CTS - Complete Terrain Shader - Deprecated

I also think they might use some kind of decal system for that, or some custom system in their terrain shader. (Afaik Larian uses its own engine for DDOS2)
CTS has no built in decal system, but you can blend textures with heightmap blending, which (imo) looks better than using decals for that. Here is an example where I blend in and out a dirt texture on top of a grass texture with heightmap blending.
Full grass texture:

Dirt blended in:

Full dirt texture:


So you could in theory use height blending instead of using decals. The downside would be that textures are ordered by their index on their terrain, in the example above the dirt comes after the grass texture and is therefore displayed on top when blending. Also you would use one texture slot per "decal" and CTS can display 16 textures max.
If you get a decal system on the asset store it should work with CTS as long as the decal system is able to display decals on the terrain. It can't hurt to query the author to be sure though, especially to see if instanced terrain and the lightweight / high-definition rendering pipeline is supported as well.

 

Hi. cannot find option "Package CTS For Build" mentioned in documentation part "Packaging Your Terrain for Build"
Is documentation still actual? May i ask you what needs to be done before i build my app? thank you

 

Hi, the information regarding Packaging for Build is a bit outdated. The options that are mentioned there have been converted to profile-specific optimization settings. In your CTS profile you can find the following settings that help you optimizing the rendering performance during runtime:

Strip Textures - This option will remove all textures from the terrain at runtime, and run the terrain directly from CTS as a first pass shader. It will reduce gpu memory usage on all terrains, and drawcalls on terrains with more than 4 textures.

Disconnect Profile - This will disconnect the profile from the terrain at runtime, and this will reduce memory usage, however it will also stop changes to the profile at runtime from being reflected into the terrain in real time.

Besides choosing if you want to activate those two options there is nothing special to be done before you build your app.

I will see to get the website updated with the correct information, thanks for reporting this issue!

 

How is the testing going? Any ETA when the update will hit the store?

 

Updates are so slow and it lacks features and not the fastest terrain shader either. I'm moving away from CTS.
Same thing with Gaia.. I've been waiting for v2 update close to a year and the end is nowhere in sight.
PW is more about selling stuff than supporting the existing users. I hope PW do a better job with existing products.

 

eh? they have version in beta and been working on some complex features.....this stuff can't happen over night..They aren't a 100 man team.. We PAID what 50 bucks or so..and got free updates..and I don't get people throwing fits if they don't update every month... The update is in beta.. So have some patience...what is stopping you from using now??

So confused by this statement........CTS updates are fine, and for what we get......hire someone it will cost you 1000 times more... for the same thing.

Hey if you think another terrain shader, is better, no one is stopping you... but we use it in production, and the quality Adam makes compared to what I have used and seen in many AAA studios......is night and day in many regards...

SO I wish you all the best.

 

Its in Beta. so should be soon. (tester here) cant say to much, but a little patience, please, it will be coming soon, and many will be happy for it . (we are super happy)

 

Adam needs to hire more developers...

 

We are getting some good feedback from the beta test, however one user measured worse performance and another mentioned terrains rendering black which we did not encounter in our internal tests, so want to make sure that is not a general issue that we overlooked. I can't give a more precise update than "soon" unfortunately.

 

Hey everyone,

We are very pleased to announce that Path Painter 1.1 is now live on the asset store!

Path Painter is a cool tool of ours that allows you to create roads, ramps, paths and rivers on Unity terrain and works perfectly with CTS!

In this video you can see how we can use Path Painter to take advantage of the height blending feature of CTS to create perfectly blended paths with your terrain:

Enhancements:

• The paint button is now bigger.
• Changed the size hotkeys to CTRL+Q/E.
• Updated for 2018.3 to use the new terrain API.
• Path Painter can now be placed into any directory.
• Single active terrain is now automatically selected on open.
• Made the status bar hotkey tips adapting to OSX (CTRL/CMD).
• Added visualization to show the active line (editable) and display when straight painting.
• Added a workaround for the Unity bug that causes things not to not render over the terrain in 2018.3.
• Updated warning message for non-square terrains to make it more clear that only square terrains are supported.

