Asset Store Gems - Showcase for your favorite Assets

A new category Asset Store Gems appeared during the current sale and I was thinking what classifies an asset as being a Gem? Who does the classification and why. Who could I ask about those assets, what's the reason they are recommended and why should I get them? And then I thought I'd like to ask the Community, you guys who purchase those Gems and use them.

I've been experimenting with assets myself for quite some time now, it's just plain fun to toy around with them. So I thought I'd create this thread, everyone is invited to join and contribute.

What this is about:

* show the Community your favorite assets from the Asset Store using in-game showcase videos
* combine assets, let the Community see why it's good to have them integrated into a project
* name the assets and optionally a brief description how you use them

What this isn't about:

* a self-advertising thread for publishers
* still images or pre-rendered fly-through videos or text only (performance should be showcased as well)
* discussions. it's just for showcase, please post in the asset's dedicated thread if you have questions about an asset

Please do share your showcases and let the Community see your Asset Store Gems Thank you!

 

The video shows features of the following assets:

* Silantro Helicopter Simulator Toolkit

Drag the Helicopter into the scene, hit play and fly. It's as easy as that.

* Meadow Environment - Dynamic Nature

AAA quality vegetation. Vegetation Studio Pro support.

* Enviro - Sky and Weather

Dynamic weather and time of day changes, simulated time. Even has an Aurora. Supports extensions for various assets, MicroSplat extension is used in the video.

* Digger PRO

Dynamic runtime modification of the terrain by firing rockets into the terrain.

* MicroSplat

Texturing the terrain and using additional modules, extremely fast shader.

* MicroSplat - Digger Integration

Use MicroSplat on the holes created by Digger.

* MicroSplat - Texture Clusters

Professional anti-tiling solution. Vegetation is left out on most parts of the terrain to show that there are no visible texture tiles.

* MicroSplat - Dynamic Snow

Enviro integration allows for having a height dependent snow texture on the terrain when the Enviro snow weather preset is active.

* Unity Particle Pack

Combination of Unity particles: Rocket firing from the Helicopter, explosion on impact of the rocket on the terrain.

* Animal Controller

Used as free look camera on the Helicopter.

* Vegetation Studio Pro

Convenient distribution of the Meadow Environment vegetation items via Biomes. Super fast rendering even at very long distances.

 

2 new Assets where released this week: MicroSplat Trax and NWH Vehicle Physics 2. Here's a showcase I created in 3 hours, so lots of room for improvement. But the effect those assets create is awesome imo:

* NWH Vehicle Physics 2

Used the 8-wheeler. Dragged it into the scene, added Desktop Input Provider. Custom Substance-Painted the body of the car

* MicroSplat - Trax

Instant Vehicle Tracks withouth problems, awesome performance.

* MicroSplat

Texture distribution, core of the other MicroSplat modules.

* MicroSplat - Texture Clusters

Stochastic sampling, no terrain texture tiling.

* MicroSplat - Dynamic Snow

Snowy terrain when Enviro snow is active.

* MicroSplat - Puddles, Streams, Lava & Wetness

Wet terrain when Enviro rain is active.

* MicroSplat - Tessellation and Parallax

Tessellated terrain when using Trax.

* Meadow Environment - Dynamic Nature

One of the best vegetation assets on the store. Here only used as background, even then it adds a lot of value.

* Enviro - Sky and Weather

Dynamic daytime and weather changes, uses MicroSplat integration to trigger terrain wetness and snow changes.

* Animal Controller

Camera movement.

* Vegetation Studio Pro

Quick distribution of the Meadow Environment vegetation and dynamic Biome changes.

 

What's always awesome is Meadow Environment combined with any of the Malbers Animals.

Note: FireBall was replaced with Iridescence Shader by smkplus from GitHub.

* Little Dragons: Tiger

AAA animations, excellent models

* Dragon the Soul Eater and Dragon Boar

Great models, free

* Animal Controller

For the Dragon and to make the Boars follow the Dragon

* Meadow Environment

One of the best vegetation assets on the store

* Skybox Creator - Video Skybox Creation

Excellent SkyBox creation solution, top quality results

 

An asset that is a true gem and which I can highly recommend is CScape. Bought it during the Winter sale and regret now that I didn't touch it sooner. The scene below consists of 3 assets and can be created within 10 minutes. I bought CScape for a car driving game, but thought why not use a Helicopter on it and ended up having so much fun with it. I honestly did not expect this What's really impressive for me is the love to detail, especially the 3d-ish nature of the interiors. I thought I'd approach them closer and slow so that you can see the effect.

