Advanced foliage shader [released]

Sorry for being daft...but...I have an empty object to which all the grass and little plants are attached with Brush tool, so I put the combine children script to that empty object or to the grass prefab object before I start distributing it?

 

yes. but you can also attach the script later on.

 

Hi lars,

I was wondering if you could make a version of this asset that will work with Unity 5.0? And when you get to that point, if you could make some wheat as a prefab? I still would love some wheat that reacts to your touch bending system!

I imported the "Advanced Foliage Shader" package into my Unity 5.0 project, and I got two or three errors in the compiled shaders. All of my materials are default "pink", as in it won't display the shader. I'm wanting to use IBL and touch bending specifically if possible.

I know some asset creators don't have Unity 5.0 yet, but that would be cool if you were able to update the package to work with 5.0!

Thanks.

 

i am working on a version for unity 5. but as unity changes so much from beta to beta it won't be reased before the official release of unity 5: i have already rewritten the shadercode 2 or 3 times during the last 4 month which is not really fun.

 

I see. Thanks for the information. I'm glad you're going to update it for Unity 5.0 full release though.

 

The Geometry Brush AFS link is down, can you reupload?

 

it should be still online:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2322017/GeometryBrushAFS.v1.unitypackage

 

Hi Lars, is there anyway I can change the alpha value of a texture within the shaders, IE I want to make it transparent if there is a collision detected, I am not sure where the final pixel color and alpha are calculated, or is there no inherent transparency with this program ?

 

hi switch,
the foliage shaders use alpha cutout – not alpha blending.
so if you want to make them transparent on collision you will have to copy the touch bending shader, rework it so it uses alpha blending instead of alpha testing, create a new material that uses your reworked shader and assign this as "touch" material. but please notice: transparent objects will neither receive nor cast shadows.

lars

 

Hey again,

I'm having some problems with billboards color. I have a day-night cycle and the billboarded trees only retain the color they have at the start. Can I fix that?

Thanks for reading.

 

i guess you mean billboard lighting instead of billboard color.
if so the answer would be: not really but somehow...
unity only updates the billboard lighting if the camera moves or better rotates a little bit.
so you could add e.g. an idle animation to your camera while you change lighting.

 

thanks for the reponse @larsbertram1

Hm, I tried to move the light source but I didn't get any update.

My source is a Directional Light, which constantly changes its rotation, and its intensity based on time.

When I start my scene from "night" the trees always remain black even when the whole other scene is lit up. When I start my scene from "day" the trees remain green even when the scene has become dark.

I hope I was more descriptive.

 

Is the camera moving or is it completely static? Even in scene view you have to move to get the billboards to update with the lighting.

 

It's constantly rotating. As I said above i tried to manually move it but it didn't update the billboarded trees. Shadows although keep updating all the time.

 

Oh, sorry, you asked for the camera. My bad.

Yes the camera is constantly updating its position.

 

Hi lars. Quick question - I'm trying to find the piece of shader code that dithers grass out by distance. Is that handled by AFS? Any chance you could point me in the direction of that?

 

should be part of the include file of the grass shader.

 

We have an issue with not being able to find a proper Billboard Tree shader that works with Linear lighting space and deferred rendering mode. In attempt to find one we bought this package, the V2 version of this package, Lux, Alloy and still have not been able to find a tree billboard shader that works in our setup. Here is our issue:

A game that has changing lighting conditions, set entirely outside in the above mentioned lighting and rendering mode. The game takes place entirely on a voxel terrain that is generated procedural. Details and GO processors then impregnate the terrain with Trees, bushes and grass. So nothing exists in the scene on startup other then the Lighting/Day-Night system and the world generators. Our tree processor then generates billboard textures and creates an atlas and then swaps out GO trees with billboard trees at certain distances. So with everything being dynamic we really need a shader that just works without extra scripts and preexisting setup. With Lux, both the Leaves shader and and the two sided cutout is UNLIT it seems. Whenever I change the lighting conditions they just dont change, they are stuck on the color that was set and it doesn't seem to take into account ambient lighting or actual lighting changing. Perhaps I misunderstand the setup - but that is the result I get.