Fixes:

• Stop null pointer exceptions when the environment changes. Path Painter should now do a much better job recovering from these situations.
• Avoided cursor pointer exceptions on OSX!

You can get it here: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/path-painter-127506

 

Very very soon!

 

Latest update... final thing being done now and all looking good.. should arrive in next few days!

 

Is there a changelog?

 

When is Origami coming?

 

Hey guys!
I don't know what happens with my CTS but when I use Gaia to create a terrain, I add CTS to the terrain and when I apply the profile the terrain disappears and I can only see like big black triangles when I move. The terrain is still there (the brush detects it) but it is invisible

 

This looks like you need to switch off "Draw Instanced" in the unity terrain settings. The next update will improve compatibility with the "Draw Instanced" feature.

 

There will be one shortly before release, as soon as the packages are locked in and we are sending it out for the asset store team to review we can publish it.

 

I have only just gotten around to testing an Draw Instanced is off. I have other basic projects and it does work fine on those. But not on my main project for some reason. Just thought I would let you know.

 

Hey everyone,

We are very pleased to announce that CTS 1.9 and CTS 2019 have landed in the asset store!

CTS 2019 an optional upgrade to CTS and is free for anyone who bought CTS in the past three months, and $20 for anyone who bought CTS before that.

They both contain the latest bug fixes, enhancements, and terrain api support, and the biggest change between the versions are that we have built three new sets of shaders from the ground up in CTS 2019 to add support for instancing and the new LW and HD pipelines.

CTS 2019 also introduces a new direction for us on the asset store in terms of the way we will update and charge for our assets. From here on we will sync all of major new releases of our software to major releases of Unity, and introduce minimal update fees to cover the cost of continuing to develop and support our products across each major Unity version e.g. 2019, 2020 etc.

The reason for this is that the speed of change in the engine has increased dramatically and instead of having to support one major release every 2-3 years Unity are doing significant and breaking changes every quarter and now even making alpha versions of Unity available.

The impact of this is that our support and development costs have gone up and we need to introduce an approach that makes it commercially viable for us to stay in business. We hope that you have noticed the amazing and timely support that we are now able to offer.

We have also scaled the team up. Instead of just being me as it was for many years we are now around seven people. The team has been in place for a few months now and you will see a whole bunch of updates and new assets launching in the next month.

We hope that people will see this as the positive step it is - we don't want to become yet another piece of asset store abandon-ware - so we are positioning ourselves to first cover the cost of the new team, and then to grow it.

Here are the change logs:

CTS v 1.9

• Fixed an issue with bad LOD switching when using snow
• Added selection fields for custom albedo and normal texture compression formats. CTS will display warning boxes if the selected format is not suitable for your target platform.
• Fixed an issue where CTS would override the "Detail Resolution per Patch" value with 64. In 2018.3 this value is now kept correctly, in versions 2018.2 and below you can enter a desired target value in the optimization settings.
• Fixed an issue where CTS would ignore the existing splatmaps on the terrain in rare cases
• Added a checkbox to seasonal tint in the CTS weather manager that allows you to switch off seasonal tint while keeping the other weather manager features.
• The rain value in the weather manager will now influence global profile smoothness instead of overriding individual texture smoothness.
• CTS will use the correct default rendering material of the current rendering pipeline when switching shader type to "Unity"
• "Draw Instanced" will be switched off automatically when the setting is activated on the terrain
• Added support for the new terrain layer system in Unity versions 2018.3 and above. CTS will create new layers in the CTS/Profile/TerrainLayers folder
• Added substance support when the Allegorithmic substance plugin is installed
• Moved CTS material application from Start() to OnEnable() to prevent issues when using CTS with the Vegetation Studio asset
• Aligned the CTS menu and folder structure with the other Procedural Worlds products
• Added a confirmation popup message when using the "Apply profile" button to prevent accidental profile application
• Fixed an issue with runtime profile switching in a build
• Added a configurable path for terrain layer asset files in the CTS profile

