Environment Gator

Hey where are those pics!

 

Hi to all,

sorry for the slight delay, i'm actually working a the new , simplified doc and tutorials to explain the new feats, and then the 1.4 should be ready.
What 's interesting is that now the Doc has become easier to read and the setup quicker, since less steps are involved in order to setup the scene.
Yes, the auto-scale for the entire package is coming!!

Again, i'll be back with details and some pics veeery soon.
Maybe later this eve or tomorrow.

Best regards,

 

Hi again,

here's a quick status update about the upcoming version 1.4!!
I'll try to cut short.

Let's start talking about some major features:

AutoScale function
This should be pretty selfexplanatory, now the component will try to auto_scale all of its components according to the WorldRadius we set. The trick works 99% of the times, depending on scene/level shape, but there are also refinement values to set in order to adjust the scale of specific components if needed. Now the initial setup should be even easier and quick than before.

GSpheres
Another interesting component ( imho ) are the GSpheres.

A GSphere will surround the scene according to the current WorldRadius ( autoscale function ) and his position in the GSpheres array ( more on this inside the doc ). They are very simple and easy to use and we can set their behaviour according to current Weather or Time.

They'll be fully customizables and can be used in many ways. Like always, be creative!! Sounds banal, i know, but it's not!!

I've used one GSphere to add the new starfield component.
Then we can add another GS ( one layer below ) to show a Skyrim like milkyway and then another GS layer set as a cloud layer and then another one to show another distant galaxy , etc..
I've already started the GSpheres's Doc.


AtmosphericScattering
With slight refinements at the shader we are now able to "animate" values for Mie and RayLeigh scattering. This allows a huge amount of variations for our sky. This means, stronger Sunsets/Sunrise, darker blue skies, haze skies, etc...


Have a look at the DevLog for all the updates.

Ah, another thing to mention is that overall performances have improved!! A pretty crowded EG will now eat 20/22 DrawCalls.
If we start to bring down the GDome quality , we can go very low in the amount of drawCalls. ( Try to set all the features on and set the GDome off or Low ).

Docs
The whole docs section has been reworked ( or is in work-in-progress ) , the main tutorial ( CrashCourseOne ) has now become shorter and cleaner and another short Tutorial could be found inside the, updated, AtmosGator&ACFSystem doc. Other updates are coming soon.

and now you'd ask: " And the ASTRONOMIC SEASONS???"
They are the 'cause of the slight delay! I'm not sure if i'll be able to implement Astronomic Seasons in 1.4. I think they will
skip to the 1.5 update ( ETA: June ) . Actually there's another cause for the slight delay, that's the new cloud shader, i'm struggling trying to have a "modern" shader for the clouds without killing the performances ( more on this soon ).

That's it for the moment,
the 1.4 is almost ready ( maybe this week end or at the beginning of the next week ).

I'd like to discuss the previews posts, maybe i'll do it later.
Now i need to "evacuate the building" because there are 4 juggernauts destroying my bathroom, right now, singing
something like:"Flooding, flooding, flooding..." auf Deutsch !! ( in German ).

Best Regards,

 

Awesome update Karlbovsky, looking forward to it.

Do you think would be possible to have a feature that saves the sky's gradient (maybe with clouds and sun) into a cubemap that would be compatible with Lux / Skyshop / etc? ( i think it needs to be an hdr diffuse and hdr specular cubemaps for them to work)
Would be a great deal to those who use those assets with dynamic skies and day/night cycle.

 

Wow wow wow, this will be a huge step forward. Dying to try the auto scaling feature.
Any chance you got the realistic star-field implemented?

Edit: Just been looking at the GSphere docs and that answers my star-field question.

 

Lux/Skyshop prefilter their environment maps via spherical harmonics, which is a bit expensive atm, ive been looking for a way to grab them more quickly, and i might have found something hopefully. Need to send a guy an email

 

Well, seems like i had the wrong idea of how it worked

What if it was just a low quality gradient map with the sun? It wouldn't work for photo-realistic reflections, but would still work for the majority of things you do with it in majority of games.

 

I actually posted about exactly this a few posts up. You can use Lux to capture a series of low-res blurry cubemaps at different times of day, and then swap between them. This is basically giving you the sky gradient plus the color of the ground at the particular time of day. If you kept the resolution really low you could probably update the nearest cube map every few seconds and do it in real time instead of storing prebaked versions.

