Documentation for Real World Terrain v4.8

Overview

Description

Real World Terrain is designed to generate Terrains, Meshes, Gaia stamps and RAW files, based on real Earth elevation data, and buildings, roads, rivers, grass, trees, based on data from Open Street Map.

With Real World Terrain comes utility that allows you to select an area on Google Maps, a set of tools for post-processing terrains, textures, place objects on the terrain.

Specification

Real World Terrain uses:

Note: SRTM data do not contain water depth maps, so zero height is used for seas and oceans.

Using

Select the menu item «Window / Infinity Code / Real World Terrain / Open Real World Terrain», to open Real World Terrain window.

Enter the coordinates of the area in decimal, configure the fields and click «Start».

Real World Terrain will automatically download the necessary elevation data, textures, Open Street Map data, create new GameObjects or files containing the specified area, and add them to the scene. For each Terrain creates an information block containing the coordinates, texture, and giving the opportunity to re-create it with the new settings.

Created terrains are stored in «Assets / RWT_Result».

IMPORTANT

Real World Terrain works with a lot of data, and can, depending on the settings to use a lot of memory.

We do not limit Real World Terrain settings, so you can get exactly what you want. But when a large number of generated Terrains, you may get an error of memory, with crashes to Unity Editor.

To create the most detailed Terrains and avoid errors, we recommend the following steps:

After the successful completion of each step to save your scene.

Generation of Gaia stamps

Select the menu item «Window / Infinity Code / Real World Terrain / Open Real World Terrain», to open Real World Terrain window.

Enter the coordinates of the area in decimal, select «Result - Gaia Stamp», specify the required resolution and click «Start».

Note: Real World Terrain uses Gaia's built-in features to generate terrains, so only Gaia stamp is created.

Real World Terrain will create a new RAW object that contains elevation data.

RAW object will be scanned using Gaia Scanner and saved as Gaia stamp in «Assets / Gaia / Stamps / Bases» folder.

The new Gaia stamp will be opened in Gaia Stamper.

You will need to specify the required size, position and Base Level, and click «Stamp».

Read more about working with Gaia stamps in the Gaia documentation.

Note: If you do not have a Gaia Session Manager in the scene, the new Session Manager will be created.

Generation of RAW files

Select the menu item «Window / Infinity Code / Real World Terrain / Open Real World Terrain», to open Real World Terrain window.

Enter the coordinates of the area in decimal, select «Result - Raw File», specify the result type, filename, required resolution and click «Start».

Real World Terrain can generate two types of the result:

Providers of tiles

Real World Terrain can use to generate textures any source of the tiles in WGS84 Web Mercator (Spherical Mercator) projection.

Real World Terrain has presets for most known compatible sources of satellite tiles. If the source of the tiles you want to use does not have a preset, you can do it using «Provider – Custom».

Note: The preset for Google Maps tiles has been removed, because it has a limit on the amount of downloaded data. But if you really want to use it, you can do it using Provider-Custom.

The legal way to use tiles from Google Maps: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/

Note: Some tile sources require API keys (tokens), for example: DigitalGlobe and Mapbox.

Using «Provider - Custom»

To use «Provider - Custom» in the field «URL» specify a URL pattern for download tiles.

URL pattern supported tokens: {zoom} – Zoom level. {x} – Tile X. {y} – Tile Y. {quad} – Tile Quad Key. Uses in Virtual Earth (Bing Maps).

General instructions:

  1. Open in a browser map on the site of provider, tiles from which you want to use.
  2. Open a browser developer tools. Hotkey in most browsers - F12.
  3. Find the address of tile.
  4. n the address replace the numbers that are responsible for the tile zoom, x, y to tokens.
  5. Insert the URL pattern into the field «URL».

Commercial use

You can use terrains, buildings, roads, rivers, trees, grass, created with Real World Terrain, for commercial purposes.

The rights to the commercial use of textures depending on the selected provider. You are responsible to read the license agreement on the provider's site.

Real World Terrain Window

Description of fields

Along with most of the fields added icons, when you hover on which you can read a summary of the field. Clicking on the icon will open a detailed description of the field.