CTS v 2019.0

• Lightweight RP 4.8.0 (for use of the Lightweight Rendering Pipeline)
• Core RP Library 4.8.0 (for use of the High Definition Rendering Pipeline
• High Definition RP 4.8.0 (for use of the High Definition Rendering Pipeline)
• Fixed an issue with bad LOD switching when using Snow
• Added selection fields for custom albedo and normal texture compression formats. CTS will display warning boxes if the selected format is not suitable for your target platform.
• Fixed an issue where CTS would override the "Detail Resolution per Patch" value with 64. In 2018.3 this value is now kept correctly, in versions 2018.2 and below you can enter a desired target value in the optimization settings.
• Fixed an issue where CTS would ignore the existing splatmaps on the terrain in rare cases
• Added a checkbox to seasonal tint in the CTS weather manager that allows you to switch off seasonal tint while keeping the other weather manager features.
• The rain value in the weather manager will now influence global profile smoothness instead of overriding individual texture smoothness.
• CTS will use the correct default rendering material of the current rendering pipeline when switching shader type to "Unity"
• Added support for the new terrain layer system in Unity versions 2018.3 and above. CTS will create new layers in the CTS/Profile/TerrainLayers folder
• Added substance support when the Allegorithmic substance plugin is installed
• Moved CTS material application from Start() to OnEnable() to prevent issues when using CTS with the Vegetation System asset
• Aligned the CTS menu and folder structure with the other Procedural Worlds products
• Added a confirmation popup message when using the "Apply profile" button to prevent accidental profile application
• Fixed an issue with runtime profile switching in a build
• Added detection of the current rendering pipeline for future support of LWRP and HDRP
• Added LWRP and HDRP compatible shaders
• Added detection for rendering pipeline and CTS shader mismatch
• Added support for the unity "Draw Instanced" terrain setting, added a checkbox for this in the CTS profile.
• Changed demo scenes to use Post Processing Stack v2 instead of v1
• Added HDRP Scene settings for the demo scenes.
• Added a configurable path for terrain layer asset files in the CTS profile

 

I'm happy to see that the team is growing. This is an absolutely beautiful shader that turns a rather bland terrain into a beautiful AA/AAA terrain.

The most beautiful update of them all. I've been looking forward to this update for so long. Thank you.

 

@AdamGoodrich is there an upgrade path foreseen for those, like me, that bought CTS on November 30th last year? To me it sounds like I bought anasset to see it depreciated after a couple of month already to be replaced with some big, better more advanced version. I know an understand you'll have to set a cutt-off date for the older versions but this is coming to me like learning to never buy an asset you're interested in for a future project again.

Edit: eugh just reading this: NOTE #1: CTS 1.9.x does NOT support terrain instancing and the LW or HD SRP pipelines. For instancing, LW and HD SRP support please see CTS 2019.
So I'm beeing forced to upgrade when I want the fix for the instanced terrain in 2018.3?? Something that was promised for CTS (current version as there was no single mentioning of 2019 version anywhere before) Seriously? That's not good.

 

@AdamGoodrich how long will you continue to support CTS? I'm hoping for it to support 2018LTS when that arrives for the duration of the LTS version but would like clarification.
How long will the $20 upgrade from CTS to CTS2019 be honored?

 

Hey there. We thought a bunch about this. If you bought CTS in November or December then you bought it on sale rather than at full price. You are not obligated to upgrade and we made a significant update to CTS in the free v1.9 release. Amongst other things CTS 1.9 was upgraded to support the new 2018.3 terrain apis. It will work just fine on legacy and new terrains however it will also disable instancing on new terrains in order stop render issues. There is a 4 month window in which we hope that you have received what you think is a great product at a good price.

