CTS - Complete Terrain Shader - Deprecated

Glad it worked for you!!! I thought it would, but I'd hate to let another Unity Dev down so I couldn't say anything straight out.

 

I get this error everytime I try and import the project. Is the current package corrupted? Anything I could be doing wrong or anything I can check?

EDIT: Seems like its just the textures that don't get imported. Some of them anyways.

Thanks for the time,

Rob

 

This might be a little noobish question but I always wondered if its possible to just import surface materials to CTS which than reads / uses the albedo, occlusion, heightmap and normal maps like they are configured in the material itself?

Right now you always have to add all maps by yourself to terrain shaders like RTP etc. and often they do not support all maps like Occlusion, Specular etc. Setting smoothness options manually by yourself is often also pretty time consuming specially if you see that the material already has the complete informations.
Is this limited by Unity? Does CTS offer something for this scenario? Just wondering. I always stuck with this when creating terrain and seeing pretty bad results of missing occlusion maps or bad smoothness values. Some terrain texture come with specular maps other with occlusion maps and so on. So its always a pain in the *** to see some shaders do not support occlusion and you can't just add the whole material which has everything necessary to the terrain shader...

Cheers
Ronny

 

Redownload pack. (remove it from engine files ) and download again.

Interesting idea!
Anyway I would like to show you somthing 1:1 compatibile with cts and unity terrain.
Advanced rock pack is groupd of Stones which love to be scaled and gives cool result and could blend 100% with terrain. Pack also contain ground textures, perfect for cts- we used them in river auto material movie. Basicaly we use the same functions for cts and this Stones so they will fit!
Just take a look:



Technical movie:

 

Does you system allow to choose a different textures instead of using terrain floor textures ?

Because in real the rocks have a different texture different from the floor texture like moss for example.





The only cases where it works with terrain texture is sand or snow deposit.

I think your shader could do a terrain contact blending like Microsplat as it uses terrain information.


Any chances you add that option ?

 

Hi all,

Just bought this and right away definitely seeing a vast improvement in looks.

One thing though.. In the asset description and on the webpage it talks about dynamic water and a water level slider, but I can't find this anywhere. How do I set the water level? I am using it with Gaia if that matters.

 

Hey guys I just wanted to say the new optimization update did some seriously miracles for my project! I'm up to about 70-80 FPS in a high resolution 4kX4K terrain in VR. Up from about 40-50 FPS. This is really freaking impressive. You guys are wizards.

Check out the gameplay video I just launched here.

Note there is some jitteryness in this video, it's not because of frame drops but because of VRIK and bad VR tracking. These issues will resolved.

I was wondering if anyone had any more general tips to make the visuals look even better in my project. I know I can push CTS further as well as the vegetation but I'm not sure the best way to go about it. I am currently using a recommended Unity Post Processing stack as well.

 

Quick question: several AO maps are included in the pack. Is there a way to use them with CTS?

 

Atm its snow setup like in swamp demo but... in next update there will be water separately I start to work on it tommorow.

At video there is everything. You could change textures as you want.
Yes I also tommorow start to work on model blend for cts. So i will try to put this in next update.

 

Hello, when I put snow, I get "werid" squares. Anyone had this problem before?

 

Are there new benchmark stand-alone projects for testing the latest versions? I'm curious about performance optimizations that have been done recently and how it all compares to standard Unity terrain now.

[EDIT]
I found the demos on the website, but they are still very poorly performing so I hope those aren't representative of the latest optimizations.

 

Humm its super fast for me and many others. you love the competition so use their product.

Me too. new scenes very fast.

 

Please don't tell me what to do. I'm genuinely interested in CTS right now.

 

I doubt that

 

seanybaby2 3 posts up VR very fast .. The old demo's run a bit slower for me then a new scene does 100 % on that.

 

Why? I own Gaia and Gena from Adam as well as World Streamer and Winter Ground Pack from Nature Manufacturer. And I'm very interested in Nature Manufacturer's R.A.M. River Auto Material as well as his Dynamic Nature.

 

HAHA I am not getting into it. That was my saying, for new people ,,, that post with very fast VR rates sayes it all

 

I am out of here on this one.

 

Sorry for being cynical, magique

I need .. err want Dynamic Nature as well. Still how ever, CTS is really fast now.
I am not sure if the stand alone demo's were ever redone, or there is something in the files.

I think Bart and Adam are very busy working on other updates, AFAIK, CTS will get geo interest bending
sooner or latter as well, and is being worked on right now, for other future updates.

I think Adam is fielding most questions about CTS .. he wants to start a data base of questions and
answers for every one at https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home
as he checks there every day, and not here as much.

 

Hello? Anyone had this problem with the snow before?

 

No problem. I actually own tons of competing products. In fact, I own every other terrain shader available except for this one. I also own competing products such as TC2 and I have several competing sky products as well. Some work better in different situations. And right now I'm kind of looking for that integration magic where I can have a complete system that does sky and weather and can integrate with the terrain shader so that it's all automated. That's why I'm also looking at Enviro.