Silantro Helicopter Simulator Toolkit is a Simulator. At first I thought it would be hard to fly with the Helicopter, but once you get used to it, you don't want it any different. The controls just feel right.

In case you want to create this on your own, here's a video with the steps and a bit more additions:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/how...pe-in-15-minutes-or-less.885757/#post-5828494

CScape has many more features, but what you see here is well worth having it imo. Performance is excellent.

Assets used:

* CScape City System

* Silantro Helicopter Simulator Toolkit

* Enviro - Sky and Weather

 

If you are in search for a Water asset that works in HDRP, then you should take a look at Crest Ocean System HDRP. See the video about how it looks like. It has a lot more features like buoyancy, dynamic waves, shore lines, etc, but the look of it alone makes it a must have gem. Here's in use with a HDRI Skybox created using Skybox Creator. Performance is excellent.

* Crest Ocean System HDRP

AAA Ocean solution with lots of features like foam, physics, shallow water, underwater, dynamic water interaction, etc

* Skybox Creator - Video Skybox Creation

Excellent SkyBox creation solution, top quality results

* Humpback Whale

* Ballena by pepetrincado

 

If you want easy AAA quality with only 2 gems, then one choice might be Castle Valley combined with the MalberS Elephants. Looks like this:

* African Elephants (Realistic)

Highly detailed models with many AAA quality animations

* Castle Valley Collection 1 (HDRP)

Top quality desert environment, true photogrammetry. Very detailed, very professional.

* R.A.M 2019 - River Auto Material 2019

Excellent river and lake solution, great team and like all the NatureManufacture assets supported through all render pipelines.

* Skybox Creator - Video Skybox Creation

Excellent solution for creating custom HDRI skyboxes, especially useful to save performance in HDRP.

 

Wet Stuff is a nice gem in order to get Wetness into the scene on all gameobjects, not just the terrain.

* Wet Stuff

Make surfaces appear wet, various features like auto puddle generation and water dripping. Integration for Enviro and Unistorm.

* Enviro - Sky and Weather

* Castle Valley Colleciton 1 (Standard Pipeline)

* African Elephants (Realistic)

 

Another gem is Lux Water, I mostly use it for Lake and Ocean. It's very performant, got above and under water look and a lot of features. Among them are Gerstner waves as well as projectors for foam and ripples. Just look at the examples on the Asset Store page. What you see is what you get.

Here's a quick example video I made using a lake:

* Lux Water

Excellent and very performing Water asset.

* Wet Stuff

Great addition to make your gameobjects look wet.

* African Elephants (Realistic)

 

Crest Ocean System HDRP and Dynamic Water Physics 2 are very nice gems if you want to get into boat driving on an Ocean in HDRP:

* Crest Ocean System HDRP

Excellent Ocean solution with lots of options including custom waves

* Dynamic Water Physics 2

Quickly setup any boat to drive around, supports various water systems including Crest and R.A.M.

* Skybox Creator

Create a custom skybox which naturally performs excellent in HDRP

 

This is amazing. Nice work

 

Here's the free Victorian Interior asset combined with ArcReactor and Unity Particle Pack and a few other models in a little fan project. Creating this took like 8 hours, so it's only a very quick prototype, I hope one can see why I consider those assets as Asset Store Gems.

* Victorian Interior

The interior models, very detailed, high quality. And free!

* ArcReactor Rays Generator

Used for the photon beam. Has lots of other effects.

* Unity Particle Pack

Used for Slimer's slime and the photon beam particle hit effect.

 

An excellent Asset Store Gem is Horse Animset Pro (HAP) by Malbers. It's got great models with AAA animations and has been well maintained for years. This week it even got Pegasus added for free.

Assets used:

* Horse Anmiset Pro (Riding System)

* Castle Valley Collection 1 (HDRP)

* Skybox Creator - Video Skybox Creation

Among others HAP also comes with Carriage and Cowboy. The asset works very well with others, among them Western Town Environment, Enviro and Microsplat Trax

Assets used:

* Horse Animset Pro (Riding System)

* Western Town Environment

* Enviro - Sky and Weather

* MicroSplat

* MicroSplat - Trax

* MicroSplat - Puddles, Streams, Lava & Wetness

* MicroSplat - Wind and Glitter

 

I invite everyone to join me and showcase your Asset Store Gems here, this thread shouldn't be about my favorites alone

 

A very exciting Asset is Real Ivy 2. It's ideal for adding detail to your environment. Very easy to use while at the same time providing a flexible advanced mode for precision. Here's a brief showcase:

Assets used:

* Real Ivy 2 Procedural Ivy Generator

* Lordenfel: Castles & Dungeons RPG pack

 

Atmospheric Height Fog

https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...imized-fog-shaders-for-consoles-mobile-143825

The Vegetation Engine
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/the-vegetation-engine-159647

 

The Lordenfel asset is currently on sale. So I thought I'd make a quick showcase for those interested in it. For that I used Malbers animals. Please note that this is just a quick exploration, the asset contains a lot more, e.g dungeons.