A huge amount of new effort went into deciphering how the instancing system works in 2018.3 and we had to reverse engineer the terrain system to work this out as there is no documentation. This is significant new functionality for CTS 2019, and we now deliver 3 full sets of shaders instead of one. You can get this plus numerous other enhancements for just $20. You would probably be surprised at how many upgrades we will need to sell to break even on the cost incurred by both @NatureManufacture and us. It is a labour of love as much as anything else.

The $20 upgrade price is permanent. Ideally we will not be forced to deprecate CTS v1 as we want to support it all the way though to 2018 LTS. I think this is totally fair.

However what happened when we did an upgrade to GeNa 2 was that some people 1* reviewed GeNa in protest. The way the asset store works is that those reviews are then passed to the new version, although they have nothing to do with it, and they are not valid reviews of the product, but are instead protests by people who expect free forever.

I really hope that we are not forced to do the same here, as the asset store will not allow us to publish updates after a product has been deprecated.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with paying for the upgrade but I'm wondering why there wasn't even mentioned anything beforehand on the instanced fix not being part of the 1.9 version upfront. I can probably guess the reasoning but clearly this isn't proper communication from your part (and in European countries, where I life this is even considered false advertising and is illegal). Would have appreciated the message when I asked for instanced support that it would be considered a new product (as that what it is in the end) rather than dropping a bomb on your customers afterwards. Well that was my 2 cents on how to keep your customers involved, now ... let's get back on topic.

 

Are you guys considering to release a video soon?

 

Well, recently I dropped using CTS and here is the reason why.

I tried to wait for CTS update for 2018.3 and it took too much time and in the meantime, I learned about MicroSplat.
MicroSplat is making updates constantly and supported 2018.3 terrain for a while.
It performs much faster, and there are much more features through add-on packs, much simpler to use and much fewer issues than CTS.
The best part of MicroSplat is that it was free to try and I was really surprised how well it worked.
It's one of the hidden gems that deserves better attention but the dev is more focused on improving the products rather than spending time on marketing.

Here is what PW should've done.
PW should at least make the current product to be compatible with the current Unity release version and then ask for extra for the future update. The update came in late, (I even think it was deliberate) and to continue to work in the current Unity version and we are forced to pay extra. Without letting us know well ahead of time, it is not ethical in my opinion but more like a money grab.
PW is saying that it cost lots of money to maintain. I'm sure it is but I believe PW products are one of the best selling assets and PW should have plenty of financial resources to keep it work with the current Unity version. PW should be in a much better position than other asset developers. I would be happy to support future development but I'm really disappointed that we have to pay extra for something that came late.

CTS is not the only problem but I have growing concerns about how things are working at PW.
There is no roadmap, no ETA on stuff, they keep on saying about the cost of maintenance and how crazy they are all the time.
Gaia v2 has promised for the free update a year ago and they removed the free update from the product description. I'm really curious what PW will do about the update when it comes. But who knows when it will be available.

I think PW is more about making money then making the best product.
PW is probably the best Asset developer in terms of marketing.
It seems like, Large Sales -> Paid Update -> Large Sales -> Paid Update... is what we are going to see.
I'll be happy to pay for them if they are done right.
I was a big supporter of PW while ago and I have most of their products but you know what happens when a company focusing more on the marketing rather than the product does its own marketing.

The problem is that it's not only on CTS but pretty much on all other products.
It's hard to rely on PW and I cannot believe what they say as is anymore.
Luckily, there are other Assets that can replace PW and I'm trying to replace them one by one.
Gaia is one of the first I dropped after the long wait on Gaia v2.
I also had Gena and PathPainter but it's causing delays entering Play mode, thus I'm thinking about removing it.

They promised Sectr update since the last fall but it hasn't been made and there isn't ETA and I cannot count on PW to make the update in a timely manner.
I'm looking into using WorldSteamer to replace Sectr now.
If I can replace Sectr and I'll then completely PW free and it hurts to say but I'm looking forward to it.

Anyway, it wasn't a pleasant experience using PW products and I hope they do a better job supporting the current product and prove themselves that they are worthy again.