 

They arent just 'blurred', theyre calculated for the radiance and irradiance of each approximate light sources on the cubemap, pixel by pixel... the maths gets really hardbut i can link to articles if you wish, but yes those PBR solutions use spherical harmonics (slow) to speed up an even slower process

You would lose the light integrity and many of the benefits of the convolusion technique, its not a simple blur, its an image representation of something very complex. A realtime gaussian blur wouldnt be that bad

 

Hi to all,

Well, there's not a short answer to that. I mean, such kind of implementation was not in plan till the version 2.0 but since i've received a lot of requests about this kind of support, i think i'll go and study the whole thing as soon as the 1.4 will be online.

I'll like to set a "users's request roadmap" for the next updates ( 1.5 and on ) and i will try to merge it with the current one.

At the moment the priority list of the main features goes like this:
- Astronomic Seasons .
- Enhanced Precipitation and Elements System .
- New EGClouds shader .
- OnScreen Editor and the set/save parameters at runtime thing!

But, again, i'll try to merge this list with some of the "most requested features" , if that it's possible.

I apologize in advance if during this week i'll answer to this topic with slight delays, it's a bit problematic kind of week, things should return to normality in 6/7 days. I hope!!

Thank you guys for support!!

Best Regards,

 

Hi, Karlbovsky,

I have to you are so many questions. I tried all dynamic weather systems, what found in the asset store. And your Weather System is BEST!
But now i have a one question: Why when I use your Skybox Shader with blend 3, 2 and six texture - The internal (not your) image effect SunShaft is not work. When i used standart Skybox shader (Renderfx groups) - SunShaft is work fine with your weather system. Why?

Sorry for my bad english. Thanks you. With best Regards, Leonid.

 

I'm very interested by your powerfull weather system that seems to be very customizable.
Lux stuff would be nice. Do you plan to add twisters, sand storm, and hail storm?

 

@Morfeuskiev

Hey, thank you!!

Yours is a good question! Why?! Actually it should work. As i said before, that's a pretty difficult week for me to work, due to some "troubles" with pipes in the entire damn building!! Right now i'm not able to test it on UnityPro i'll do it as soon as possible!!
( sorry about that ). Meanwhile, please try the system in SphericalWorld mode, repeat the first setup steps, and look if the Unity Pro sunshaft works in that world-mode. ( It should ! ). Note that there's a slight modification to apply to the SunShafts.js script in order to properly work inside the EG. You can find the workaround in this topic.

@Kilonne

The short answer is, yes!! After the 1.4 release, i'll focus on few but crucial parts, the precipitations/elements system will be one of those.
The idea is to create a pretty complete system that will grow up with time.

Here are just a couple of screens from the latest tests.
The effect i'd like to have for the clouds is something like this.
Note: Pictures may look a bit pixelated due to .jpg compression and the textures i'm using during tests really suck, but they we'll give you the idea:






Some extreme settings:






I don't think that, with the current shader, we can go much further than this.
I mean, i pretty much like it and if we start from "good" textures, results are not bad at all, but it's still missing something that i'd like to achieve with the next shaders ( 1.5 ?! ).

Anyway, the 1.4 is coming soon...

Best Regards,

 

I've been thinking about how to get this system working with an IBL + PBR shading approach as the approach doesnt go that well with dynamic environments, have you investigated this at all? Its probably going to become pretty relevant in Unity 5, but i also hope Unity 5 brings the tools fpr capturing environment maps and suchlike at the same time too. It would probably be best to discuss it if you're not clear what im talking about, after youve had a look at it but i'd like to share/consider ideas as to an amenable solution to it (mainly filtering cubemaps on the fly). Ive talked to various folk about it, i'm adamant to get it working with this system, currently my only answer is to supply the PBR shaders with the curve-altered skyboxes from the 6 skybox sky type, wth if possible variants on the base skyboxes with prefiltered cubemaps for more complexity (but could become a headache)

 

Hi,

i've lately started to "think" about how to implement IBLs environments. At the moment i'm pretty open to any kind of discussion about the topic ( read this like: any help/suggestion is more than welcome ). Since i need to rework the cubemap shaders, in order to solve the HDR issue, this will be the right time to start investigating the whole thing. Actually i'm also waiting for some more infos about Unity5 features even if i think that Unity5 will not ship before 6/10 months. Anyway, right now i'm working on it ( actually learning things ).

This sounds interesting.
What do you mean with: "..with the curve-altered skyboxes.."?

 

Hi, Karlbovsky,

Spherical World. All settings are the same (Partially cloud, fix). Gameobject Environments_Gator:
1) Transform position 0.0.0:

2) Transform position 0.200.0


Mystery?