Assets used:

* Lordenfel: Castles & Dungeons RPG pack

* Ravens and Crows

* Realistic Raccoons and Red Panda

* Animal Controller

 

Lordenfel is quite extensive, it also has dungeons. So I tried Dungeon Architect with it in order to create random dungeons. The quick results you get are impressive. Another asset worth exploring is Obi Rope. Here are all 3 assets combined with the Malbers Raccoon in a quick prototype:

Lordenfel: Castles & Dungeons RPG pack

Dungeon Architect

Obi Rope

Realistic Raccoons and Red Panda

Animal Controller

 

One really awesome asset is Unity's own free Particle Pack. Here's usage of the rocket trail as trail for the hover craft. And the sand particles as sand explosion when the worms show up and descend. It's just to add to the atmosphere. Same with Obi Rope in this case. Obi Rope is very powerful, but here it's just used to let the ropes, which are attached to the worms, bounce. Way better than using a line renderer. Same for using MicroSplat Trax on the terrain for the worms trail. It just adds to the overall atmospheric gameplay. And same as Arc Reactor for the connection between the race worms. It's just a simple mix of various assets:

Unity Particle Pack

ArcReactor Rays Generator

Obi Rope

MicroSplat - Trax

Giant Worm Boss Character

Dieselpunk Hovercraft

Enviro - Sky and Weather

 

One of the most useful (not to mention free) assets I've come across is the Bezier Path Creator:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/b-zier-path-creator-136082

This has a path editor along with examples for having something follow a path, generating a mesh based on the path and normals, spawning instances along a path etc.

 

This one goes for Unity itself. Unity 2020.2.0f1 got released and with it HDRP 10.2.2. Crest HDRP got updated to that version and so I thought I'd combine a few assets in a new project. Among them Crest HDRP, Lordenfel HDRP, Irval the Wyvern, some Whales and Ships.

Everything was created from scratch with what comes with the assets within a few hours, I didn't remove any details, just the backdrop mountains and instead I duplicated rocks to have them in the Ocean. I was just reusing what comes with those awesome assets.

The thing I'm impressed the most though is the performance. I didn't expect that. Great job @Unity!

Links are in the video description, I won't repost them because they are already listed on this forum page.

 

Tropical Forest Pack in combination with Vegetation Studio Pro gives awesome performance, especially when using Instanced Indirect. In combination with Crest Ocean HDRP it makes beautiful islands. And with the MicroSplat suite it adds even more atmosphere, e. g. terrain wetness along the shorelines, removal of repetitive terrain textures using stochastic texture clusters, tesselation & parallax for height & depth, etc.

Assets used:

* Crest Ocean System HDRP

* Tropical Forest Pack

* Horse Anmiset Pro (Riding System)

* MicroSplat

* MicroSplat - Texture Clusters

* MicroSplat - Tessellation and Parallax

* MicroSplat - Puddles, Streams, Lava & Wetness

* MicroSplat - HDRP Support

* Skybox Creator - Video Skybox Creation

* Vegetation Studio Pro

* Vegetation Studio Pro Extensions

 

I thought I'd contribute with a showcase video. The Tie, Star Destroyer and competitive Pod Racers are moved with Bézier Path Creator.

What I also would like to mention in that regard is that Unity's own Hover Racer tutorial and the project itself is awesome. I really would wish that Unity would enhance it a bit or make it work out of the box in 2020.

* Bézier Path Creator

* Hover Racer

The other assets I used are already listed on this forum page or are in the description of the youtube video.

 

I just love creating prototypes. However something unexpected happened and one of my videos went viral last week. Screenshot of my youtube analysis page as of the time of this post:



I guess it'll climb further since 1.000.000 was from last Sunday to yesterday. And the other 500.000 of it happened from yesterday to today. I do feel the need to give proper credit to the asset store publishers. Without them this wouldn't have been possible.

The scene is very simple and was only considered as a quick personal showcase to see how it looks like to have an Asian Dragon fly over the terrain. I just love them and wish there were more available on the Unity Asset Store.