Thanks.

 

Thanks for your efforts guys. I'm considering an update but a roadmap would be great. What we expect in 2019 edition this year? And how does draw instance, new shaders effect performance or other things?

I think releasing new version without a "new features video" is a mistake (in terms of pr window at least). Think about it, CTS comes with 2019 name in its new version but latest video is 9 months old. Also you can mention how difficult it was to intagrate new terrain system in video, so people would understand this version, features and new price policy better (And comparisons between 2018.2 and 2018.3 with new CTS would be great).

 

I have no problem with it. It is how industry runs to keep itself in business. Thanks Procedural World for you CONTINUOUS support on your assets in the ever changing Unity

 

A slight problem maybe, I upgraded to CTS 2019
Am on win 10, Unity 2018.3.6f1, not an empty project But very little in it, like Aura 2, not many assets that
have codeing, so on import, I get this red error .. am just reporting since it might be me, but it might
be a problem.

Assets\Procedural Worlds\CTS\Scripts\CTSDemoController.cs(55,16): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'VolumeProfile' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

 

This is a bug due to an unfortunate last minute fix that slipped through testing, you can get rid off that error by commenting the offending lines out. In case you plan to use HDRP anyways, the error will be gone as well after you install the HDRP packages. Working on an update for this that we still want to release today.

 

How do you completely remove old version of CTS from project, still remnants remain after deleting CTS asset folder.

 

There are a number of things at play here.

Instancing is not a 'fix'. It's a completely new feature in Unity 2018.3 and a massive amount of time was spent working out how to support it within the Amplify framework. If it was as simple as clicking a button it would have been included in 1.9. Bart and I discussed this and felt we deserved to be paid for our effort.

The next part of the answer to your question is quite painful for us. When we released the upgrade to GeNa 2 and the roadmap for it we copped and are still copping a merciless beating. If you check out our reviews and you know our history you will find a group of people that previously gave us 5* reviews are now down rating ALL of our assets - not because they are bad assets - but because we are now charging for the additional work and ongoing cost of support.

In hindsight we did not do a great job of communicating our intention and we live and learn. Hopefully we do better here.

So what we announced a few posts back is the new way we will be doing business on the asset store. Like all new announcements it has to start somewhere so here it is:

All of our assets will be moving to yearly release cycles to be in sync with the yearly Unity release cycles, and as we move to the next year we will charge a nominal upgrade fee.

Why?

Unity is getting more expensive and harder to support. There are now 3 pipelines instead of one, the new ones are still in a state of rapid iteration, and the API's change from point version to point version. This is an absolute nightmare for us to support and the fact that most of our products run seamlessly from Unity 5.6 to 2018.3+ is no small feat.

Additionally, the asset store is not the money pit that some people think it is. We do well out of sales but most other months we run at a loss and we have to change to survive. We asked our customers what they preferred - a subscription or an optional upgrade fee. The feedback was overwhelmingly for an upgrade fee.

Yes. There is very little change in typical usage, but there are also some rather cool additions such as the addition of substance support via the new substance API, and the ability to disconnect and reconnect profiles to minimize memory overhead in release builds. We also wanted to get the latest fixes and support for api changes out sooner rather than waiting for videos. We will have a whats new video soon.

We just did.

1.9 is free.

Its a long story. We have talked about this at length elsewhere and I have conflicting thoughts on this. I think we will probably still release this as a free update.

First we have heard of this. Can you please lodge a support request.

Yeah. We have spoken about this elsewhere as well. We have actually done a significant amount of work on a new version and had it ready to go, but our main test guy at the time has become significantly ill. The new team is gelling well now and starting to kick some goals, and we will be addressing the update again shortly. We do apologize for the delay on this.

Sorry to hear that you feel this way.

I find it curious that you have this perspective given our history of supporting and developing our products. We have told people that we are investing into the company and have built the team considerably. The improvement in support levels and the activity on our discord server demonstrates this.

