This issue is not related to TerraCity at all and if your models have imported correctly in Unity, it won’t be any problems for placement. This is not because 3ds Max FBX importer axis conversion alone and as you said it won’t change the direction and doesn’t solve the problem. Instead you have to change the Pivot Point rotation.
To overcome this issue, do the following:
In 3ds Max, select your model => go to Hierarchy panel => select Pivot tab => enable “Affect Pivot Only” => press “E” or rotate the x axis of the pivot to 90.
That’s all, export the model as FBX with the exporter’s default settings and now it should be imported into unity with no problems.
Just wanted to let you know that we’re heavily working on Yosemite Park demo which will be the best example for our products (TerraLand TerraTrees) abilities and functionalities.
Besides, we really need and appreciate your opinions about what prices would be for our products. If you think that you need more info on products, please let us know and I will post features of each of them here.
It would be nice if you could upload a simple workflow video of each tool. That would be great, though it is not needed.
I would pay whatever prize you set, overall it depends on the amount of time and work you spend into your products. What do you think would be a good prize? I think 90 Dollars would be a good prize, though I do not know whether that might be to high or to low.
Thanks for posting Olafson, we will make tutorial and showcase videos for each product. Actually, believe me or not, I have to say that the whole project relies on more than 3 years of research and investigation and about 1 year of coding in Unity and outside it.
As each product will be sold individually, please let me know that your suggested price is related to which product?
3 years is really a lot of time. I would go for 90-115 Dollars for TeraLand and 80-100 Dollars for TeraTrees. I am not Intersted in TeraCity so I do not want to put up a prize suggestion.
I think that I can give a much better suggestion if I saw one of this tutorial/showcase videos. As for now, I could only try out the Lite prodcuts, but I am not interested in these at all, what I need is real elevation Data Terrains and automatic Tree placement.
If you could upload these videos soon I would be glad to give you my final suggestion.
Wow, I missed this very interesting release. The tree plugin sounds interesting. Just a comment on geo.rasters.
Using coordinates stored in geotiff like pics might not be always usefull as for peolle using max like me have to change the origin when moving from microstation, a shift option for x,y coordinates might be usefull.
@Olafson
Sorry for late reply. Thanks for your suggestions, we are preparing video demos tutorials, documentation help files and screenshots. The website is going to be ready soon, I can’t give an exact date but it won’t take so long.
Generally in TerraLand you need to know the TopLeft BottomRight Corners’ Latitude/Longitude for Terrain and Satellite Image. But You can use any numbers instead of geo-coordinates (Latitude/Longitude in Decimal Degrees). So In TerraLand-Maps if you don’t want to use geo-coordinates, you can have for example:
Terrain:
Top: 4 - Left: 0 - Bottom: 0 - Right: 4 (4x4 grid terrain as the base area)
Satellite Image:
Top: 3 - Left: 1 - Bottom: 1 - Right: 3 (2x2 grid image as an overlay)
Now, the draping image will be in the center of our terrain. I wish I’ve answered your question.
@reaper7
There’s no difference, TerraLand can generate any terrains below sea level or up. It all depends on the heightmap you give to it. Some heightmaps cover the terrain below sea level and some don’t.
In TerraLand-Terrain, you can give your heightmap’s extreme points (Highest Lowest Point of terrain elevations) and Width/Length in meters, and it will convert the scales into Unity’s scale units and if the heightmap covers below sea-level elevations, it calculates the sea level based on the water is at “0” elevation.
As to your request pertaining to determining a pricing structure for your tools…
Have you reviewed the terrain generation software called World Machine ?
It is quite impressive.
If you have not looked at it… you might want to do so…
Unlike Unities’ new MS&T Bundle which will have a GIS plug-in and cost $7500.00 US, World Machines price structure is excellent as it is most affordable for most game designers.
So, I would think you would get more sales and have more of a fan base and therefore your company would grow larger if you try to keep your prices as low as possible.
Just some food for thought…
Please put careful thought into your pricing structure…
Best of luck…
Thanks a lot for posting TerraSame1, your suggestion is much appreciated.
I’ve worked with World Machine before. It’s a great software for terrain editing, but TerraLand is Unity specific and doesn’t need any external programs. AFAIK World Machine concentrates on procedural terrain generation and editing and doesn’t support satellite image placement (correct me if I’m wrong), while TerraLand is especially for real world GIS data files and can generate terrains from heightmaps and put any satellite images on them based on their lat long without needing to import/export heightmaps or meshes from other softwares. Also in TerraLand you can have direct access to heightmap and satellite imagery (US Territory Only) for downloading right within Unity. TerraUnity products are designed for simulation type games and many non-game usages.
