I started using Terrain Composer 2. I found out its not that easy for a beginner to use it as I thought and read about it. Few days after purchesing I found there are plenty other similar programs. Most popular is Gaia 2. Now I want to know, is Gaia 2 easier to use for a begginer than TC2? I already spend about 50€ for TC2 and dont want to put another 50€ for similar program, unless it is much easier to use. Also Gaia was on sale like a week ago and now I’m kinda sad. Maybe will be in some kind of a bundle in near future or on sale again when black friday comes but that like a good month away.
So anyway, is there someone who uses both (TC2 and Gaia) and can explain a bit more if there is good way to choose Gaia 2 as a beginner or the learning curve is not so much different between them? Because it is really hard to find a lot on google (talking specially for TC2) about these programs/plugins. There is documentation for TC2 and some videos, but they are not really that deep and you run into problems really fast as a beginner. I’m not an expert so I want something that is friendly for a beginner as much as possible.
My personal suggestion is don’t use any of those extensions unless you plan to generate a generic looking terrain fast.
They are good to get you going, but in the end a good looking environment requires handwork.
In Gaia you can design your target terrain to a good amount, but the time it takes you to master yet another system is mostly wasted if your game does not intend to become the next big open world thing.
And if you start to have procedural terrain you begin to have to adjust your whole workflow to that. This for example means it’s more hassle to have multiple assets that also modify the terrain (like river/road/vegetation systems). These may conflict at some point, which is my experience.
So even though it’s not exactly an anwer to your question, i’d say try to use what you have (TC2 is not bad if you know what you expect it to do), don’t buy yet another tool that just like tc2 requires time to master. I’d even say stick to building by hand, with the new unity terrain tools it’s a fun learning experience.
That’s actually a good advice. As a begginer really dont want to break a project somewhere in the middle. Will stick with build in terrain system. Thank you for a good advice.