 

https://proceduralworlds.freshdesk.com/support/home

 

Guess most of us who have been around Unity for the last couple of years have a lot of " competing " products.
And the " lure " of " I have to have this *.* " after 2 years has worn off me. But yes lot of sky's / water / terrain products.

Adam has used Enviro in helping show case his World Manager API ( good for cut scenes / show casing / etc )
link >> https://forum.unity.com/threads/gai...d-scene-creation.327342/page-177#post-3204475

Also Bart I am sure used Enviro for some of his Videos for R.A.M and also his Advanced Rock Pack 1, which I am
hoping will be able to hook into CTS weather system and the rocks will get " wet look " as well.

but Yeah finding that " integration magic " can be tough ... and still is.. To me though it looks like a
matter of time before Gaia 2 and Barts magic, will end up being a winning combo.

I think they are very aware of FPS for VR so I would think that would translate to Wii as well.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot about water. I have most of those as well. lol

 

@magique
Loving CTS. I am in cruise mode on terrain shading (4 layers for the base, 4 for spraying on features) and the performance is outstanding. As I recommend to any other developers....only use Unity Terrain for textures/shader and never use vegetation on it (within it?? ). There are a few solutions for 'Object Based' vegetation and rocks (like the upcoming Vegetation Studio) and spraying them down is a snap with something like GeNa or many other 'Prefab' brushes (not all equal....GeNa is by far the best).

I, like yourself, have all of them....I spent good money so I could have the Pleasure of comparing them to My Workflows. This includes all the different terrain 'makers'.....L3DT is still By Far the Best and Easiest to make excellent terrains and splats. CTS is crazy simple to use.....I simply make 'Recipes' of what the landscapes should respond like. I typically use 4 of these which have Zero Tessellation (no need with good normal maps) and respond excellently to Rain and Snow from a weather system. The performance is really fast and more importantly.....consistent. It is easy to budget in the rendering pipeline.

For example.....AVS and my Genesis Natural System (private) are competing products which AVS is consistently beating mine by ~10fps.....consistently. AVS has narrowed the gap in features but I use CTS with both systems and I see Zero hit from CTS directly when it comes to things piling on top of it. The rendering pipeline is simply diverted to other resources which CTS just simply becomes a slice of yummy roast beef in the landscaping rendering budget sandwich. Simple and awesome how it just plays well.....and that is perhaps the largest eye opener with CTS. It integrates extremely well and simply does not interfere with the primary goals of landscaping. I for one am not looking sideways or back any longer.

To be honest....pretty frickin' amazing what these awesome devs (not just CTS) have done with Unity Terrain. I am not certain a new Unity Terrain System needs to be made at this point. Crazy awesome.

Cheers
O

 

Cts+ vegetation studio+ submited (pending review) my folpackand grounds pack with vs profile - auto grassland and forest paint. Ofc my first speed level design hehe but it shows how author of cts use cts . btw i must play with your system too someday!

 

vegetation studio isn't sell in the store yet?

 

No it is in closed beta phase. It will be released in 2-5 Weeks. Author is working on finale documentation and tutorials while it will get reviewed.

Btw nice video Bart. Looks so easy how you paint textures on your terrain and get really nice results. Texture painting is done through Vegetation Studio in my test terrains right now.

 

OK, so I now have this and started testing. Performance for my Windows platform testing has been excellent so far. I do have a couple of comments though. It wasn't obvious at first that Smoothness was the setting to use for Wetness. Also, it would be nice to have a global wetness slider so I don't have to set each individual texture. But perhaps I just didn't see it somewhere? Finally, it seems to be a bug that if you turn on snow and set an amount that if you uncheck Snow it still has snow applied. You have to check it, go back into the settings, and turn down to 0. Other than that it all looks good so far.

 

@magique
I kind of complained about the name of some things back in Beta....but like other things I can change the name but I have a script that I connect to the CTS shader directly but connecting to the CTS weather manager is simple to do and easy to manipulate. On the snow....good one....I never turn off snow I simply reduce it via my script....so it is always there and starts to appear in colder weather and snow events. Have to let Bart answer on that one.

 

Yeah, true. I'll be using the WorldManagerAPI and tying to Azure Sky and LIQUIDUM so eventually all will be good.

Btw, a big shout out to anyone who doesn't know LIQUIDUM. A very nice weather package that now has a wet object feature. You just attach a script to any object and tell it the wetness strength and whether it's affected by rain and when it's raining it'll automatically get wet and then dry up when no longer raining. It doesn't require special materials. And an update coming up soon will support skinned meshes so your characters will get wet when in rain or entering water.

 

Some quick testing

This scene included Vegetation Studio, Azure Sky Pro, CTS, SE Screen Space Shadows, LIQUIDUM, HX Volumetric Lighting, PRISM, and AQUAS.

Frame rate drops are solely due to recording software. When playing stand-alone it gets a fairly solid 60 fps at 1080p resolution.

