DIGGER - Caves & overhangs for Unity terrains

It does trenches really good too. That is actually how I have been doing my caves is dig down and set up my ground of the cave first. Then decide how I am doing the overhangs and outside of the cave from there. I hope that makes since. I have been up looking at code for too long today . So I apologize lol.

 

This weekend is the last chance to get Digger for only $28.
Price will be increased in a couple of days!

 

First of all, awesome Asset! I don't have a use case yet but decided to play around with the system. I created a simple terrain using Gaia and proceeded to just dig and add with the max size and opacity. While doing so I noticed that in some cases the generated voxels generate "holes" which are unpleasant. Trying to dig around them does not make them go away. I tried reproducing that bug with a flat terrain without success, but with a generated terrain it tends to happen sometimes.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm using Unity 2018.3.2f1

 

Thanks for this feedback. Looks like a bug. Could you tell me more how to reproduce this issue? Or maybe could you send me zip of your project (exporting won’t be enough because internal Digger data is ignored by Unity)

 

I sent you a PM with steps of how I reproduced the issue and a test project.

 

I’ll check this out thanks!

 

The “hole” error is fixed. I’m going to release a small update with new “high mesh resolution” feature and this fix + a few optimizations.

 

Awesome to hear, I can wait for the update!

 

Digger 1.1 is pending for review

BTW, I uploaded a new video which I hope shows better what Digger can do. Let me know what you think!

 

Thanks @Amandin-E - I haven’t had time yet to try out Digger, but I will make sure to dive into it with this new update. After that I promise to write a review for Digger. Thanks for the new video, it’s much appreciated!

 

why doesnt this work in runtime?

 

It may in a future version, however I want to focus on edit time for this asset as I already have another voxel engine - UltimateTerrains - for real time stuff.

 

but i'll be usefull for those want to use it in runtime with unity terrains. like me

 

Please keep on track @Amandin-E feature creep is not good and you do have a whole system for run time.

Plus he has to get out every bug before even trying, and even then it could break much easier with new Unity
versions. Just saying imho

 

I agree

 

Digger 1.1 is available, but there is an issue that will prevent your game from building (because of Editor script use). I'm going to fix this right now and send an update ASAP. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Digger 1.2 is pending for review. It just fixes the build issue of Digger 1.1

 

Good, I switched to 2018.3 just to try Digger. So far, so good..

 

Thanks! I hope the upgrade of unity wasn’t painful!

 

Is it possible or planned to change the brush shape or have a few options to choose from?

 

It is planed, but to be honest I’m not sure what I should add as brush. Would you like to see something cubical? What else? I may not be able to create all shapes because it has to be done programmatically, but please share your ideas!

 

How about a sphere but the bottom half of the sphere is squashed / flatter, making it easier to create a cave floor.

 

Good idea! Thanks!
And what about smooth and sharpen “brushes”?

 

I wonder if you could decide where you want your caves before using digger, and then make an indent or slight rise before you use your erosion filters. Might work. I use World Creator Standalone and curious to see if I could make the erosion look natural. The other point....most caves are in karst areas where erosion is not so pronounced.



Any reason to show a geology picture.

 

Smooth and sharpen would be great too Could it be set up like other apps ,where if you use sharpen then hit shift and it changes to the smooth brush . ?

 

Hey, so I tried the new version and had no problems with the holes! But I found another problem (in the same project I sent you regarding the holes). For some reason I'm not able to dig straight down on top of the cliffs if the resolution is set higher than 1x. A level lower it works like a charm. Due to that digging problem the seams around the voxel mesh are not lining up with the terrain hole (I this is because they expect the hole to be deeper and the sides to steeper than they actually are)

I recorded a quick video (using the same project as before) to showcase this new bug:

Sorry for digging out the bugs

 

Looks like a good idea!

Sure!

Thanks for reporting it. I see what the problem is. I'll let you know when it's fixed!

 

a cone shape would be good, which you can flip. So we can create stalagmites and stalagtites.

 

I vote for cubes, and a way to select the depth that the brush takes away.

I'm also having trouble with holes in the terrain, even after updating to the latest version of Digger. They're not really holes, as the terrain mesh is still there and can be driven or walked on, but holes in the textures.



