully restored since Gaia 2 / Pro is installed now and has brought the missing assets back. In case the terrain details (grass) is missing, open the Terrain Inspector, select the Terrain Details Tab and click on refresh:


Next, open the Gaia Manager Window and configure the lighting and Water in your scene as you would like to have it for the final scene setup. Execute Step 2 in the Gaia Manager ("Create Player.....")

• You can open the Gaia tools such as the Stamper or Spawner from the Advanced Tab in the Gaia Manager
• The sea level should be defaulted at 50 meters, you can open a stamper and spawner and readjust it from the "Appearance and Gizmos" menu
• All available biomes of Gaia 2 / Pro can be found in the advanced tab as well. You can strip off all assets of the terrain (textures, etc.) and run the biome spawners to give your terrain an entirely new look. (Backup your project first if in doubt)