It has taken some time but the benefits of growing the team and getting them up to speed are finally starting to land:

• Path Painter received a free update last week.

• CTS received a free update plus a paid upgrade yesterday.

• Gaia will get yet a another free update next week (pending successful testing), with an awesome new pipeline manager, a bunch of cool new lighting setups, and new LW and HD support for the water and skies system we added in the 1.9 update. We have not ever charged an update to Gaia despite pouring years of effort into supporting and growing it.
  
  
• SECTR dev starts again shortly and we will be changing things up a little with it. Hope to have that out within a 2-3 weeks as well.
  
  
• GeNa 2 has had another 3 months and counting of full time effort put into it since it launched, and the next free update will take it to an entirely new level.
  
  
• Ambient Sounds - new sound system arrives in next week or so, as does Ambient Skies - new sky and post fx system, and Ambient AI should come a few weeks after that.

We will provide over the next few days. CTS is already has many features and shades terrain, so I am not sure how much else we want to add to it. One thing I would like to see added is mesh blending as well. We did a bunch of work on this but were not happy with the results. We will review this again when we get some time.

 

For this check it should be enough to remove the old path
Assets\CTS
from your project.
Did you maybe move the CTS folder out of the Procedural Worlds folder after the installation? Then you might be getting the "Remnants" message as well, you can then safely click "Do not show this again" in the popup and it should not bother you anymore.

 

I would like to see more on your ambient system

 

Thanks Peter I am just restoring to a backed up copy where CTS wasnt added to scene but is in the project to see if that helps. CTS is in the assets folder and so I havent moved it. I will try clearing cache take a look in a few other places before trying again.

 

Soon

 

Ok, so I installed the latest CTS into my project that uses VSPro with about 12 textures. When I apply a single CTS profile to one terrain tile I get the image below with the error stating that there are textures missing. Looks like I will have to add textures to a CTS profile from scratch which is a pain but if thats what I have to do then I have to do it.

This is the: CTS_Profile_Basic any other profile jst sends the tile either black or light grey all over. Is this a bug or is it because CTS isnt playing with VSPro and adding textures? Thanks

 

Normally you should not have to start over from scratch, the profiles existing in the CTS profile should replace the existing textures on the terrain (as far as available, if you have 2 textures on the terrain and the CTS profile has 6, it will replace the first 2 and add the additional 4 but they won't show on the terrain if not spawned / painted on).

The error message should only occur if your terrain has no splatmap information stored in your terrain data object. Could you please check which terrain data object is associated with your terrain and check if you can see splatmap images on that terrain data object that represent the texture distribution on your terrain?
To do so, select your terrain, check what terrain data object is referenced in the Terrain Collider component. Find that data object in the hierarchy and see if you can unfold it to reveal the splatmaps.


If that is the case you should not see that error message when applying the CTS profile to that terrain, and CTS should be able to replace the existing textures on the terrain with the ones in the profile.

 

I have been thinking about this, there is another developer that has a 100 $ asset and has decided to depreciate
the asset every 12 months for a user, then they have the choice of buying it again or going onto Patreon and for a 25$ payment you get one time access whatever the current version is.

So not all assets are the same in complexity so while it is the developer's decision if they are going to do some kind of
" fee " on a recurring basis and every situation is different.

I think in general how Procedural Worlds has decided to do this is okay. Every game sooner or later will need to get locked in, if it is going to get published. So I think a nominal fee, for locking in support based on final LTS Unity versions is not a bad way to go really.

 

Thanks Peter, Yes there are 4 splatmaps for each terrain tile:
SplatAlpha_0, 1, 2 and 3.

0 has a blue outline of the landscape, 1 is plain black (other tiles have same but theres blotches of yellow), 2 is green and blue and 3 is red and green.

I have a large project and use a few biomes and so VSPro is setup with 16 textures. Those textures are showing in the terrain settings on the unity side but when I added CTS to one the one tile the textures where removed. I had to return to VSPro to get them showing again.

 

Me thinks so too.

