Thank you as well for your support and efforts in the community. This is such a huge help honestly. I feel like I’m actually learning something really really cool. I’m going to test out everything and practice some things that you mentioned.
I wanted to ask one thing specifically. If I do decide to buy a license later on, what does the size resolution give me? That’s something I’m a little confused on. Seems like you get 4K resolution on exports with Indie, and bigger with pro. But I’m unsure if that means that it can be spread wider and cover more distance width-wise, or if the mountain ranges that I am importing from open world data will simply be more crisp and high resolution. And additionally, the tiling functionality on top of that kind of making my head spin. Like if I just stuck with free plan 1K and did a bunch of tiling how it would come out, versus if I had the 4K indie plan. Any insight you can share here would be really appreciated
You won’t be able to tile with the free version. Even if you tried stitching them together manually, they wouldn’t blend together as they would be run in separate simulations and you’d get a big seam.
Higher resolution exports just means a higher meter/pixel ratio. You can then either make your landscape larger than it is now, while preserving the same meter/pixel resolution, or keep the landscape the same dimensions, thus increasing the quality.
Both the Terrain Definition and scale of the Landscape actor in Unreal is much for flexible than you’d think, which is why I want to emphasize Ty’s TLDR. It’s a really good idea to get the scale right when you first import data, so you can understand the fundamentals of the dataset, but you can take it anywhere from there. Over-scaled landscapes can look very cool and stylized.
Also, Blur is very resolution dependent. It will be much stronger in a 1K export than 2-4K viewport.
In many cases, free and indie options are sufficient for various workflows. Pro and enterprise versions typically cater to specific company or workflow requirements.
Additionally, there is the licensing process tied to major versions, as you will always retain forever up to the final major version of each (such as Gaea 1.x, Gaea 2.x, and Gaea 3.x).
Planning or purchasing early/during deal times (often Cyber Week Q4) can also be beneficial in the long term if you do choose to purchase.
Right now, for example, if you purchase any license, you’ll get seats for Gaea 2 and 3 ( when it releases)
So for indie, that’s $99 now for Gaea 2 (and Gaea 3), instead of $99 now for Gaea 2 and $99 again when Gaea 3 is released ( all optional, of course)
[!important]
Community Edition is free to use and free to evaluate. you would need Indie at minimumif you plan on profiting from it after your evaulation period.
As for resolution, you are correct in stating that the data appears “crisper”, which is inevitable; you can observe this when scaling the viewport from 512 to 4K.
As James has also mentioned:
Indie generally does cover many workflow needs especially for inidividuals, for example it does introduce split builds ( splits heightfields _after_ build so the heightfields are seamless) and 8k exports ( covers up to ~32km2 game worlds as 1m/px quality or 64km2 at 2m/px if you’re focused on a game)
which are fairly common standards for large game worlds
another example is Gaea’s default build options at 8k is .61m/px single file which is again pretty decent for game worlds ( small ones, large ones you’d be juggling 24+GB Vram needs in unreal at least
If you take UE workflows and the indie license, I think UE users get a bigger boost from Gaea Indie than say Unity user, who would need to use split builds ( indie >) or tile builds ( pro+) and then deploy a custom or asset-based streaming solution in engine, Unreal has much of that in engine already.
Unreal practical limits are 8k for most users, 16k or more gaea builds in unreal require 256gb+ RAM to loads so you’re starting to sit on multi computer/ cpu farm requirements ( which is Pro+) unless that’s where you’re at independantly ( some are)
so stagger up when it makes sense too, look at your goals and what you need first, it’s probably best not to make a single software dictate your entire pipeline unless it’s 100% needed. look at opportunities like Gaea deals, this could make a good finacial choice before you get to where you need it.
for example, you may know in 6 months time you’d need gaea pro, so why not buy pro 2 now, and you’ll get pro 3 later for free, you may bring on another team member at that point too which gives you another use for an extra licence that you happen to have handy.
IMHO Gaea scales really well and favouably for users you can always sidegrade a license to a higher tier later if/when you need it.