Advanced foliage shader [released]

Hi lars,

Giving AFSv4 another go after giving up last time, tried following the guides but ending up with some weird billboards that don't match the in-scene trees at all.

The trees are using the AFS materials. We are linear/deferred.

 

the billboards do not look as if they were aligned to the camera perspective – so i guess you have forgotten to add the afs setup script to your scene?
the script is needed to e.g. pass the correct ambient lighting to the rendertex shaders (which are used to render the billboard textures).

how does your lighting setup look like?

btw. it always take a while to update the billboards (unity engine restriction): you have to rotate the main camera a bit to force an update.

 

Hi Lars, Is AFS 5 going to be the product as AFS4 or will it be an upgrade path/completely separate?

Also any roadmap to release etc.

 

afs 5 will be the first update you will have to pay for i guess it will be something like 5$ or so.
and it is nearly finished: i just have to clean up code.
as i am very short of time right now you may expect in in january 2017.

lars

 

I do i uninstall this? everytime i delete to folder it just reinstalls itself once i select my terrain
Also just disabling the script wont work as the default unity grass waving is not working then.

 

Hi Lars, looking forward to AFS 5. Could you give a quick summary of the features that will be included in the new version? Will we be able to use it with SpeedTrees?

Cheers

 

that sounds spooky... but i doubt is does.

afs ships with a grass shader for the terrain, which overwrites the built in one.
in order to get rid of it you have to find the "AfsGrassShader Terrain v4.shader" in the project tab. then delete it or rename it to e.g. AfsGrassShader Terrain v4._shader" so unity will not compile it.
you may have to restart unity to make it work.
the same goes for the "AfsFoliageShader Terrain v4.shader" which overwrites the built in vertexlit shader.

 

no, speedtrees will not be handled by AFS 5. i may add that later though...

here is my current changelog.

• Lighting unified and optimized for deferred rendering. Except for grass all shaders use physically based shading built on top of Unity’s built in BRDF and support proper translucent lighting in both forward and deferred rendering.
• GPU instancing support for foliage and tree shaders added.
• Wind is now basically driven by a built in directional Wind Zone.
• Foliage shader optimized for single sided geometry which lets you save a lot of vertices and still gives your correct lighting in both forward and deferred rendering.
• Foliage shader for the terrain engine high quality tangents added (instead of the formally estimated ones) so bump mapping works perfectly.
• Tree shaders use the new unified lighting which means physically based shading and deferred translucency. Transitions between mesh and billboard are improved as shadows will fade in. Added support for wetness (beta).
• Billboards now use alpha testing and write to the depth buffer properly by default in order to make them work with depth based image effects like volumetric lighting. Alpha blending might be enabled manually.
• Grass shaders now support wetness (beta).
• Touch bending revisited. No need to use different materials and shaders anymore. Simply enable touch bending in the material editor and add the “touchBendingCollision” script to your model which now handles a (theoretically) endless number of registered touches.
• Foliage Tool now supports Blueprints which let you copy settings from prefab to prefab in order to e.g. create LODs. Improved adjustment of vertex colors and Debug View added.
• Wind on grass has been reworked. Please check your scenes and adjust the “Wind settings for Grass Shaders” properly.
• Combined Meshes Proper information about the original pivot now are baked as well so you will get less stretching and advanced variation in bending.
• Setup Script some performance improvements added.
• Dropped support for static batching Use GPU instancing instead or combine instances using the Combine Children script.
• Formally statically combined and baked meshes may be corrupted.
• Tree shaders Dropped support for billboarded leaf meshes for performance reasons. I guess pretty much nobody uses that feature anyway. But in case you do you may reactivate it by editing the shader.

 

thanks, that worked

 

Does touch bending work with terrain trees / bushes, or only trees placed as GameObjects?

 

touch bending needs plants to be placed as game objects.

 

Hi Lars,

We just got this cool tool for our studio and I'm looking for a guide on how to use your tool, so far I can't find any good documentation. Thanks

 

the documentation is part of the package – but it might not be the "good" documentation you were asking for.
so do you have any specific questions?

 

Ah I completelly missed that, just saw ton of docs under the main folder will take a look. Thanks!

 

hi lars - how's progress on AFS 5 going? Still expecting a January release? I'm ready to throw my money at you for it

 

Hi there,

I'm currently working on procedural plant mesh generation.
Would this project be useful for me or is it made to be used in design time?

 

Hi Lars, when I apply the Combine Children AFS script to my prefab the plant dissapears from the scene in game mode. Have I missed a step somewhere? Note that the prefab neither has animation nor is it set to static.

Nevermind, after looking over the documentation again. I see that you need to put the mesh into another gameobject and this one contains the script.

Thanks!

 

progress is fine – but it might get february...

 

upcoming version 5 might be more interesting as it supports instancing.

 

Hi Lars,

I have some problems with the combine children AFS script. When applied to a group of vegetation, they all lose touch bending and will no longer interact with the player.
Another issue I have is with the geometry brush, when the object prefab has a collider they connect to each others collision mesh and not on the surface I want to paint on.

Thanks!

 

touch bending needs single game objects – so you may not combine any plants using it, sorry.
that being said you problem with the geometry brush should be solved…

 

Hi Lars, thanks for the reply. I see! That makes sense.

Geometry brush is still not acting according to expectations, here is a screenshot using your assets.

