Unity is amazing, but it still does not have the build random world button that I keep asking for!?
So if there is not already a list of great procedural generation tutorials I would like to put together a list of links to the best procedural generation tutorials for Unity developers, then maybe we can learn to create our own ābuild random worldā button (with the new UI).
Well Iām hoping you will help me out with great links, they you can like the best links and I will collate them and sort them based on number of likes!
So what is the best procedural generation resource you have found for Unity???
It is easy to create a ābuild random worldā button, the problem comes when you want a world that will fit your game idea If you want one that can do everything from Minecraft to Landmarks thenā¦ have fun
If you look outside of unity specifically, there are tonnes of websites with stuff about procedural meshes and geometry and fractal terrain and all the rest of it.
Generally though if youāre going to push one button to generate a world, youāre going to have very very little control over what kind of output youāll get, unless there are some human rules built into the algorithm. Making stuff purely based on random noise etc can produce sometimes interesting results, sometimes boring results, sometimes impossible results, etcā¦ a hybrid approach combining some human imposed āknowledgeā/rules mixed in with some randomization can produce some more useable and interesting outputs.
While itās not strictly in the conventional view of āprocedural generationā, Red Blob Games, has countlessly helped me when procedurally generating a hexagon based terrain. Excellent website for all topics.
Adding props the red blob games site. I regularly use a guided or seeded procedural methodology. Where I use procedural generation, but a several points along the way I can reject the results, regen and/or tweak the results before taking the next step. Then store the results as complete or with some degree of randomization left in. The āimagesā link in my sig is an example that process.
I have been focusing on procedural generation for nearly three years now, and while fractal solutions are great, they are almost impossible to ātameā so that you get exactly the result you want, in exactly the location you want. On top of that you then need to flick around a whole bunch of tools in order to then get the outcome you are looking for.
It took a bunch of iterations of my own tools to get something that I was happy with, and what I ended up with is a tool that I called GAIA, that I just released onto the asset store.
What makes GAIA different is that it combines the best of manual scene generation with the best of procedural scene generation. You can go all one way or the other - and imho a combination of both offers the best flexibility.
GAIA gives you a toolset that allows you to choose which mountain goes where, and what hill go where, to rotate, scale and blend them, and then to āStampā them into the terrain. GAIA then procedurally textures, plants and populates the rest of the scene for you.
Heres a video - hopefully it will show you a little bit of what I am talking about.
Btw GAIA is open ended - so if you want to leverage your existing workflow with tools like World Machine, thatās supported and made easy by GAIA as well.