A big thanks for informing me about the MS&T Bundle, We didn’t know anything about this. From my readings on this bundle I found that the GIS part is only the GIS Importer Plugin which is a new option in Terrain menu that can import Grid Float files (.flt / .hdr) to Unity Terrain objects and stitching multiple terrain tiles together. If that is, so there isn’t so much about the field of GIS. I know that this package contains of all Unity Pro licenses plus some new features but maybe there are more options form this bundle which haven’t mentioned yet to match that $7500 US price. Please let me know if you have any more detailed information about this bundle.
We are trying our best to release the products with the most options the cheapest price available
TerraU…
Thanks for the reply… And, I see you checked out my web site… Cool…
I have not yet found any detailed info about the MS&T GIS Plug-in…
If I get any new info from Unity… I will share…
Here is a thought for you… scrap using the USGS - USA site for your data and take a look at NGA raster Roam…
Then you will have access to the entire world rather than just the US…
Another point…
In my design efforts… I have found that using a Sat image is all fine and good for far away viewing…
The key to a great project is to have it look good at three distances…
Far - Medium - Close…
Will your Plug-in deal with all three distances? Use Shades at different distances???
Just thinking out loud here…
Thanks and if you need a beta tester I might have the time…
Yes, I’ve checked out your website TerraSame, good luck with your job, keep us updated
Thanks for posting the link, The reason we have chosen USGS is because it includes an API with the highest resolution available in US and data can be extracted exactly with the given lat long points to define area of interest. We are trying to find another service to cover the entire globe, however the best one is SRTM but unfortunately the extracted data is in 1x1 degree tiles. I’ll check your link to see what can be achieved. As soon as we find a good service, we will implement that in the future versions of TerraLand.
Having multiple image resolutions on terrain based on camera distance is a great and awesome feature but we haven’t dig into that subject yet to see if it’s applicable in Unity or not! I think that requires overwriting the Unity’s built-in terrain shader system.
For now, when using TerraLand-Maps to place satellite images on terrain, the best approach is that to have the 1st image on terrain as the base to cover the entire terrain with maximum resolution (4096x4096 pixels), and the rest of the images again with maximum resolution to place on the areas of interest. So you may end up to have higher resolution images where you want them to be but not all over the terrain plus using mip maps on images to have a little resolution management to increase rendering speed and reduce aliasing artifacts.
Besides, we have a new product in our pipeline which is a Terrain Enhancer. The user selects a color from terrain’s reference image (which can be a satellite image or a landcover-map) and wherever the image includes that color, it can be replaced with a tiling image to have better resolution on those areas. For example if the satellite image resolution is low and you know that green areas in image are grass, you select that green color to define zones and there it will place user selected grass texture as an overlay on satellite image. The final terrain will have hybrid textures containing of both satellite images and seamless textures.
You will be on top of our list to be a beta tester for our future products
I have been working with this GIS stuff for 6 long years… (I am only days from launching a new 3d web site???)
And… I am no geologist and… I am no GIS know it all…
But maybe… just maybe… someone who knows GIS will get this stuff right…
Have you guys seen this thread… http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/146808-ats-Colormap-terrain-shader-RELEASED
Looks very promising also… I have been working with it… It is darn near perfect… But alas… no Lat…Lon… Attributes…
The shader works very well switching between far Sat images… to medium… to close high texture tiled images…
Best I have ever seen…
TerraU… Take a look at that shader… It might help you… and the creator… “Lars”… is sharp…
His trees are sweet… Too…
@Olafson
Terrain Enhancer is going to be our first future product and we’ll make that after the sales are ready. Thanks for waiting, soon they will all be available
@TerraSame1
Nice to hear that your 3d website is going to be ready, keep it up.
Thanks for posting the link, I’ve seen that before but never thought of using that for satellite images. I’ve seen Lars’s works before and his shader is great. I see the switching is really smooth as you can’t even notice it. Unfortunately I’m so busy these days to check the shader for myself, but if you mind to make a simple demo for this shader using multiple resolution sat images, it will be so helpful to see the results. If the results are fine, then we’ll contact Lars for helping us…
As the shader supports “4 detail maps which are mixed in at shorter distances”, so I think this is the only limitation to have maximum of 4 high res sat images(detail maps) on terrain.
All your products sound so promising!