CTS - Complete Terrain Shader - Deprecated

I am very proud to announce the launch of CTS - The Complete Terrain Shader - a collaboration between @NatureManufacture and @AdamGoodrich (Procedural Worlds)

It's a new terrain shader with a focus on Speed, Power and most importantly, Usability!

Key features:

• 16 textures 1 pass - fast;
• PBR terrain - beautiful looking terrain;
• Standard work flow - compatible & easy;
• UV Mixing - removes tiling;
• Detail Mixing - adds interest & reduces tiling;
• Geological Layering - adds interest;
• Detail Mixing - adds interest & reduces tiling;
• ColorMaps - additional terrain texturing;
• Cutouts - height and mask based;
• GrassMaps - additional texturing from grass cover;
• Dynamic Snow Cover - with a slider;
• Dynamic Water Cover - with a slider;
• Height Blending - relative texture blends;
• Basic, Advanced & Tesselation variants;
• Ambient Occlusion - realistic shadows;
• Profile Based - similar to Unity Post FX;
• Texture Library - 48 quality sets, 20 helpers;
• Substance Support - save time on exports;
• Seasons & Weather - Rain, Snow & Seasonal variation, easily integrated;
• Gaia integration - Gaia compatible plus libraries;
• World Manager integration - Control CTS from World Manager;
• Weather integrations - Enviro, Tenkoku, UniStorm, WeatherMaker, Genesis;
  
• Sample swamp and landcape scenes included, excluding 3D models;
• VR Compatible;

Per Texture Control of:

• Albedo, Normal, Height, Ambient Occlusion, Smoothness, Roughness;
• Near and far tiling - reduces tiling;
• Tinting - matching & seasonal variation;
• Brightness - texture matching;
• Smoothness - reflection & wetness;
• Height blending - relative texture heights;
• Height depth - relative texture depth;
• Triplanar - no more terrible cliffs;
• Detail strength - use it as needed;
• Geo strength - use it as needed;
• Snow amount - control snow cover;
• Snow / Water - angle, height, hardness;
• Snow / Water tint - vary color by usage;

Hardware support:
- Shader model 3.5+ (basic + advanced);
- Shader model 4.6+ (tesselation);
- Direct X 11 / 12;
- Open GL ES 3.0;
- WebGL 2.0;
- Metal;

Shaders are limited by texture array support, and consequently do not support DX9, OpenGLES 2.0 or Web GL1.0.

Roadmap:

• Weather update - per texture tint and wetness
• POM - fake tessellation (will depend on performance hit)
• Water & Snow at same time (currently mutually exclusive)
• Water Wetness - wet patch above your water
• Snow glitter
• Mesh blending support

Support:

For support go to https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home. These request are tracked and most responses happen within 24 hours. There is also a knowledge base on the support system so chances are your question has already been answered.

 

Here is a range of images of environments created with CTS.

 

Looks great

 

Hey guys,

Can't wait for this to go live. That video looks incredible.

Really interested in the snow aspect of this - any more screenies?
The polar bear scene looks real!

 

A bunch more coming really soon!

 

Another @AdamGoodrich production that is going to take the Unity Asset Store by storm and become a must have asset

 

I am really looking forward for this and hoping for screenshots / videos which show the Editor options. Specially the Tesselation / Height Blending and Snow / Rain options to compare the usability with other assets like RTP. Because the setup and options with an excellent usability needs to be the gamechanger when using this asset.

And as a future request:
1.A fast and automatic selectable Geometry Blending for objects spawned on a Terrain would be really awesome.
2. Puddles / Droplets effect for more dynamic water effects? Perhaps thats already included?

Good work guys! Looking forward for more info.
Ronny

 

Man, that looks really amazing - can't wait to check it out!

 

The video's are coming together now. The universal feedback we have received is that people love it's usability!

 

This is looking very interesting. Congrats!
Here are some questions for you...

Is there an overall color map option that can be transitioned to for distant terrain rendering? Being able to blend at a set distance to a single texture covering the whole terrain with it's own Albedo/Spec/Normal would be awesome.

How are splatted textures drawn into the terrain? Can you use the standard unity terrain texture editing tools? Can you use your own custom authored splat map too/instead?

 

And another top 10 product from the house of Goodrich. Looking awesome.