This doesn't always happen but it does do this most of the time. I tried the demo scene and everything works great in that. I'm using Landscape Builder to make my terrains, but they are standard Unity terrains, as I can still use Unity's terrain tools on them

Also there is a glitch in the collision mesh, where it is sticking almost straight up. If I drive on the terrain that Digger has made it knocks my vehicle over or only pushes it away if going slow enough. You can see the nearly vertical tire tracks in the picture below.

 

Could you send me a package containing your scene (with the terrain) please?
Also, could you send a screenshot with all these settings:


I will release an update with bug fix ASAP.

 

@Willbkool_FPCS I'm pretty sure I found the issue. It happens when the control map resolution of you terrain is low compared to the size of the terrain. I'm fixing this.

 

I'm not at home this weekend so it will be tomorrow night at the earliest.

I'm using a 4097 heightmap for a 4x4 km terrain.

 

No worries, I can wait a few days
Yeah, that's the heightmap but the controlmap is something different. Heightmap controls elevation, controlmap controls textures.

 

Purchased -

My wishlist for digger:

• Path tracing - Create a start/end (possibly curve?) and have it cut (or fill) using the current brush along the patch. (easy overhangs and caves)
• Volumes - Attach a cutter script to any convex mesh (cube, sphere, etc). Scale, rotate, resize, etc to whatever you want. and have it cut (or fill) everything located inside. (use it to make easy dungeons).

 

Good ideas, but not as simple as it might look. I add it on the roadmap however.

 

Hey guys, just to let you know Digger 1.3 will be uploaded in a few days, probably next week.
It will fix several issues (including those mentioned in this forum thread) and add a few more brushes (cube, half sphere and cone), as well as a « depth » parameter to control the position of the brush relatively to the terrain surface.

 

Looking forward to the 1.3 update!

I'm currently working on a WebGL project -- unfortunately the Digger terrain part shows shows up white instead of the painted layers. Any chance that can be tweaked to show up as intended?

 

I will definitely test this. Might be a shader issue, even if I don’t see why the issue happens in WebGL only. Are you using default shader or CTS?

 

Using the default shader. Screenshot below shows how it looks in WebGL


When switching the project to WebGL, using Digger causes this error message:


After that digging / adding is possible, but only shows up as a white material. Clearing / Sync & Refresh is possible, but is then followed by:

Code (CSharp):

1. NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
2. Digger.DiggerSystem.GetOrCreateChunk (Digger.Vector3i position, Digger.Chunk& chunk) (at Assets/Digger/Sources/Digger/DiggerSystem.cs:479)

... each time the 'brush' is used. It's possible to use the brush again (once) by removing Digger components in the scene and removing the DiggerData folder.

Hope that helps

 

Oh I see! Texture Arrays are not supported by WebGL. I forgot that.
The only thing I could do is to provide a shader that doesn’t use texture arrays, but there will be less than 8 textures on it (which is the limit of the current shader).

 

That would still be great - what would be the maximum limit without using Texture Arrays?

 

I don't know yet I have to test. However, as per this documentation, texture arrays should work with WebGL 2.0. Do you really need WebGL 1.0 (it supported by more browsers of course, but this will probably change in the future...)

 

Yeah I read that too and then tested this, but the result is the same when forcing WebGL 2.0 (i.e. I deactivated AutoGraphics API and built for WebGL 2.0 only). WebGL 2.0 support would be fine -- it just did not seem to do the trick.

 

Ok, looks like the doc is not accurate. I will test it and provide a fallback shader if needed.

 

@DandyUnicorns I updated Digger to make it compatible with WebGL. The fallback shader should be able to handle up to 6 different textures. Would you like to test it as a beta? If so, send me a PM with your email address and your invoice number (starting with IN).

 

@Cecrit @Willbkool_FPCS Have you tried Digger 1.3? Does it fix your issues?

 

No sir, just downloaded the update this morning, haven't had time to check it out. When I get home from work tonight, I will try it out..

 

I just gave it a quick test and it seems to work like a charm now!

 

Over the weekend I tried in an existing project and at first it looked like Digger had done nothing. I went into Play mode and tried an FPS character though and fell through the terrain into the hole that Digger had dug. But The terrain still had the original texture over the hole. So last night I created a new project and everything worked out ok.

 

Good to hear! Thanks!

Did you try to click on "Sync and Refresh” button? It’s true that some updates can break previous work but I thought it was not the case with 1.3 update.