Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Hoodini to Gaia question

    • 144 posts
    October 18, 2021 9:07 AM PDT
    With the recent dev stream announcing the switch to Gaia from Hoodini I have some questions. From what it sounds like, and from what I heard on the Pantheon Plus recap, it sounds like what was already accomplished with hoodini will STILL be used and will not have to be recreated with Gaia. So it's literally just a straight switch of using Gaia now instead of Hoodini. So, kind of like cooking a steak with a cast iron skillet (hoodini) and then just switching that steak into a stainless steel pan (gaia) to finish cooking it. That's great we won't lose progress. However, how nicely will these zones/textures/items play well with each other? I'm not a computer programer or understand any of that stuff. I can list things for sell on ebay without kicking my dog 90% of the time. That's my skill level. But I do know that sometimes if you have different types of computer files meshed together they sometimes don't play nice with each other. Are there any potential problems we could run into in the future with such things like adding mods or addons in the game if for example most of kings reach is made with hoodini, but then the rest of the world is made with gaia? I'm sure you guys have already thought about this and its a no biggie, but I dont know enough to know if its an issue or not. It would be such a pain to start on another continent, get my custom ui or whatever other addons are allowed, and then when I zone into kingsreach or another zone that was made with hoodini, now my addons are broken. Or any other issues that could arise like that. Curious minds want to know.
    • 144 posts
    October 18, 2021 10:24 AM PDT
    Sorry, I had paragraphs in there, but when it posted it somehow changed to a giant paragraph and I. Not sure how to edit.
    • 49 posts
    October 18, 2021 11:18 AM PDT
    Im pretty sure the HDRP and their conversion of existing assets to go into the HDRP ensures uniformity and performance. In any circumstance, it will most likely not affect any UI addons you have installed. The UI elements is something entirely different than the displaying of the 3D world.
    • 1303 posts
    October 19, 2021 3:05 PM PDT

    First, addons and mods were not going to be allowed, the last I heard. 

    Second, I dont think this is really a matter of different kinds of files that might come into conflict. I believe its all the same graphics files (assets). It's more about how the presentation of those assets are pre-loaded into memory. Or in this case, how not all assets associated with a zone are pre-loaded into memory when you enter that zone.

    • 144 posts
    October 19, 2021 3:21 PM PDT

    I think people are getting hyper focused on the UI/Addons part, and maybe I didn't phrase it correctly. 

    I'm mostly just curious if there will be any difference at all, on any scale, for either side (client or server), from Kingsreach with hoodini, and the new areas being built with Gaia. Will it make any difference when youre in one zone made by Hoodini vs when your in a zone built with Gaia? 


    PS. Fey, I very doubtful your sentence is true about addons. You'll have to provide some source for that. 

    • 1303 posts
    October 19, 2021 8:18 PM PDT

    Hoiyay said:

    PS. Fey, I very doubtful your sentence is true about addons. You'll have to provide some source for that. 

     

    Please see the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EyoahxPeT8

    Start at about 1:04:40. Kilsin talks about it shortly after that. I believe  Aradune  said the same here on the forums but I can't seem to find it at the moment (on mobile) And there are multiple older threads on the forums around the topic. 

    • 1303 posts
    October 19, 2021 8:27 PM PDT

    Speaking specifically about Gaia and Houdini, they are really just terrain and environment generators. In the end their output is essentially the same ; a set of geometry, texture, collision and animation data. How that's used by the game client shouldn't really matter. 


    This post was edited by Feyshtey at October 19, 2021 8:27 PM PDT
    • 1860 posts
    October 20, 2021 11:17 AM PDT

    Hoiyay said:



    PS. Fey, I very doubtful your sentence is true about addons. You'll have to provide some source for that. 

    That's where that long thread about hiding numbers from the client came from.  What Fey mentioned is correct.  They have talked about not allowing add ons a few times.   They have never gone into detail about how they intend to regulate it which is why there have been multiple threads discussing it.

    • 3852 posts
    October 21, 2021 7:36 AM PDT

    I note that this change was one of the highlights of the October newsletter.

    I don't doubt that all the changes allow for a better game - but this brings back memories of past changes of direction by VR that wound up delaying progress by years - quite a few years. An old saying is that the perfect is the enemy of the good - is VR caught again in a loop of always improving and never releasing? Or will this change speed up the semi-mythical releases of alpha and then beta and then the game in addition to improving the final content? Or at least allow enough time savings later on to offset the time spent in transition now?

    The newsletter - which I really like - shows that things are progressing but does not give great confidence that alpha is within view. I remain convinced that faster progress on a *good* game is better than slower progress on a *great* game because as the state of the art changes great turns into mediocre and what looks to be wonderful in 2022 turns into crud by 2024 if things drag out that long. So better "good" released in time to still be good at release than "wonderful" released much later when it has degenerated into merely good - or worse.


    This post was edited by dorotea at October 21, 2021 7:42 AM PDT
    • 337 posts
    October 21, 2021 8:03 AM PDT

    Hoiyay said:

     
    With the recent dev stream announcing the switch to Gaia from Hoodini I have some questions. From what it sounds like, and from what I heard on the Pantheon Plus recap, it sounds like what was already accomplished with hoodini will STILL be used and will not have to be recreated with Gaia.
     