 

Not yet - we discussed it but decided that six months of collaborative effort for the first release, and a road-map for things we would like to add - as influenced by customer feedback - was a pretty good start

We originally got the bones of 256 texture support working but then when you started to dig into customised splatting, and all the other nuances we decided it was over kill. The majority of the images above are standard 4 texture Gaia terrains. The mixing, snow, geo etc is what adds the interest, and even 16 textures is a lot of textures!

In the end we made a decision to support compatibility and well known work flow over having more textures. People know how to paint terrain, it's 100% compatible with other painting tools (e.g. Gaia or your terrain tool of choice), and it will just work with no integration or modification required.

 

That's definitely wise. Despite how amazing a 256 texture (or hell, even 64 texture) system would be... ease of use and compatibility are not factors to sneer at.

 

Looks fantastic!

 

it looks incredible! I cannot wait to get it.

- is the swamp water using CTS ?
- Also did you Super Sampled your video or is it as is?
- do you include the swamp scene in the asset package?
- can you post a screenshot from farther away from the top (2.5d like)?

 

Videos where you use this shader to create a scene would be great. Your practical example videos of you using Gaia and GeNa are what sold me on them.

 

Yep - they are in the process of being made

 

Yes - however it is just a texture - looks cool eh! We have some more cool ideas for water which will be explored in a future release.

As is.

Yes, minus the 3d models.

We will do many more shots - these are being put together now.

 

This looks good, and long overdue as a terrain shader. Those that exist are either overcomplex and hit and miss whether they work, or a bit too simple, and don't deliver on the control. I'm hoping this will do it for me - get tired of throwing money at poor solutions. Good luck with it. Oh, and triplanar mapping - nice one; on terrains, it's a no-brainer.

 

Dynamic Nature Starter will be compatible and will do it for you

 

Hey dude
Will do what exactly? Geometry Blending or dynamic water effects like puddles and dropplets?

 

Amazing video, outstanding, If I'm reading it right then I should be able to just replace the standard terrain shader with CTS, paint with whatever tools I choose and the shader will take care of the rest. I work mainly with real world height data overlayed with satellite imagery, when I paint textures it's with low weight, just to add detail close up. The idea of a colour map does appeal, I currently use TerrainImporter , it's yet unreleased V2 allows me to import satellite images into the last texture prototype with a user specified weight and should I hope still work with CTS?, What sort of speed increase should we expect with CTS / does it use fewer setpass calls than the standard terrain shader.

Looks like you have followed the KISS )Keep It Simple Stupid ) principle and that will be greatly appreciated.

 

From own testing and screenshare sessions with @AdamGoodrich on Skype, CTS is going the same route as Gaia & GeNa as you have described (KISS) but with HUGE power and functionality for those what want to dig deeper using the huge selection of fields and sliders to customize the outcome as you see fit.
Things like visible tiling is a thing of the past. CTS is a high performing, simple to use Terrain Shader Solution that is going to make each user an immediate fan.

 

Geometry blend rest is cts case. We will add step by step new features into cts.
ATM I must finish demo with snow so im really overloaded

 

One for me to keep my eye on

 

Btw Adam didn't mention yet that 48 texture sets (192 maps: albedo, smooothnes, normal, ao, height) and 15 additional textures ( geological maps, noise) are included in the shader pack.

 

Going to be an epic release man

 

That might be worth the price in its own right

 

Well, like with Gaia that comes with a HUGE selection of sample assets to give the user the best out of the box experience, this package is then following in same footsteps to again have a fully usable and value for many solution all in one.

Very nice surprise and addition for sure.

 

It looks very cool

 

I forgot the amazing texture library...

• Texture Library - 48 texture sets & 20 helpers (geological maps, noise, detail)

And last night I scripted up a very very cool feature!

• Seasons & Weather - Integrate with your weather - snow, wetness, seasonal variation

Here is a little sneak preview of the weather integration in action. I have already been hammered by my beta group, so please don't get hung up on the scene - its a 'concept' and has been broken every way possible while I am testing

What the runtime controller does is allow you to control snow and rain at run time... so if you have a weather system you can update the terrain in real time.. and I have to say its a super cool feature.

The other thing it does is lerp the tint that is applied to your textures by season... so you can take the same terrain and give it a dry summer look compared wet spring look and so on.

This will allow you to very easily modify your terrain in response to season and weather - Enviro will be supporting this, and so will Genesis weather (free) by @Olander.

