Hello. This will be a big post. :]
I’ve been using Gaea for pretty much exactly a year at this point, so the list of thoughts “it would be great to have this” has grown solid. Some of these I mentioned on the Discord server, but since it’s kind of gone and the team’s presence there wasn’t noticed, I’ll just upload the full list in its entirety here.
-Ability to copy or duplicate Notes and Groups with all their content inside;
-Ability to create groups inside groups, and bigger group taking smaller groups within it along when you’d drag it around;
-Groups leaning around the nodes rather tightly and not having that large minimal scale that can hinder within a graph - make it so you could shrink a group frame to a size of just slightly bigger than a compact view mode of a node (like Combine’s default);
-Node search bar in Terrain tab in the data panel;
-Drag-n-drop for TORLET files instead of having to go File-Import-Torlet-navigate;
-Ability to define user heightmap (i.e. mask gradient) display by a custom user-created gradient. Ideally, it could either be stored in the app (like a satmap/clut) or imported as an sRGB texture or even a CLUTer node/texture. I like the “heat” map, but if I could customise it myself, that would be amazing;
-Easier ways of storing user CLUTer gradients, exporting them, sharing them between projects; having a dedicated “User” category in SatMap node for those;
-Walking camera mode and capability of looking bottom to top (for example, to check the view on the mountain from a perspective of a person standing on the low ground looking upwards). Currently you can’t put your camera below your terrain, which deprives you of a perspective you might need to estimate your terrain correctly;
-Edge node’s Round mode cuts off way too much even with Size and Softness set to 0, please reduce the effect at lower values - currently I always have to make custom masks with hemispheres instead;
-Allow rewriting node state to a new current one instead of the button only offering to load the saved state. You get stuck with that one and you can’t save a new one (aside from just duplicating the node, of course). And/or allow storing multiple states (like you get the list of recent seeds, for example). Then maybe it won’t be that useless compared to just duplicating nodes with different settings;
-Power modifier ([graph]^x) as a separate button at the bottom; it feels needed very often, it’s not on the list, Math node takes time to set up, Shaper doesn’t work in the same way. I’ve needed it since day one and it’s still needed very often for tweaking gradients falloff, and it’s my most frequent use of Math node;
-Removing a modifier confirmation window should be removed, in my opinion, since the cross is small enough already, on top of that if you click on the same modifier (which have larger buttons) it gets removed without confirmation anyway;
-Debris node could really use Bias slider to set up the bias towards average size of boulders within the specified range, so that one wouldn’t have to set up multiple nodes for different fractions that often;
-Sediments node should have Seed;
-Ctrl+C - Ctrl-V working between different windows with different projects opened in them would be great. Although drag-n-drop for Torlets would be good enough, probably;
-Export as torlets should prioritise exporting the selected nodes instead of the whole graph. Instead of just selecting a branch and exporting it, you have to select them, duplicate, create a group, group to tab, go there, export, then delete the tab…
-A setting to choose whether to build to the last selected node upon reopening a project or only the first node in the tree. Currently the preview of the project is formed by the selected node when you save it, but when you reopen it, it also starts building till that selected node, which can be inconvenient in 4K previews when you only need to open it for something brief (At least Stop Engine button works properly now, but if your first node to build is something like Rockscape, you still have to wait for 30 seconds until it stops building), so you either have to rely on Stop Engine button or pick the first node each time before save-quitting (but you lose the preview of the project). Personally, I’d like to choose between Gaea starting to build everything upon launch or just the first node (more often the case).
-Ability to remap application’s hotkeys;
-Ability to create a customisable quick menu list of nodes! Let’s say I want to have a list of 15 quick-access nodes within a reach of a finger, always, same nodes in same order. Not an option… Let alone you lose your entire prediction (most used) system if you lost your appdata folder or you’re working on a new/guest device, and you can’t restore it in any other way other than using specific nodes for dozens of times until the system recognises their usage.
-Ability to assign a shortcut to any functional button in the app;
-A toggle for Height mask slider between height relative to the terrain definition’s height range and height relative to your current terrain’s range. So that you get different masks for “between 20% and 40%” when you’re using a terrain that covers only 70% of the height range of the project. It would be very convenient for procedural generation workflows where results can be unpredictable before they reach the height mask node upon each generation;
-Consider renaming “Slope” to “slope mask”, “height” to “height mask” and so on. I’ve seen many cases where people try exporting Height node thinking it’s the one for heightmap export, and then get very confused with the result they get;
-Ability to rearrange groups in Terrain tab by dragging. Currently it’s a set list and it becomes useless as soon as your project becomes big enough. As mentioned, there’s no search function, and you can’t find what you need if it contains a hundred or more nodes. There is a crutch that the groups at least are displayed at the top, which helps, but you also cannot rearrange the order of the groups without erasing and remaking them.
-Support for AVIF/JPEG XL formats for exports and screenshots. They are way more memory friendly and just overall advanced. For screenshots, even regular JPG could do. Screenshots can get pretty heavy, especially with increased rendering resolution. Right now you have to compress/reformat them manually;
-Ability to see full name of the node without hitting F2, when you just hover over the name or when the node is selected. Currently the node names get truncated, so you can’t distinguish “Projname Normals Med” from “Projname Normals Small”;
-Ability to use Autolevel in TextureBase node so that you get access to the entire spectre instead of just a part of it.
There is another post dedicated specifically to feature requests related to workflows with the node graph. Let me know whether I should put it in this topic or create a new dedicated one.
Please give us more freedom with scale and translation!