And one more unpleasant thing. When I choose fog Linear, and push button "check and set" - in render settings set exponential fog. But when i start - fog is Linear and work Fine. This is not bug, but not good for visual debug in scene mode view.

Thank you. Maybe you have a bugtracker?

 

@Morfeuskiev
That's strange!!

While in play mode:
Have a look at the scene in Scene view, choose one Iso-lateral view.
Select the gameObject called Ground, inside the EnvironmentGator gameobject ( Hierarchy view ).
Look if the sphere that builds up the Ground gObj. overlaps with your terrain in some way, it should not, but let's have a look.

With Transform.position do you mean the camera/player transform?

Let me know as soon as you've tried. We'll figure it out!!

Regards,

 

His not overlaps with my terrain. I know, so that is not good(maybe, you tell me), but my landscape has a negative height. My camera normally has a trasform.position.y = -50(ground) to maybe -70(river). A normally your ground gObj located on top of the head, and hide my landscape ground(sorry, but i think you understand me). ie I see only mountain(canyons) when the camera go to somewhere higher up the mountain and very big white gObj called Ground. I disable his.

No. I mean about gObj called Environments gator(clean Prefab, not from Crash Course).

So. What screenshot is correct: 1 or 2? I certainly prefer the second option

as I understand it Tranform.position of Ground gObj does not depend on the Tranform.position prefab Environments_Gator. Ground position always 0.0.0.


In general it works, but still would like to understand the nuances. But that's the only thing I do not understand - Why so cheap cost your weather system? That's strange!!

With Best Regards

 

Oh, i meant the skyboxes are altered by gradients depending on time of day

Resolving any HDR issues would be a very good idea, and i've noticed a bug in dx11 mode which shows pink artifacts as the sun rises 'through' the perlin domes (i think it is) and i had a lookat your shaders and saw it had uninitialised variables and suchlike as warnings - this might cause problems with the dx11 compiler as it's very touchy about making sure everything is initialised, or if given a float4 (like a colour) and it's arbitrarily truncated without specifying which elements to use for truncation it throws a warning

Unity 5 is set for release in the summer, its soon! So addressing pbr becomes a very important issue, its definitely on the minds of the pbr asset creators of Unity. You don't really need to do a huge deal, ideally you shouldn't have to do anything except make sure everything works in HDR and linear colour space (I'm hoping to god that gamma is mainly abandoned by people) - Unfortunately noone yet as found a runtime implementation for creating and convolving skyboxes for use with PBR. If you havent got a PBR solution yet, the github repository of Lux has the latest version of Lux and it's awesome and it's free, and will be a great idea to investigate. The same author also does the Advanced Foliage System too which is also awesome and the latest version that has been submitted to the asset store supports PBR well (I hope he pays me well for this promoting!), links are here: https://github.com/larsbertram69/Lux and https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/3253 (Version 3 should be there in a few days)

Lux and skyshop currently use spherical harmonics to convolve an environment cube to get necessary cubes for ibl. This is ridiculously slow but still much faster than brute force - I'm looking into (well,i suggested to a very smart man about) making an OpenCL cube processor that could speed up convolution in realtime - not quite REAL realtime but fast enough that gentle blends every few seconds are possible and realistic. I suggested spherical harmonics to them but it's possibly faster with importance sampling, i know the new skyshop cubemap processor will use importance sampling but not at runtime (yet! they say they will supply the source so i'll naturally try to use an (ideally) opencl compute shader). Only problem is i dont know how to do any of that! It's important to my game so i'm very keen on getting something working, its very important to assets like this because PBR with IBL seems almost impossible without a very strong improvement in environment map creation.

Like I say though I wonder if it is possible to do it in a bit of a more hacky way if its easier. If not then using the above suggested approaches only need use a 32 pixel edge length cubemap for both diffuse and specular cubemaps needed for the process

Reference for using spherical harmonics is here http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter10.html and for importance sampling here http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch20.html

You can use Lux to get a good idea of what you'd want your results to look like

 

Ok, and what if you put the EnvironmentGator.transform at -70 on his Y!?
I mean, try to set the EG at your scene's lowest level. All that "yellow" in your screenshot it's not a good sign!!


Regards,

 

The same as at 0 on his Y. If environment gator position.y = 0/-100/-200 - Ground object always in 0. So it should be?

You can repeat my activity.Open your demo scene (Final) (I have version 1.3r9) and set Environment Gator position.y = 200.