 

Hey your welcome to your opinion, and respect it.. but Micro splats, also keeps adding NEW ADD ons and charging.. So its NOT free. They have a VERY BASE version..... You need to buy ADD ONS, which are almost well over 100 dollars for any serious developer that is making a game... he/she will need those, CTS offers much more than the BASE FREE version of Micro Splats... After testing, Mega, Micro, RTP, and CTS, since they all been around and many in beta.......we found, they are all pretty close in speed, BASE ON, using the same features... So, they are all great shaders, but I found, I was able to make a way more Robust , and rich terrain with CTS..

I personally liked Mega splats way more than I did Micro splats, MS, is more of a drop on solution.....where more advance users will use Mega splats to get that rich terrain... The same way I can with CTS, and RTP. .Sadly, RTP UI, is a night Mare to use..

so my point is they are all great shaders and each one will fit others needs differently. but as far as Speed for Larger MAPS, we have tested them all with over 100 testers.. and they are all near the same with some smaller differences to not matter ....

So that is the same thing, and I bet in time Jason will also charge for an update... Its the nature of the beast they aren't going to give away tools for years and years...

Mega Splats I bet he will drop... or make Mega Splats 2 , which WILL BE A charge.. Micro Splats will continue adding ADD ONS, which cost 10-20 dollars.. So, i'm confused when you say its free. That is apple and oranges.. This stuff cost money and this is a common practice ... So they charge in order to keep working and making a living, to be able to give others tools..shaders or what ever it is they do.

Jason is also making a new Add on, which will NOT be free. for Meshes.. So that will be a charge I bet... So he is just doing it differently....that others are. but bottom line, MS would cost me over double, for less features as it is right now. and I was unable to make that rich, terrain as I did with CTS, and Mega Splats. Not Bashing Jason , he also is a great shader programmer, but I for one i'm not a fan of Micro Splats, and Jason himself will tell you the same thing, that Micro Splats is for people who just want to drop, and do next to nothing.

Where CTS, easy as hell to use, and Mega splats, I can get that Rich terrain i'm after.. But CTS is way easier to use that Mega Splats.. ( i test both of these still a lot ..) to see what is the best performance we can get,and base on our feature needs... Sadly Mega Splats also does not have Substance support.


I tell people this all the time, RELEASE your game, and do a multi player, keep spitting content out for FREE for years and years, and see how long, you can last... in business...You won't..period.

So, I for one, Like PW tools and we use in our new Steam games. and ,Love, CTS, Gena. a lot... They are professional tools, I'm sorry they didn't work out for you...but they are far from a money grab.. I see the same comments when a indie releases a DLC, or micro, people are like Money grab.......I really wish people that say this would work, and release software and a game for free, and work for years and years for "FREE"...

For those tools that PW team offers, you would be paying much more than Lunch money for an upgrade.. also, the older versions work fine, so it shouldn't stop you from using...

Also look at the store of the many assets, and many good ones, closed down... Due to them NOT able to work for free for ever...so they will abandon it, and I don't blame them..

Modo, Substance, Auto Desk, Adobe, and many different software will charge yearly, Sub fees and more...This is the standard in the gaming industry..

I for one, would like to see Unity, have it so every year, that the devs can charge a yearly fee..... and release MAJOR versions, this way they can hire people if they want.or can afford to, and keep releasing good stuff... Instead we see many of these assets being abandon, as they aren't going to work for free...

This kinda of stuff keeps me away from the store, because I for one, couldn't see myself, selling my hard work for 10-20 dollars....hundreds of Man hours... (No way))

Anyways, I wanted you to see others point of view, and in hope you understand the industry a bit more...


Anyway best of luck and glad you found a shader that works for you. I love the fact that we have competition...... but CTS, is not a money grab.....