One last question regarding combine children AFS script. Is there a asset count/vertex count limitation to how many childrens there can be under one script? For some reason they dissapear when I apply lots of them, maybe over 200 grass instances.

 

well, usually "pass placed" foliage does not have any colliders... but i may have a look into the script some day.

vertex count is limited by unity to something around 65000.

 

Hi Thanks for this great asset, and is low price.I have a problem with touch bending. My player is made with third person controller, i have a rigid boby ,capsule collider , and touchBendingCollisionGS script . I use dry grass touch bending prefab with trigger on, but my player have collision with the plant (and can't interract correctly with the touch bending) .i m so dispointed...could you have a soluce please? ( If i make a cube with collider trigger on i have no problem to cross it with my player)

 

you have to mark the collider of the plant as "trigger".

 

Thx for the answer, my collider plant is marked as trigger....like i said i can't cross the plant with trigger actived , i don't have this problem when a try to cross a cube with collider and trigger as true.. i followed all steps on the pdf..
My player object have rigidboby, capsule collider and touch bender listener script and the plant prefab is dry grass touch bending by default (so with tigger as true and touch bending collision GS)...However my player object have a collision... (.sorry for my english)...I find a way to move y center axe collider, upper ,and it work well...

 

well, afs does not handle collision, that is done by the unity engine.
so either you have detected a bug – or something still is wrong with your setup...
please have a look at the provided demo scene.

 

Hi,

I'm tempted to dive straight in for V4 but can see that V5 is on the way. Is there discount for V5 for V4 users or will it be a whole separate cost? If so, I think I'll hold out.

Cheers!

 

you will be able to upgrade fom v4 to v5.
so buying v4 + upgrading to v5 will be = buying v5.

so in case you should start with version 4 now please don NOT use legacy bending (bending only stored in vertex colors) but use "vertex colors and uvs" instead: v5 will most likely ship with a new bending wich drops ambient occlusion so all bending information can simply and properly stored in vertex colors.
you should also only use single sided geometry. v5 will handle that in deferred better than v4. and it will save you a lot of data (and hassle editing double sided geometry...).

 

Wooo! That's great, I'm going to grab straight away then. Thanks!

 

OK, looking great so far, thanks!

Just wandering what general approach is for lightmapping, is it even possible? I'm having some issues with the trees coming out black. I'm guessing lightmapping trees a little problematic for foliage and trees that use wind.

Just wondering what the approach is to lightmapping - whether the general approach is to go with real-time lighting and shadows?

 

lightmapping is not supported by the tree shader - but by all other shaders.

 

Hi there,

before i will start to clean up the initial package of version 5.0 i have taken some time to make a litte short:

 

finally version 5 has been submitted today.

 

Awesome! Great to hear man. The above video is amazing!

 

Question about pricing for updating from v4 to v5 - how much it will cost?

 

Nice work! Looking forward to giving it a try

 

7 $

 

thanks

 

What are the requirements for using version 5?

 

unity 5.4 or above.

 

Is it available? I can't see anything on the store.

 

unfortunately it is still in approval – for 14 days now

 

good things come to those who wait

 

Hey, so i am interested in AFS as it seems many people have done great terrains with it. I am having trouble making grass look any where near realistic, so i am hoping this may fix that problem. I have a few questions though.

1. Can you use other grass / folliage / tree assets with this? Are there any limitations (like speedtree doesn't work, or only grass meshes or something)
2. How is the speed compared to the normal unity terrain system for tree's or grass assuming your using a lot of grass (i routinely am getting 2 mil tris + on normal forests due to unity grass amounts)
3. Any video's on how to set it up or a workflow video?
4. Demo's are not working, is there another link to any of them?
5. Any tutorials on building terrain with this system? or game ready projects?

 

• grass: in order to fully benefit from all feature you can only use grass meshes – which however might be a single quad. simply adding textures will not let you use a lot of the advanced fatures.
• foliage: there is no specific "foliage" in unity. in afs foliage are just meshes – either added to the terrain engine or placed as game objects and maybe combined into larger patches. in order to make bending work nicely on foliage you will have to set it up by painting vertex colors to your meshes manually in your 3d app – or by using the included foliage tool.
• trees: afs replaces the built in tree creator shaders giving you nicer lighting and better billboards including nicer fading between mesh trees and billboards. speedtrees are not effected.

speed is not really effected by afs as it is still unity's terrain engine which does most of the job. with version 5 at least the rendering of trees should be accelerated as the afs shaders take benefit from gpu instancing giving you far less draw calls.

not at the moment. all i can offer is the online documentation of the upcoming version 5:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/164MTEnV_-krBdMr-20QhPttY1bY5H46FtpSDM1UQdRk

i have only on more or less up to date demo right now: it is called "the forest" and available at steam. unfortunately it is not free.

 

Hello lars I talk about it in Lux shader forum but this is question about advnance foliage shader, Why if I use speed tree on terrain there are light probes on trees, but when I use normal unity tree with your shader there are now light probes (like on screen) There is ambient light off because I dont use it. But there should be indirect bounce from light probes? Am I doing something wrong? or should i Upgrade to version 5 of your shader ( I saw it is avaliable)

 

as far as i can say unity does not bake light probes for tree creator tree added to the terrain.

 

finally!
version 5 is available:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/68907

it turned out to be the "first person controller" which made the package stuck in the pipeline...

 

Woohoo! Congrats Lars!