Almost the same effect But even though the earth below. Cloud has very hard contrast. This is good =)

I would like to give advice: Linear space are good use with HDR. HDR requires wide ranges of color/brightness. And how do we get it in practice? Increase the value of the light source, there by increasing the range. In this case tonemapping works fine. I increased all the values ​​for brightness of the sun is 2 times more and it looks great.

I hope you not break your brain by reading my posts

Yellow color is not poor. The camera on screenshot has isometric. All lines are parallel. If you turn the camera you can see the transition of the atmosphere and at one point catching yellow.

Thanks your.

And by the way, if you are working on natural rainfall / snow, I recommend you get acquainted with RTP shader.
At the moment, a very good set of AAA assets list for the project:
1) Terrain composer
2) RTP
3) Advanced Foliage shader v2
4) and of cource very beautiful weather system Environment Gator =))

Thank you )

 

Hi,

Yes, that's because Ground is a child of the EnvironmentGator ( EG ) and so its Y is related to his parent transform position ( the EG ). If you set the EG transform at a lower position inside the inspector, the Ground gameObject will follow and the issue should be gone and things should work properly.

Let me know how proceeds. (p.s. maybe it's my bad english the issue, and i don't get your problem correctly !!
Thank you for the suggestions, i really need clues to start planning this kind of implementations.

@lazygunn

Super!! Thank you for the clear briefing that will definitely help a lot !!
I've got a lot to learn during this weekend. I'm a bit scared about the whole thing, but maybe it's just because i'm not so knowledgeable about the issue.
p.s.
Lars's project is awesome !!

see you all soon.

 

Hi, Karlbovsky,

You do not quite understand correctly.

I open demoscene Final. Standart settings without any change. Worlds size 12000.

1) gObj Environment gator set position.y = 0. Start. And now position.y gObj "Earth" is = -12000. This is normally. BUT!
2) gObj Environment gator set position.y = 200. Start. And now position.y gObj "Earth" is = -12200.
3) gObj Environment gator set position.y = 500. Start. And now position.y gObj "Earth" is = -12500.
4) gObj Environment gator set position.y = -200. Start. And now position.y gObj "Earth" is = -11800.
5) gObj Environment gator set position.y = -500. Start. And now position.y gObj "Earth" is = -11500. and etc...

As seen from this - how would not change position.y of the object Environment Gator for me, the object Earth will always land in the 0 point, relative to the world coordinate. And most likely, this problem is different contrast of your clouds. So i my opinion, when position.y Environments gator = 200 - cloud looks is very contrast. This is good.

I am waiting to 1.4 version. In my opinion you should not hurry with the introduction of PBR. I think it goes beyond of the your weather System. In my project i used Marmoset(and Lux), but his is very static shader. In future unity 5 PBR shaders are fully automatic and dynamic. So before Unity public Unity 5 - you can do a many function about weather, snow, rain, Clouds (generators (yes, of course i see ACF generator, but he is very hard to teach) and more examples) and atmosphere effect.

For example Terran composer advertises RTP shaders, and vice versa. And also mentioned in their releases AFS v2. Even some of the functions in the RTP shaders have been implemented at the request of the creator Terrain compositor.

I am sure that you understand what are often problems of integration between different assets.

With best Regards, Leonid.

Offer:

Why not teach the sun is placed in position according to the settings when i click to button check and set? It is very convenient for visual debugging scene.

 

I don't think he should 'integrate' it, as this product has no need to integrate it. Preparing for it is different. The Lux and Skyshop shaders only static shaders in that their source of illumination - environment maps - are static, as they cannot currently be updated (filtering calculated) quickly. If they could be updated quickly they would be as dynamic as any other shader. Do you have any evidence of Unity 5 providing fully dynamic image based lighting? Unity 5 will also not remove the need for other PBR products, much like the current standard Unity shaders do not stop the need for other shaders to be developed. As I said, it's not something the creator of this asset should integrate at this point, but definitely consider. Unity 5 is coming fairly soon and I hope it does come with the ability to integrate the realistic lighting and reflection generation for dynamic scenes, definitely important for this kind of product, if it does not I have also been talking to other people about it. I'd like to add that I didnt make any of those products but they do have some collaboration between them and I am familiar with their creators, but only because they are very good products.