 

@magique welcome to CTS

I must admit that I was genuinely nervous when you reached out - but am glad you did and that you are enjoying CTS!

Bart has started on the next version, and a soon as he has done his stuff I will as well. I can highly recommend Enviro - I have been demoing Gaia, GeNa, CTS, Enviro, AQUAS and Vegetation Studio for the past week at Unite and then PAX here in Australia.

GeNa has been integrated with Vegetation Studio, and Gaia will be as well. Much as I like Vegetation Studio - I prefer to create my environments myself with the control I get with GeNa.

The new clouds in Enviro are already absolutely gorgeous - and its still in alpha. There is also a new volumetric lighting system coming - but its still got some issues and I hope Hendrik is able to resolve them.

I also saw some the latest clouds from Tenkoku the other day, so that's also an awesome package to explore.

While not in 'screen shot mode' here is something i made that shows off the new clouds in Enviro.



And this is a sample of Vegetation Studio, CTS, and Enviro's volumentric light all working together. The assets were imported and auto configured from MegaScans with a new tool I am about to release.

 

For anyone wanting a free tool that enables you to easily integrate all your terrain, time of day, and weather assets then I also recommend World Manager API. It's very light weight and quite useful!

http://www.procedural-worlds.com/blog/wapi/

 

Here is another test using Baldinoboy's Tropical Forest Pack. Assets include CTS, VS, PRISM, Azure Sky, HX Volumetric Lighting, and SE Screen Space Shadows

@Mark_01 and you doubted me.

 

Fog have wrong color anyway looks cool. Forest dont like bright colors ofc only in my opinion it should be dark green or blue

 

@magique I am sincerely happy that you are enjoying CTS!

For me I like the " artistic style " of that VSAndTropicalForest test It is almost as if this is what a
Tropical Rain forest would look like for a while with global warming. Artistically well done I think.

Unfortunately ? Vegetation Studio is on my insta buy list. From what I read, It will still be possible to use
GeNa for precise control for placing items and still use VS after ?

And also Sentieri is on my insta buy too, I am thinking that Sentieri should be able to follow a path that
goes down a natural ravine ( mountains ) where water would naturally flow. I am really crappy at
drawing with a mouse, I have a tablet some where ... its a PIA to hook up but I may after all these new
exciting assets come out! Which reminds me I should do a R.A.M review some time . LOL ...

I recently tried Amplify Color and Beautify, for a test I was doing with Alloy shader. I had Unity 5 Pro, and Level 11, for a while was really good. I was surprised with the combination of Amplify Color and Beautify was really good.

Anyways, nice work, magique I am very happy you are enjoying CTS.

 

Well, I used eyedropper and selected sky color so it should be correct. As far as coloring, I made a better one with greener coloring. Anyways, it was just thrown together in about an hour.

 

I didn't like the coloring so made a greener looking one. But it was just a quick test, but I'm going to develop it into a full-blown tech demo for my game. Still lots to do with VS and vegetation masking, etc.

So I've heard that it should work with GeNa, but Adam can verify that.

Yep. I am in that beta as well and will be trying that in this demo scene soon along with R.A.M. too. So, stay tuned. More goodness to come.

 

Yep. Still a few issues there but am sure Lennart will sort them quickly enough.

There have been some nice 'aha' moments for me in the past few months....

Firstly terrain... I can no longer handle plain unity terrain.. and CTS is the first thing I do after generating a new terrain.

And the next is grass. After doing mesh grasses with Vegetation Studio... i simply cant tolerate billboarded grass any more.

I guess finally is clouds. The biggest weakness in most of what is on the asset store at the moment is clouds and there are some really nice things coming. Your skies, lighting and clouds are what really set your scenes off visually.

All up, its an exciting time to be a game developer

 

Apologies if this has been requested already - are there any plans to have a per-layer (per-texture) blend values for global color/normal maps?

 

Seems like a good idea, not sure of the performance impact. @NatureManufacture ?

 

I will check. Ofc this will always take 2-3 fps.

 

I love the shader, its flexibility and ease of use. I'm using Enviro, AQUAS, Gaia and CTS. Integration works flawlessly. Great work!

I'm having some trouble with snow however. When I use the slider in the CTS profile snow looks correct. When I change snow in the Weather Manager, the snow is black. I've baked all the textures and applied the CTS profile, so I can't quite figure out what's wrong.

Do I need to add the texture to the terrain somehow, or is this handled some other way?

 

Cool , fun stuff! I think next year will be huge for Unity in general!

 

Any possibility of there ever being puddles with optional rain drops? Lars did a really nice job of this with a special terrain shader in his AFS 5 asset.

 

I have seen this as well - I will check into it.

We can add this to the road map. If you are using enviro you will get splashes where the drops hit the ground.

 

Sounds good.

 

Is there a way to create profiles without terrain, i mostly use substances, so i have to assign to terrain dummy textures, and replace most of them, every time i want to create new profile.