Tree Billboards that are stuck on a static lighting - they are either bright or dark but cannot change is also what I'm getting with AFS 3. With AFS 3 we thought for sure it would work so loaded it up, changed the light and low and behold, grey tree billboards that don't change with changing lighting conditions. After reading more of the documentation it looks like maybe AFS will not work for us based on needing some static setup steps. Anywho, this was our results from trying both of these packages which we thought might provide PBR Billboarding trees for particular setup. Is there a shader out there that will take into account changing lighting conditions, work in Linear lighting mode with Deferred Rendering and be a transparent cutout that is double sided without the extra static setup steps with the scripts needed? I must have misunderstood what both of these packages do or we are just setting it up wrong - any advice is much appreciated. Thanks!

 

you do not have to precalculate anything but you wil have to pass lighting information to the leaves and bark rendertexture shaders i guess.

 

@Tethys: so you have managed to get your billboards lit correctly?

 

Not yet, haven't had a chance to look at how to do this. I actually have a billboard shader that works fine in Gamma mode but we are in linear mode so considering just altering that shader to work in Linear color space. Thanks for the follow up!

 

@larsbertram1 I'm very confused right now. How come in Unity 5 when I select the "Nature/Tree Creator Leaves" shader with afs in my project it looks different and animates according to the Setup AFS component? All the AFS shaders are broken and purple but the standard unity foliage shader looks like a perfectly working AFS shader?

 

I know, that's exactly why I find this so strange! Nature/Tree Creator Leaves is not an AFS shader at all yet it responds only to the wind settings of the Setup AFS component. It looks amazing and responds perfectly to the scene lighting settings. When I delete the AFS folder from my project the Tree Creator Leaves looks like garbage and doesn't animate. Does this make sense? AFS shader are purple. Tree Creator Leaves (a shader that comes with unity and has nothing to do with AFS) looks and animates like an AFS shader.

 

somehow it makes sense as the afs shaders are built on top of the tree creator shaders.

 

I haven't even authored the textures to fit the texture format for the material and it looks absolutely amazing. Tree Creator Leaves + whatever weird stuff AFS is doing to this shader is the most amazing vegetation shader I've seen in Unity. I'm trying to get some screenshot to adequately show it.

 

Thanks for making this awesome tool. I read through the entire forum, but I didn't get a clear answer on whether or not AFS objects can interact with Unity wind zones? I have a player character with a radial wind zone attached to him. When he jumps/launches into the air, I'd like to AFS plants to start waving around wildly based off of the wind zone scripting we have in place for the jump/launch. Thanks!

 

hi there,
wind zones only work with tree creator trees which never get batched or anything else, sorry.

lars

 

OK, thanks for the quick reply.

 

I am struggling mightily to create a custom mesh (grass) in Maya and integrate it into the AFS system in Unity. I have followed your AFS Model and Texture PDF instructions, and can't figure out the process. If I record a short screen-cap video of my process, can I send it to you to check out? I'm hoping this would allow you to spot what I am doing wrong. Thanks!

 

you may do a screencap.
but if you are just going to do a rather simple gass model (single sided) then you do not have adjust vertex colors in may: you can simply use the afs grass model postprocessor to get the vertex colors applied on import. please have a look at the docs.

lars

 

Thanks again for the quick reply. I have read through the docs, but I guess I am missing something, or I'm not fully understanding your instructions. You mentioned: "afs grass model postprocessor" - which doc is that referenced in? If I can't figure this out, I will record the video and send you a link to it on Dropbox. Thanks again.

 

Hi lars,
we switched a project from unity 4.5 to 4.6 and now the billborads from the terrain trees are really dark, too dark. Do they have changed the billboard shader? The scene uses also skyshop. With unity3d 4.5 i had found nice settings and the look was fine. But now...
A little screengrab

Tia,
Jochen

 

sorry, but i haven’t looked into 4.6 so far...
2 random thoughts:
- it might be skyshop overwriting any of the afs tree creator shaders
- it might be unity having done some changes to the way lighting is passed to the rendertex shaders (like they did with unity 5): so you may try uncheck "use linear lighting fix".