 

I couldn't agree more, some people just need to understand that, making this stuff cost money and people NEED to pay paid for there work...... same with games, we just talked about this with my partner, we will be releasing, DLC in the future and I seen some on Steam throw fits, because there is a charge....They need to understand making this stuff, aand the software we use, we need to Maint as well... Stuff like Modo cost me almost 2 grand, and 400 a year.....and Substance I have yearly fees, Server costs and much more, these companies will GO under if they just keep these games going for FREE ......This is why we see many games stop being worked on....They can't afford to hire anyone anymore, and they lay off there work force... So, bottom line for games, software if people want to get updates , they need to pay for it... no one is forcing them.. More people need to understand ...

Great post Mark, I agree!

Game dev is not a cheap hobby if that is in fact a hobby to some... It costs money and a lot of it.. as time goes on.. and to keep up as the years go back...there will be charges.... This is very common..

Anyways, CTS has Substance support back, the first Shade to bring it back many users like myself, been on Unity /Substance case, to get the support, back, so that shaders like CTS can bring it back also.. So thanks for that!

@pw Team
Thanks, PW team and your hard work, please keep it up.. There are plenty people who do understand the cost of development and you are helping companies, people feed there families but selling your tools at such LOW amounts.... It helps keep our over head down .. Ty for that...

 

If you want to keep those 16 textures you spawned with VSPro, it would be best if you would add a CTS component to one of the terrains (what you probably have done already anyways) without selecting any CTS profile. If it is possible you could also deactivate all other terrains in the scene to make sure no other terrain interferes with the profile creation, and then Choose
Window > Procedural Worlds > CTS > Create and Apply Profile
which should take the 16 textures as they are and turn them into a cts profile. After that is done you should be able to apply the CTS profile to the other terrains and they should keep their 16 textures as well, only that they are rendered by CTS then.

I'm currently installing VsPro to make sure that this is no cross asset issue that we are not aware of.

 

Thanks peter I will try again in the morning. I personally believe its a VSPro CTS issue as I have other projects that have always worked fine even before the updated CTS. But I am just guessing. Il let you know how I get on in the morning. Cheers.

 

We have supplied Lennart with a copy and he may have some insights to offer as well.

Hey Mark! We just updated CTS to 2019.1.1 with a fix for this and you can grab it now from the asset store.

 

Thanks Adam, I will contact Lennart over the next few days. Thanks.

 

Adam, any plans to add a spline type of functionality to path painter to work with VS Pro? You said Gaia will have an update next week, when is the next update to Gena coming out?

 

Splines are being considered for Path Painter. I believe you can get it to work already with VS Pro by getting VS Pro not to spawn on a texture... but am not sure as I have not tried.

We should have the next version of GeNa 2 out within a few weeks. There is only one more new feature to be added (its a super fun variation on the gravity spawning system), and we are now largely working on refinement and stabilization.

 

That is not false advertisement, the version you purchased the asset for, per the Unity Purchase Agreements for the Unity Asset store is, a product is sold is sold as is, with the understanding that the product may not be upgraded or further supported. Unity removes unsupported, non-updated assets once they have gone beyond the lifecycle of actively updated Unity versions.

The asset is not falsely advertised as, in November, you purchased the CTS version for the version of Unity that was available then, as later versions, such as 2018.3 were still in beta. It wasn't until December 7, Unity 2018.3 was removed from Beta, to which you purchased the asset in November where support for the asset was for Unity 2018.2. Unity 2018.2 to 2018.3 had substantial terrain engine changes that has broken a lot of scripts where a lot of developers have scrambled to fix their assets for that later version, although, they are not obligated to fix it as, again, when an asset is purchased, it is purchased for versions of Unity that are displayed as having been built for, which, CTS was not built specifically for 2018.3 ufntil much later and is patching in support since 2018.3 is the end of the life for version 2018.x.

2019 is the new Unity engine cycle which the update states it will begin supporting fully, specifically beginning with full retro support of 2018.3. I haven't tested CTS 2019 on older versions of Unity but likely legacy support is not available and thus CTS 2019 will only work on 2018.3 and forward as the old CTS will have as much support for 2018.3 that can be made but will be primarily for Unity versions 2017.x-2018.2.