Advanced foliage shader [released]

Well, I think the discussion is getting a bit circular here. Good luck, all.

 

I am inclined to agree. You too.

 

Hi Lars and friends,

I've hand modeled a tree in 3ds max, and want it to render in 1 call, so I applied the Afs Tree Creator Leaves Optimized to whole thing, trunk included. This causes the geometry to get all bent out of shape for some reason. On the left is the model using Tree Soft Occlusion Leaves, it looks basically correct. On the right is the same model with the Afs shader on it. What's going on here? Is the shader making some assumptions about the model being a Unity Tree in some way?

 

yes, it is a replacement for the built in tree creator leaves shader which needs bending information stored in vertex colors and uv2.
so for manually modeled trees you could either use the regular afs foliage shader and set up bending just using vertex colors added in 3d max, you could use the foliage tool which would even let you stiore bending information in vertex colors and uv4 giving you nicer bending - or you could use my "custom tree importer" package from the asset store which will give you probably the best results.

lars

 

Lars, I sent an e-mail yesterday, but haven't heard back so I'll post the question here. I'm very interested in a lot of your tree packs, but they are all from Unity 3 and some reviews are complaining that they are not working in Unity 5 out-of-the-box. So, my first question is whether or not these tree packs will be updated for Unity 5? Second, are all those tree packs designed to work with the Advanced Foliage Shader?

 

sorry, i haven't had the time to answer yet.
all trees are modeled using the built in tree creator. so there should basically work even in unity5.
some packages contain old unity 3.x custom tree shaders (which are broken in u5), others contain copies of the old shaders (broken in u5) to allow you to assign the "optimized" tree shaders manually by dragging them onto your material.
but if you simple get rid of the custom shaders, assign the built in tree creator shaders to the base materials and update the trees, everything should work fine - except from the highres 2048 textures.

and of course all trees should simply work with afs. they are just regular trees.

lars

 

Hi Lars, Thanks for the tips. I tried the regular foliage shader, but that doesn't let me use the trees as trees. No billboards. I tried using the simple tree shader, which looked okay, but the billboards still had the mesh issues. Then I tried using your custom tree importer which worked pretty well except that it requires 2 materials. Then I remembered your script for collapsing down to one. Huzzah! Now we're in business. Thanks again.

 

you are welcome!
lars

 

So what can be done about the hires textured trees?

 

you will have to import the built in tree creator shaders so you can create a new material and drop the tree creator leaves optimized and/or bark optimized onto that material in the project tab.
then you can add any texture you want.

lars

 

Alright. If I get the packs and get to that part I'll see if I can make it work. Thanks for the info. I definitely want to use those packs in my game.

 

hello guys. i got these warnings in console. is it something important or should i just ignore it?
message:
must use the Nature/Soft Occlusion shader. Otherwise billboarding/lighting will not work correctly.

 

That is just saying the shader for the tree you are using with the terrain needs a correct shader or the billboarding is not going to work. You can use the AFS Simple Tree shader, think that is the name, but not the regular Foliage v4 shader with the terrain.

 

It works now thank you for your help!

 

Hi, I would like to ask if afs could be used on trees, then if an object brushes against leaves if those leaves could move out of the way..is that possible?
P.S I'm still using Unity 4.6

 

With AFS touchbending setup as it is the whole tree, plant bends when touched.

 

Oh wow sounds cool, is there a demo video of this, I cannot find one for some reason?

 

From the first post:

 

Any idea why I'm suddenly getting this problem when making builds to PS4?
I have the shader set to the fast tree shader.

264:43:27 The tree blueFlowerBush_billboard must use the Nature/Soft Occlusion shader. Otherwise billboarding/lighting will not work correctly.
264:43:27
264:43:27 (Filename: C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Terrain/TreeDatabase.cpp Line: 181)

 

fast tree shaders are not supported by afs.

 

I meant the simple tree shader, but I figured out that if I added the shaders to the always loaded shader list the issue goes away.

 

fine!

 

Hey Lars,
A while ago, we had to downgrade to Unity 5.1.4 due to issues with the new versions, and we're using AFS v.4.0.1 but I'm having some weird visual issues. We're using DX11, Deferred and Linear Color Space. The bark is using the Nature/AFS Tree Creator Bark Deferred and the leaves are using Nature/AFS Tree Creator Leaves.

http://imgur.com/a/ZLDMF

The first image is the tree how it looks in the scene and in the game without post processing. Some of the leaves and all the fronds are completely black.
The second image is when I turn Scion Post Process on with only tonemapping. The black parts now turn white. With Unity's tonemapping I don't have this issue, but we've had too many other issues with it, so we can't use it unfortunately.
I had this problem on the bark as well, when I was just using Nature/AFS Tree Creator Bark on there (With more weird black parts on the trunk, seen here: http://i.imgur.com/KEygIj8.png), but switching to the deferred version fixed that.

I can't tell if this is an issue with AFS or Scion, but because I had other weird looking artifacts with AFS I thought I'd ask you first. Am I missing something? Why are some parts of the leaves completely black (Only to turn white with post processing)?

