by New nodes for creating river networks, canyons, hills and water surfacesNew features consist of the Rivers node, which produces river networks, even in landscapes in which they would not typically form, adjusting terrain while “maintaining [its] overall shape and character”.
When created, terrains can be exported as meshes, point clouds or height maps, with the alternative to create LODs or variations through a built-in surface anomaly system.
Create seamlessly tiling terrainOther changes include the choice to generate flawlessly tiling surface, explained in QuadSpinners post as “one of the most requested features for Gaea”.
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Other brand-new functions special to the industrial editions include Turntable Animator, which renders 360-degree turntables of terrains, for usage in asset reviews or portfolios.
As well as by developing and editing a traditional scene chart, users can manage terrain kinds through a Photoshop-style layer system or by direct sculpting.
The software application consists of a procedural disintegration system efficient in mimicking scree, snow and sediment deposition, which can even be used to shape fine information into a terrain.
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Powerful procedural terrain generation plus artist-friendly direct sculptingFirst released in 2019, Gaea is meant to supply an artist-centric approach to terrain generation for video games, combining effective procedural controls with a variety of direct input approaches.
Prices and system requirementsGaea 1.3 is offered for Windows 7+ just. The free Community Edition, which is certified for business use, supplies access to the majority of the secret tools, however caps export resolution at 1K.
New nodes for modifying terrain consist of Sunlight, which can be utilized to manage snow plant or melt growth.
Updates to the existing terrain-blending and disintegration nodesUpdates to existing nodes include new Insert and Embed modes in the Combine node.
Indie, Pro and Enterprise editions: brand-new Tiled Builds system and Turntable AnimatorIn addition, users of the industrial editions of the software get an experimental new Tiled Builds system, that makes it possible to produce terrains bigger than the existing 8,192 x 8,192 px limit, by splitting them into pails that are blended together at the end of the build procedure.
Read an introduction of Gaea on QuadSpinners site.
There are likewise 16 other new nodes, consisting of devoted generators for landscape features like canyons and hills, and a Sea node for generating water surface areas.
Check out an introduction of the new features in Gaea 1.3 on QuadSpinners blog.
The software is utilized for both video game development and visual effects work, with testimonials on QuadSpinners site consisting of artists at studios including Respawn Entertaiment and Scanline VFX.
The release likewise includes the Wizard node, a “light-weight wrapper” for the existing Erosion node planned to streamline the procedure of setting up hydraulic disintegration impacts for surface.
It isnt backwards-compatible with previous variations of the software– both Gaea 1.2 and alpha builds of 1.3 itself– but is meant as a long-lasting support (LTS) release, and will continue to get vital fixes
The upgrade– a compatibility-breaking long-lasting support release– also presents the long-awaited option to generate effortlessly tiling terrain, and a Tiled Builds system for creating surfaces bigger than 8K.
Performance and workflow improvementsUnder the hood, the software applications new Sophia algorithm adjusts the triangle density of meshes produced to the complexity of the underlying portion of terrain, typically reducing poly counts by “20-40%”.
Unlike creating a fixed-density mesh– still offered as a choice– the procedure just produces triangle-based rather than quad-based meshes, and does not automatically create levels of information.
Overall performance is “approximately 30% faster” than Gaea 1.2, with the most visible improvements when previewing surface at greater resolutions.
Unlike other surface blending modes, the shapes from the source terrains are not “polluted” by one another, making it possible to add smaller sized functions like rocks into a surface while protecting its overall type.
Gaea 1.3: a significant backwards-compatibility-breaking updateThe initially significant upgrade to the software application for almost 2 years, Gaea is referred to as “our most significant and most effective upgrade yet” in QuadSpinners post.
New includes in the release, referred to as “our greatest and most powerful update yet”, consist of a new Rivers node to instantly produce river networks and a beginner-friendly variation of the flagship Erosion node.
A recording of QuadSpinners livestream previewing the brand-new functions in Gaea 1.3. The upgrade, referred to as the greatest in the terrain-generation software applications history, is now offered as a new long-lasting support release.
QuadSpinner has actually released Gaea 1.3, a major upgrade to its next-gen terrain design tool.
Workflow enhancements include a new Start screen, supplying access to over 110 new quickstart files highlighting how to develop various kinds of terain; and a Help menu for accessing documentation.
The Indie edition, which caps export resolution at 4K, costs $99; the Professional and Enterprise editions, which provide 8K resolution plus a variety of sophisticated functions, cost $199 and $299 respectively.
In addition, Gaeas erosion nodes get a brand-new Sediment Removal feature, which gets rid of surface sediment to expose underlying crevices; and several nodes get a height picker tool for tasting height values on surface.
Its currently still a speculative function, and is not suggested for usage in production up until the stable release, set up for Gaea 1.3.1 later this month.
Tags:. blend file, in reverse compatibility, mix terrains, blending mode, Combine node, combine surfaces, compatiblity breaking, totally free edition, Gaea, Gaea 1.2, Gaea 1.3, game art, game advancement, heightmap, hydraulic erosion, light baking, long-term support, LTS, new functions, parametric modifying, portals, price, procedural erosion, QuadSpinner, Repeat node, river network, Rivers node, Sea node, Seamless node, Sophia algorithm, Sunlight node, system requirements, surface design, terrain modifying, surface export, terrain generation, terrain mesh, terrain modeling, terrain sculpting, thermal disintegration, tiled surface, tiling surface, turntable animation, Turntable Animator, Unity, Unreal Engine, vfx, visual results, Wizard node.
The procedure is recursive, with brand-new Seamless and Repeat nodes making it possible to tile an already tileable landscape function throughout a bigger area of surface