 

Looks very similar to the issue i had with my game that i did not manage to solve so far. Have not looked in to it in a while now though.

 

.. think it's point 2... they have changed something.
I have tried it without skyshop and have the same results. But i found a little workaround. With a separate distance light only for the trees i can tweak the shading a bit...

Jochen

 

hi jochen,
now i had a look into 4.6.3. using linear lighting. and as you have mentioned: billboards are too dark.

so i tested the original tree creator shaders and it turned out that:
- neither ambient lighting is passed correctly.
- nor direct lighting.

so this is a massiv bug in version 4.6.3. i guess – and it is probably worthless to work on a workaround right now as this will most likely be corrected in the next release of unity.
meanwhile you could use gamma instead.

sorry about the inconvenience,

lars

 

Thats great to know : )

 

i do not think so ;-)

in fact it is a bitter pill. but unity 5 meanwhile handles linear lighting pretty well—even if it comes to billboards—so i guess and hope that the current problems in unity 4.6.3. are only temporary.

 

Well, its good to know its not my fault or your fault, then i dont have to spend more time trying to figure it out : p

 

i see.

 

Hi Lars, I've been having this issue with the grass. All the grass patches slowly fade to black and then back to normal. What can this be? This did not happen with the regular shader in unity.
I'm using Unity 4.6.1, AFS3, RTP3. The grass is painted as a texture using the terrain editor.

 

hi malteins,
adding grass as a simple texture to the terrain might cause the problem.
you should always add grass as mesh – otherwise you will stop the advanced foliage shader for the terrain engine from working properly.
so it might be the problem – as i have never tested this case. other reasons might be wrong vertex colors – but it is pretty difficult to say anything about this without any knowledge of your project (like other packages included, color space, render path, ...).
nevertheless: you are the first one to report such kind of problem so i assume it has something to do with your set up.

lars

 

Thanks for your quick reply, I'll be checking this out in a while. So I shouldn't use textures no more. Would the grass meshes you mean, be like two intersecting polygons, with the texture on it? This will increase my polycount though, right?

Thanks again for your time, sincerely

Martin

 

hi martin,

a custom grass mesh might be just a simple quad. so it would not increase the polycount.
but of course it might be more complex – which i highly recommend.

in case you add your own quad and do not rely on unity’s built in one you can specify the uvs which would let you create your own texture atlas: this is needed in case you also want to add plants using the advanced foliage shader.

lars

 

Hello, I am trying to Use the AFS 3.0 in Unity 5 and I am getting an error due to the change in the way fog is handled in Unity 5.
Afs_CustomFog.cginc (4):
declaration of "unity_FogColor" conflicts with previous declaration at /UnityShaderVariables.cginc(174)

I am also receiving a bunch of Implicit cast warnings but those are not my main concern. (I figure somehow I need to remove the custom fog effect completely and replace it with a placeholder half4 value in the CGINC file but i have had no luck getting it to work) Do you have any suggestions on how I could fix it?

Thank you.
-Alex

 

Ok, I've managed to setup some mesh grass. I've actually used yours, the ones that come with the package.
I'm still getting the same problem, my grass start turning darker and then back to a very bright shade. I've also followed your guidlines and documentation. Might this be some sort of issue with Unity 4.6.1?

 

afs for unity 5 is in development...

 

hi martin,
it might be an issue with 4.6.1 – as i have just checked it with 4.6.3. and everything works as expected.
lars

 

Hi, I saw that you were putting together an update to fix Unity 5 issues, and I was just wondering if there was an eta on when that would be ready, or if there was a quick fix for the fog color conflict mentioned earlier. Thanks!

 

Hi Lars, tried to convert unity tree to afs tree, i followed your directions to the best of my knowledge. somehow, its not looking great for me, check out the pic. have i missed something? if i try to adjust the alpha cut off any further, trunk disappears.