I hope you have an idea

 

Hi Lars

I purchased this pack a while ago, and now I find myself working on a mobile project. Are anything in this pack suitable for mobile or would it be better for me to grab your free mobile shader pack? What I would like in particular is the touch blending feature

Sorry if it has been asked but since you have "mobile" in your signature it is a little time consuming to search the thread

 

hi ramsdal,
personally i have never tested the shaders on mobil.
so i can't really tell about their performance. but as a roule of thumb: if you can afford to run trees using the built in tree creator shaders you will most likely be able to use afs shaders too.

lars

 

Hi, I'm using AFS in my project and I would need an emissive effect on vegetation, also because my scene is pretty dark. I am using the Grass Shader v4, I think I should modify this shader. Do you have any suggestion?

 

you will have to write your own lighting function to do so. get the "Lighting.cginc" file from the built in shader resources and modify it. then include the modified version in the grass shader.
but if it just too dark you may raise and brighten the albedo.

 

Thanks Lars, I'll try that. Yes, the grass seems too dark. I've noticed that when I hit play it gets darker. Don't know if it's normal or not. Anyone has experienced the same situation?

 

grass is lit correctly in playmode – or when it is combined statically. pleas refer to the docs.

 

I seem to get some odd grey borders on my trees at nighttime. anybody got idea how to get rid of them?
only happens with billboards
heres screenshot of it:

 

You could try to edit Billboard shader and adjust render queue setting.

 

how do i change it?
i found somekind of solution: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/336217/terrain-tree-billboard-have-bright-outline-against.html but when i edit shaders code it seems to change back the old values

 

Is there any easy way to manually tweak billboard tint color? Or just make it look closer to mesh tree. For me there is very distinctive difference between mesh and billboard in terms of color, it isn't just lack of ao in billboard, the color itself is very different.

 

do you use gamma color space?
in linear the color should pretty much match.
but with any version of unity 5.x they have changed the way billboards get rendered or stored or whatever – so with unity 5.3.1. and linear lighting billboards more or less match 100% in color (using skybox ambient lighting).
but of course they do not recieve real time shadows (including self shadowing). so in case you have very strong shadows and pretty low ambient light shadows cause problems too.
lars

 

I'm seeing some really strange behavior and I'm wondering if it's an AFS issue or just a Unity issue in general. Anyway, I've got a Conifer tree from the AFS sample and the following terrain settings:

Tree Distance = 128
Billboard Start = 25

I would expect to see trees as far as 128 away, but render as billboards starting at 25 from the camera. Since here is what the manual says:

Tree Distance The distance (from camera) beyond which trees will be culled.
Billboard Start The distance (from camera) at which 3D tree objects will be replaced by billboard images.

However, in order for me to see the trees out to 128, I need to change the settings to the following:

Tree Distance = 128
Billboard Start = 100

Very strange. Any ideas?

 

if u are using unity terrain and painting trees to it. u have to use simple tree shader to billboards work correctly

 

You mean the Nature\Afs Simple Tree v4 shader? I've changed to that now, cleared, and re-painted the trees. It didn't help. Also, I have an issue where there are some terrain areas where it just refuses to paint AFS assets. I'll be painting just fine and then I hit a large patch of terrain and it just refuses to lay down any trees or grass.

 

to be honest: i have never tried such settings as in my opinion they do not do much sense:
if billboards start at 100m distance then every tree beyond that distance will be rendered as billboard = more or less for free. not really of course but quite cheap.
why do you want to have billboards only over such a short distance?

lars

 

Desperate for performance gains since I am getting hit hard for what I would consider to be insignificant things. However, I've made some changes to shadow settings as it turns out that most of my issues were due to those settings being cranked up too much. So, I think I'm good to go now on performance issues regarding trees.

 

Thanks for reply. Using 5.3.1 and linear color space. Also using rtp, maybe this has something to do with it?

 

rtp should not effect billboard rendering.
which ambient mode do you use? skybox should give you the best results…
which version of unity do you use? dx9, dx11 or opengl?

 

Ambient using skybox, using default 6-sided skybox shader, dx11. I think it can be Unity bug, will try on newest version soon.

 

The values in grass translucency specularity don't affect anything. Generally things just don't seem to work...

 

hmm, that seems to be one of your favourite claims. but things work.

 

this is on.


this is off. nothing more to tweak here.
any other parameters affecting translucency are not related to grass.

 

Ok, it was my fault mostly, I had terrain trees billboards tint set to red, but still after setting tint to black billboards were a little too bright, would be nice to have better control on billboards color/tint.

 

Having trouble with geometry brush. Followed the steps, but nothing is being placed. Am I the only one?

 

Oh, it had to do with my model being an odd scale instead like 1.

 

Curious, what is the reason the foliage shaders are one sided with doubled up geometry and not using Cull Off instead?

 

I've been using this to make custom plants and things have gone great so far! Thanks for all the hard work on this tool.

I tried making some custom grass using the AFS Grass Shader though and I'm having a bit of a problem. I'm sure it's something stupid I did to the grass model but I'd love any help you might be able to offer. The red grass on the right, which works great, is before I added any values to the Alpha of the vertex colors of the model. So those models dont blow correctly in the wind, the base moves around in the ground. I added alpha = 0 to the base of the grass model using Maya, Alpha = 0.5 to the mid and 1 to the top. I bring the new model into Unity and the whole thing just renders as black, which you can see on the left side of the attached image. Any ideas?