Perhaps we can also get integrations going with Tenkoku's weather system as well... @chingwa ?

UniStorm is be another popular system as well. We will reach out after release to facilitate this.

 

i have only one wish which is please make it compatible with unity 5.4 (unity on consoles still far behind)

 

Before, sorry for my English. Hehe
How beautiful @AdamGoodrich, this seems too beautiful. I'm looking forward to the release. I have some questions.
1-I saw that it will support the Enviro, but I have enviro games and another with UniStorm, will it integrate with them?
2- Do you have the intention to create some more beautiful "water", like Aquas?
3- And Gaia 2.0, will be out soon (hahahaha)?

And thank you for the great Assets. With them many like me working alone can create their own games. Thank you.

 

Unfortunately no. We use texture arrays which were only introduced in Unity 5.5.

All authors are welcome to do integrations, and we will happily work with them post release to speed this up.

Not at the moment - we are a terrain shader - the water effect in the swamp demo is actually just a texture, but not animated like aquas. Perhaps we will consider this a little later if people want it.

Yes... I have put a lot of time into CTS and as a result Gaia will take a little longer - but Gaia and CTS together will be pretty magical

 

What about Dynamic Nature Starter ? CTS will be difrent asset? Or what?

 

Yes it is a different asset. @NatureManufacture can provide more details.

 

Okay. I'm now little bit confused Can you explain difrences between this two assets. What one have that second doesn't have.

 

You can ask @NatureManufacture. Dynamic Nature is his asset and he is best person to answer that. He will be online in another 5 hours or so.

 

Last question for you. I have UniStorm weather system. I read you plan make integration with this? Yes?

 

Indeed. And with CTS....the attached pics are 4 Textures and Zero Post FX

 

@AdamGoodrich any chance for work around to make it possible with unity 5.4 ?

 

No. It was a massive amount of work to get it going with Unity 5.5+!

 

I watch video couple times. And one detail is bad. And maybe this is in road map.
Meshes like rocks doesn't blend with terrain textures. Did you plane make something with this. On store is one asset to blend this.

 

I am watching your every move Mr. "Goodrich", if that's even your real name!

 

Did someone say "Weather"??? This looks really nice Adam. I'm introducing Temperature-based tinting in the next Tenkoku update and this seems like it could go hand in hand. I would love to see, eventually, the option of substituting textures depending on the season or temperature. I imagine there would be texture count problems and may not be feasible, but to be able to switch between an actual dead grass texture and a fresh living grass texture based on season would be awesome.

Additionally, the introduction of 'Absorption' maps could give even further fidelity. I'm not sure how you're organizing your texture inputs, but if you have any extra color channels lying around you could use as a greyscale absorption mask to define how the material will react to wetness over time. This could affect the darkening of diffuse color as well as the variance of specular and normal flattening... all to simulate the accumulation of water and damp areas on a per-texture basis. If you haven't read the below paper I would humbly suggest it, just for the amazing attention to detail, if nothing else: https://seblagarde.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/observe-rainy-world/

Well, sure, of course! I assume this would be in the form of a "helper" component that could integrate directly between Tenkoku and your CTSRuntimeController component? Should be easy enough. Let's talk about this offline

 

Random idea here, please ignore in case of insane. In ZELDA breath of the wild, I spend time climbing in always raining zone (and succeeding) I have notice that part that are covered aren't wet! It also seems to adapt to wind direction, I wonder if they don't generate a fake wind point with a direction and generate a shadow mask (there is no shadow when it rain) as if it's a directional light, then use it to mask wet and dry area accordingly ... That was impressive attention to details anyway, whatever the way they did it.

 

Lots to digest here - sounds cool - we are using texture arrays - so adding more features will have a memory impact - but definately doable. Lets talk after release

 

Another great asset and a milestone for terrain shader by @AdamGoodrich and @NatureManufacture
Congratulations

 

See my last post in page 1. That feature is called Geometry Blending and NatureManufactor answered that his Dynamic Nature Asset will offer this. So CTS will not have this feature (from the start). Ofc I am hoping that this feature will be added in the future because RTP has it already.

Enviro Support out of the Box is awesome

 

Yes of course.. we decided that it had enough of everything to be able to release and to also be an awesome addition to people's terrain tools collection

Besides if it truly have every feature of every shader that was ever released, then it would never get an update, and then people would complain