    To answer YOUR question, a.k.a. the actual thread's question, the things baked in Houdini should be rebaked using Gaia.  It inputs all the terrain data and asset data and adds its special sauce to change those lq polys into much finer quality, adds it's specific set rules of erosion and zoned layers of biomes that are not the same as another program's.  You are correct that the Houdini baked terrain and Gaia baked terrain would look different, even if a small amount.  Even in Gaia, baking it two different times would yield slightly different results since they said it uses a RNG "seed" (think creating worlds in Minecraft) to randomize where the intricately laid out textures begin and end.  This way you can only have the exact same bake if you use the exact same seed even in Gaia alone. The erosion effects in Houdini use their own slides and options and textures to create their effects, so it would definitely look different.
     
    The good news is that they didnt have to go back and do a lot of rework.  As they said in the stream, they can almost immediately bake a full tile worth of terrain.  The only rework is resetting the biome settings in Gaia.  From what was said in the stream, the content creators rebake their own stuff all the time as they change things in the world.  Using these tools makes it possible to constantly change terrain, move assets around, change settings to the biomes and erosion functions at the content creator level without needing a full rebake of the worldc stopping everyone's work.  They are free to change as much as they want with no loss of time.
    • 1303 posts
    October 21, 2021 1:46 PM PDT

    @Dorotea - This change isnt really a step backward. It's a way to start talking multiple steps forward at a greater pace. 

     

    edit: Yeesh, does this post have really messed up formatting for anyone else? 


    This post was edited by Feyshtey at October 21, 2021 1:47 PM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    October 21, 2021 1:55 PM PDT

    So WTF was wrong with Houdini that requires a move to Gaia?  Didn't we just have streams not that long ago espousing just how amazing Houdini is and all that it can provide to make development faster only to now see it thrown out for Gaia?  When will Gaia be thrown out for the next thing coming down the road?

    • 1860 posts
    October 21, 2021 3:50 PM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    So WTF was wrong with Houdini that requires a move to Gaia?  Didn't we just have streams not that long ago espousing just how amazing Houdini is and all that it can provide to make development faster only to now see it thrown out for Gaia?  When will Gaia be thrown out for the next thing coming down the road?


    I thought the general consensus was it happened largely because of the switch from Jimmy Lane to Tim Schuhler.  Houdini was Jimmy's thing.  

    • 122 posts
    October 21, 2021 7:13 PM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    So WTF was wrong with Houdini that requires a move to Gaia?  Didn't we just have streams not that long ago espousing just how amazing Houdini is and all that it can provide to make development faster only to now see it thrown out for Gaia?  When will Gaia be thrown out for the next thing coming down the road?

    From what I got from the stream was they said they wanted to be able to procedurally generate terrain well but also be able to adjust things manually afterward.

    When looking on the unity forums I came across this topic, it's a little older but probably answers some questions : https://forum.unity.com/threads/best-terrain-generator.453894/

    Some things people said when it came to editing terrain after:

    "Gaia is good if you want to make more customized terrain and have more control over what your final terrain looks like. Gaia 2 will be even better and include tiling and erosion. Gaia is much easier to use with your own height maps, which is why I use Gaia."

    "Both, GAIA and MM terrains must be edited. I cannot belive that a game can have success with a random generated terrain. In my case I have to edit them anyway, and for this purpose GAIA is better, because it works with the changed terrain, so it can texture it again."

    "Recently we evaluated houdini indie for terrain generation. It's brilliant, like any other tool, however I made the decision not to use it as we actually do want to control things manually."

    It just seems that Gaia is a more popular and more used option than Houdini when creating with Unity, as well as being able to manually edit terrain after it's been procedurally made.  it's possible it could also be a preference of Tim's too.  This was just what I took just from skimming that post though.

     

    • 3852 posts
    October 23, 2021 8:21 AM PDT

    >I thought the general consensus was it happened largely because of the switch from Jimmy Lane to Tim Schuhler.  Houdini was Jimmy's thing.  <

     

    I find this rather scary. If whenever someone leaves you switch to an alternative approach the replacement person prefers instead of choosing the replacement because of willingness and ability to work with what you have already committed to you almost guarantee endless change and instability. I am not saying that is what happened here or that the change was not an excellent one but the thought is disconcerting.

    • 49 posts
    October 24, 2021 12:02 AM PDT
    I guess the situation was more complicated than that. My guess is that Jimmy had done some prototypes/experiments with Houdini, and while doing so they found pros/cons, and learned more about how to do procedural terrain generation for unity in a HDRP. With the knowhow about Houdini gone (without Houdini being integrated in HDRP), and the remaining team having experience with Gaia and Gaia had a better pro/con tradeoff, my guess is that they choose Gaia then.
    But it is a spekulative timeline and I am just guessing.
    But software development often is iterative like that. Learnnng is part of the development.
    If they were to switch from Unity it would be an entire other discussion.