For the scene I used the awesome Meadow Environment, one of the best assets on the store. The vegetation got distributed using Vegetation Studio Pro. Then a R.A.M. river got added to make the terrain look a bit more versatile. In order to fill the sky I used Enviro, its clouds are very awesome imo. And the Dragon is the Black Dragon from Protofactor Inc.

You see it's very easy to get attention with only a few AAA assets. Creating that scene doesn't take more than a few minutes. The impact however turns out to be huge, I never expected that to happen

From the comments I gathered that probably someone posted it as real Dragon sighting. That would explain the "fake", "it's a kite", "green screen" and what not comments. Very appreciated, since this is just a computer game prototype. However the important part is that nobody says the rest of the scene is computer generated. I guess it's because most of the audience is watching on mobile phones and there it's less noticable. And the even more important part for us Unity users is: It's the Standard Pipeline

This is the video:

Assets used:

* Black Dragon

* Enviro - Sky and Weather

* Meadow Environment - Dynamic Nature

* R.A.M 2019 - River Auto Material 2019

* Vegetation Studio Pro

Applications used:

* World Creator 2 for Terrain Creation

 

Now you can start to monetise your prototypes on youtube

With that amount of views it may be worth it

 

This is a dedicated post for @NatureManufacture for the excellent work they do for the Unity platform.

Lava & Volcano Environment 2019 is free for a limited amount of time. Go get it. If you purchase more of their assets during the publisher sale, please use the link with their affiliate Id, they very much deserve it:

https://assetstore.unity.com/publisher-sale?aid=1011l7vcu

Some use cases of mine:

@NatureManufacture Thank you very much! And give us more please!

 

A new gem on the Unity Asset Store is the Realistic Wolf from Malbers. I had a lot of fun with them. Here's a showcase video I created quickly:

Checking the asset out was so much fun, I had to try in different environments:






Assets used:

* Realistic Wolf

* Ice World

* Vegetation Studio Pro

* And several of the MicroSplat modules which are already listed in this thread, especially MicroSplat Trax

Special Mention:

Music is from Roman Senyk. His music is free. And it's awesome imo. Here's a link to his patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/romansenyk

 

Did you use anything special for the lighting in the winter video? Looks amazing (as did the Trax stuff).

 

Thanks, that's all HDRP 10.3.1, nothing special otherwise.

 

A must have Gem got released on the Asset Store today: NatureManufacture's Mountain Environment - Dynamic Nature. Here's a first look video. All I did was just load the demo scene that comes with the asset and put a Malbers Dragon in it. The scene even comes with background mountains, clouds, etc:

There's a lot more to explore (like falling rocks, fish, etc), just check their asset store video. This asset will quickly climb to the top assets on the Unity Asset Store.

Assets used:

* Mountain Environment - Dynamic Nature

* Little Dragons: Tiger

* Animal Controller

 

A few of my recent favorites:

Hierarchy 2 - Allows for header styling in GameObject names, folders that can take the place of gameobjects and automatically 'flatten' the children out at runtime / play mode so you can have the organization during design but without the possible performance hits for having child transforms on child transforms and so on.

Scivolo Character Controller - Feels like one of the premium Character Controller replacements (note not a whole system like Invector, but a replacement for the Unity Character Controller component) but for free and with source. At the very least it's been miles better than the built in one, and the code is clean + compact too.

Magica Cloth - I don't think this is really "hidden" anymore, but it's still the best cloth system I've used. Takes advantage of jobs for speed, can handle mesh or bones for deformation, tons of various features such as static friction, keeping shape, various collider shapes, creating a low poly version of the mesh for deformation + performance purposes, etc.

 

Toying around with the Malbers Raccoon in the Suburb Neighborhood is quite nice. The Raccoon has a lot of features to toy around with, even climbing which is quite easy to achieve: Add a collider to a mesh and set the "Climb" tag on it and that's it. The Suburb Neighborhood House Pack looks great and comes with an extensive demo scene:

* Realistic Raccoons and Red Panda

* Realistic Wolf

* Animal Controller

* Suburb Neighborhood House Pack (Modular)

 

I'm feeling kind of honored that some of the game prototypes I created are used in Unity's sale video

In case anyone wants to see the clips in full length:

The assets I used are already listed in this thread. In case anyone wants to know in detail, just check the descriptions of the videos.

 

If you want to get into Formula 1 type racing, this asset is a great start.

* DSRC - Track02 (HDRP)

 

Snowboard Game Starter Pack (Template) is an awesome asset. It's a full featured template for the creation of a snowboard game. It doesn't come as HDRP yet, but I wanted to toy around in HDRP, so I made a few adaptations and chose to only do a free ride. The asset comes with a lot more features, just check out the asset description on the Unity Asset Store

* Snowboard Game Starter Pack (Template)

Please check the youtube description to see the full list of all the assets I used in the video in addition to the snowboard asset. All of them are already listed in this forum thread.