Real World Terrain Window

File - allows you to export and import settings.

History - contains the history of generations.

Settings - opens the settings window.

Help - documentation, API reference and useful links.

Area - the coordinates of the top-left and bottom-right corners of the area in decimal or UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) format.

Title - a description of the current generation. Used only in history.

Use Anchor - whether to use anchor coordinates. If yes, then the zero position of the container in the scene will have the specified coordinates.

Insert the coordinates from the clipboard - inserts the coordinates copied in the helper.

Run the helper - open the helper.

Get the best settings for the specified coordinates - opens the wizard that will help you get the best result.

Show Open Street Map - opens Open Street Map in the browser on your current location. It is useful to know which objects are marked on the selected area.

Result type - the type of object being created.

Count terrains - the number of new terrains by longitude and latitude.

Align Water Line - If disabled terrains will have zero Y at minimum elevation. If enabled, terrains will have zero Y on the water line (zero elevation).

Size type - the method of determining the size of created Terrains.

Scale - a scaling factor to the new area.

Max elevation - the maximum height of the new area.

Max underwater depth - the value used when no value of the height map. Usually it is the sea, oceans, lakes. Uses the absolute depth, such as «-30».

Detail Resolution - the number of cells available for placing details onto the Terrain tile. This value is squared to make a grid of cells.

Resolution Per Patch - the number of cells in a single patch (mesh). This value is squared to form a grid of cells, and must be a divisor of the detail resolution.

Base Map Resolution - the resolution of the composite texture to use on the Terrain when you view it from a distance greater than Basemap Distance.

Height Map Resolution - the pixel resolution of the Terrain’s heightmap.

Create prefab - specifies whether to create prefab, in the folder results. Create prefab takes some time.

Elevation Provider – provider of elevation data.

Generate textures - indicates whether the created texture.

Result Type - type of texture result.

Provider - the source that will be downloaded texture. Textures derived from different providers vary in quality, maximum detail and conditions of use.

Type - the type of texture map.

Count textures - number of created textures. Only Mesh.

Texture width / height - size of the texture created for each terrain.

Max level - the highest level of approximation for the textures.

Generate buildings - specifies whether to create buildings.

Generate roads - specifies whether to generate roads. This field will be available if the integration with EasyRoads3D v3 or Road Architect is enabled.

Generate rivers - specifies whether to create rivers.

Generate trees - specifies whether to create trees.

Generate grass - specifies whether to create grass.

History

It contains the history of all runs Real World Terrain.

Each record contains fields:

Best Settings

If you do not know what settings to use for the selected area, click «Get the best settings for the specified coordinates». Move the sliders to the desired quality setting and press «Apply».

Settings of Real World Terrain

To open the Settings window, click «Settings» in the upper part of the window.

In the settings you can:

To return to the default settings, click «Revert to default settings».

Memory usage

Click «Memory Usage» in the main window of Real World Terrain to open memory usage information window.

This window displays the uncompressed size of terrains and textures, after being generated with the current settings.

Only the main fields affecting the size of the result are shown.

Important: This window does not show the memory that Real World Terrain will use to generate the result.

Clear the cache

Real World Terrain uses a large amount of data that it caches in the folder «{PROJECT FOLDER} / RWT_Cache». If this data is not more than you need, you can clear cache by pressing the «Clear cache» in Real World Terrain.

Helper

Real World Terrain Helper

Usage of the helper

Click «Run the helper», to show a helper. Helper will run in the default browser with the coordinates specified in Real World Terrain.

Helper contains:

Place the frame on the desired area on the map, select and copy the text in the block «Copy this to Clipboard». In Real World Terrain, click «Insert the coordinates from the clipboard» and selected in the helper coordinates frame will be inserted into Real World Terrain.

Alternative helper

If you have any problems when using the built-in helper, you can use an alternative helper: https://service.infinity-code.com/RWT_Helper/RWT_Helper.html

POI

Contains a list of points of interest.