 

The new Malbers Crocodile is awesome. Here's in combination with Lux Water in Standard Pipeline:

* Crocodile Realistic

* Lux Water

* Wet Stuff

* Animal Controller

 

Fluffy Grooming Tool was finally released last week. It's fresh, awesome and very exciting, even Unity featured it in their What’s new for artists and designers in Unity 2021.2 Blog.

* Fluffy Grooming Tool

* Nvidia's The Attic

 

ArchViz Pro Interior Vol. 7 is quite impressive. Here I added life to the scene of the asset with the Malbers Raccon and Fluffy Grooming Tool.

* ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.7

* Fluffy Grooming Tool

* Realistic Raccoons and Red Panda

Note: The Raccoon was groomed by Daniel Zeller, so credit for that to him and thanks a lot for allowing me to use his work.

Edit: Follow-Up with the Malbers Wolf groomed:


I had so much fun toying around with it. Even if you don't intend to use it for games, it's a blast just grooming fur on animals.

 

The Kubold animations with the Maksim Bugrimov models is an awesome combination. Here's a preview checking out both assets:

* Fighting Animset Pro

* PBR Fighters (Pack)

* Creatures Insects Pack

* Astronauts (Pack)

* Castle Valley Collection 1

 

The Dwarfs Pack and the RPG Fantas Pack of Maksim Bugrimov are quite nice and have a very low price. Just toyed around with them this morning (and other assets which are already listed in this thread):

* Dwarfs Pack

* RPG Fantasy (Pack)

 

ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.5 is very nice to show the potential of the Unity Engine. Here's in combination with a Malbers Wolf groomed using the awesome Fluffy Grooming Tool:

And one with CineMachine's Shaky Cam:

* ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.5 HDRP

* Fluffy Grooming Tool by Daniel Zeller

* Realistic Wolf

 

This new asset is really nice for assets organisation:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/smart-library-200724

 

The Sci-Fi Characters Mega Pack 2 by Protofactor Inc. contains a lot of versatile assets for a Sci-Fi scene. Here's additionally combined with Sci-Fi Character 05 (Crow) by Maksim Bugrimov.

Assets used in addition to ones already mentioned in this thread (see youtube description for full list):

* SCI FI CHARACTERS MEGA PACK VOL 2

* Sci-Fi Character 05 (Crow)

* Monster Sounds Pack

 

My top list

Microsplat (all modules)
Better Lit Shader (thanks to this asset I revived tons of assets that had custom shaders and didint work in SRP)
The Vegetation Engine (thanks to this asset I revived tons of assets that had custom shaders and didint work in SRP)
Amplify Impostors

Those are the must have for me

 

ArchVizPRO Interior Vol. 8 looks really great. Here's a video with modified lighting and post processing and a wolf and a bee added:

I especially liked the love to detail, here's e. g. an example of the refraction in HDRP:

Assets used in addition to ones already mentioned in this thread (see youtube description for full list):

* ArchVizPRO Interior Vol. 8

 

You could even make a game out of that bee flying around scaring people in the house

 

Unty's own The Realtime Rascals with Fluffy Grooming Tool is really a nice combination to spend the day with just toying around and having fun with grooming

Assets used:

* The Realtime Rascals

* Fluffy Grooming Tool

 

Book of the Dead Environment is one of the best assets that Unity gave us for free and most definitely a Unity Gem. Unfortunately it got removed from the Asset Store recently. However, that's no reason to not use it anymore if you already have it downloaded from the Asset Store. I thought I'd try upgrading it to Unity 2022 and add a bit more assets like Fluffy Grooming Tool, the Realistic Wolf by Malbers, Irval the Wyvern and the Challenger from the Fontainebleau demo. BotD didn't get maintained anymore past 2018, but I really hope Unity reconsiders that they removed it and provide an upgraded version for us in the future.

 

This one's an instant Gem: (STP) Survival Template PRO

I bought it this week and am still amazed by the features that this asset has. Easy to setup with quick results, very versatile and high quality.

Although it's only for Standard Pipeline (for now), I tried to upconvert it to HDRP and combine it with Book of the Dead:

Assets used (including ones already listed in this thread):

* (STP) Survival Template PRO

 

Big Environment Pack Reforged is exciting with lots of features and a most awesome Demo scene:

Assets used in addition to ones already mentioned in this thread (see youtube description for full list):

* Big Environment Pack Reforged