Point of interest contains:

After creating the terrains all the POI will be placed in right places. You can quickly navigate to the desired POI double-clicking on the line in the window «Hierarchy».

Use the utility «POI Manager» to comfortably work with POI.

To replace POI GameObject, drag a new prefab from the project to Real World Terrain POI Item (Script).

To update the position of POI in the scene based on the coordinates, click «Update World Position».

To update the coordinates of POI based on the position in the scene, click «Get Coordinates from World Position».

Additional features

Generation of additional elements

Real World Terrain can automatically create buildings, roads, trees and grass, based on real data from Open Street Map.

Before the creation of additional objects please visit «www.openstreetmap.org» and make sure that you are required objects are marked on the map. In Europe, perfectly marked, almost all of the city. In America, most buildings are not marked.

Important: the created objects may be slightly different from the picture on the texture. This is because the layout objects in Open Street Map. If the building is present on the texture, but not created, then it means that it is not marked in Open Street Map.

Buildings

Real World Terrain can generate buildings in the following modes:

Note: BuildR developer left the Asset Store and deleted all of his assets. BuildR integration is only present if you have purchased BuildR before.

For buildings and walls added a description of all available tags Open Street Map. For many of the buildings there including address, name, height, etc.

If the tag contains the height or number of floors, the object will be created with the correct height. You can always correct height, specifying the desired value and pressing the «Update». For buildings can change the type and height of the roof.

If the building was created with the wrong normals walls or roof, you can quickly fix it by pressing «Invert wall normals» or «Invert roof normals» respectively.

Roads

Real World Terrain can generate roads for EasyRoads3D v3 or Road Architect.

When generating roads, you can select the types of roads to be created.

For EasyRoads3D v3, you can specify the types of roads from the Open Street Map and the types of roads EasyRoads3D, customize the width of the road and generate connections.

Rivers

Real World Terrain can generate rivers as Mesh or for R.A.M 2019 - River Auto Material 2019 (third-party asset).

To generate rivers as meshes, you need to specify the material of the rivers.

This may be a regular material or a material of a third-party asset (for example, R.A.M - River Auto Material).

To generate rivers for R.A.M 2019, specify profiles for Area and Spline.

Both profiles will be used for rivers, just OSM has two types of rivers.

Ram Spline will be used to generate rivers for which OSM has only spline points.

Lake Polygon will be used to generate rivers for which OSM has coastline points.

Trees

Real World Terrain can generate trees:

Grass

Real World Terrain can generate grass:

Regeneration

You can recreate the already created objects with the new settings. To do this, select «Real World Terrain» in the «Hierarchy» and click:

Regenerate terrains - to change the parameters Terrains.

Regenerate textures - to create textures with the new settings.

Regenerate additional - to rebuild the buildings, roads, trees and grass.

Utils

Overview

Real World Terrain contains a set of tools that will be useful for the search and placement of objects on the map, working with the POI, etc.

These tools are grouped in «Real World Terrain Container / Utils».

Building Manager

Real World Terrain - Building Manager

Tool to search the buildings.

It allows you to filter the buildings on the values of tags.

Enter the street name, house number or any other information contained in the tags, and will show buildings that contain tags with the specified value.

Object Placer

Real World Terrain - Object Placer

A tool for placing objects on the terrains by geographical coordinates.

This tool works in two modes:

To create a new GameObject select «Place New Object», specify prefab and coordinates, and click «Place».

To update position of existing GameObject select «Update Position», select GameObject, specify a coordinate, and click «Update».

Place your cursor on the terrains, to see the location under the cursor.

Press «CTRL + SHIFT», to insert the coordinates under the cursor in coordinates fields.

POI Manager

Real World Terrain - POI Manager

POI management tool created using the helper or specified before generating.

For each POI is displayed: name, coordinates and buttons:

S - Select POI GameObject.

P - Open the POI in Object Places.

Scaler

Real World Terrain - Scaler

Tool to change the size of terrain in the scene.

It works in two modes:

Scale first Terrain Layer allows you to adjust the size of the texture so that it looks correct after scaling.

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