PBR is an exciting thing with amazing results and I will, some way or other, no matter how I get there, get PBR shaders working with this in some manner but as you say it's probably worth waiting for Unity 5 before thinking about any kind of integration. This does somewhat mean I can't use this fully until i do have an answer to these things, but I have some suggestions to overcome problems with working with this until then

Is it/could it be possible to set the sun position in-editor so you can see it fully, the correct size and luminance as you'd expect, without going into play mode? I'd also like to be able to use an entirely static skybox with the sun already in it but have EG look after the lighting (the sun invisible but its direction aligned with the skybox) - this includes being able to tonemap/change 'exposure' of the skybox like skyshop, it seems that if i use skyshop 'Sky' objects they fight with EG in placing the skybox, but skyshop skies can have their exposure changed in a 'proper' hdr fashion when i'd rather have EG do it and not use any shader product-specific functions. While i'd like the lighting to be completely fixed in a scene, i would still like the weather to continue being fully dynamic. Perhaps the static skybox could be processed to lose contrast in realtime depending on cloud cover. I would be using prefiltered cubemaps based on the static skybox for the shaders on everything else in the scene. It might even be a nice workflow to be able to scrub through a day with a slider with the system working as normal but in the editor scene/composition view, freeze elements at a fixed point and set to a preset (Say time of day, sun position and current skybox condition), have a button to isolate them so I can then grab a cubemap of it all with a Lux or Skyshop probe, set the grabbed cubemap as a static sky and prefilter the cubemap with Lux or Skyshop offline to be used by my Lux shaders for that moment.

Each preset could now switch between different grabs to help compose, very useful for using this until dynamic pbr pops up and even then, still very useful as a composition tool wether you have dynamic skies or not because one-click switching between conditions would help adjusting materials and shaders a great deal

The reasons for the above are because, well, I think it's important that an environment system have a fully controllable HDR treatment as it affects the appearance of lighting a lot, and secondly it would allow me to work on my environments with this properly without having to wait months to see what Unity 5 will do, or see if Nuaj will do it for now as I own it until I can move back to this when i can fully compose my scenes in the editor without guessing then pressing play.

I find a lot of the above a lot more important than astronomic seasons as at the moment if I can't get my shaders to match their illumination and reflection with the environment during in-scene-view composition then I can't work with it productively. I don't mind having a completely fixed sky/time of day for a while though so long as everything's in place and if possible use presets to switch between different skyboxes/sun positions so i can quickly test the shading in varying conditions. This is all workflow helping stuff, really, rather than runtime stuff, but really would help a lot and I dont want to not use EG for a while because of these things because I like it a lot!

I guess if you find my suggestions sensible i can easily throw art stuff at you to try things out with (Or even include for free on your site) as i use programs like Vue regularly to create art so texture based art can be generated fairly easily.

Because of the above i actually agree with Morfeuskiev that more time be spent on weather conditions, clouds and additionally lighting but not so relating to the time of day. The only features i'd suggest working on in relation to PBR are workflow scripts like suggested above, which have no specific PBR shading involved, but help PBR users to compose their environments quickly and accurately. This is really also useful when you've just made a shader tweak and you need to see it working under a lot of conditions easily, i was already planning to make a little tool that would switch between HDRI and associated convolved cubemaps that would assign presets to the proper slots for the global sky material and Lux correctly while I worked on the texture maps for specific objects or collections of objects. EG having that functionality would be tonnes better than me making that tool as you can get so many variations of of EG, have your presets match exactly what EGs output could be during runtime, and the ability to make it seems already there, just need the right ways to hook it up

And if i'm being dumb and this can already be done, tell me how! With the only additional thing i'd want being control over the envronment maps in a HDR tonemap sense

 

lazygunn,

Wow, with my knowledge of English - it is difficult, but in general understand your thought

In general, I agree with you, but there are times that I still do not agree:
1) PBR - For proper operation of PBR each object must have its material and its specular map, or simply lost the essence of reflection. At the moment, it is difficult for Unity in one thread.
When we buy Skyshop and integrate in out project - first opinion, of our team, was wow, cool. But now I see that the PBR shaders simply have another model of light and only in some materials give a prize (eg metal).
PBS control ambient color too.

Now i disable Skyshop and enable all function on E.G. Weather system and for outdoor environments different is very small. But speed has improved and compatibility with some elements (eg RTP - grass is not good looks with Skyshop hide terrain grass shader)

I like latest video from Skyshop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xPkzqUy8kw .
This indicates that PBR need for indoor environments with cube floor(Of course not necessarily).

As for the sun, I certainly did just that (though I still do not understand why the strenght shadow has 0.6 when the ambient brightness is adjusted shadow color), however, the sun is governed when i run game mode, then the script is there, why not just add the event(ruler in script), which was carried out in scene view mode. I think that it is absolutely not difficult.

Thank you for your opinion and dialogue. I think that help author E.G make the product the best in its class.

With Best Regards

Upd.

About the fact that Unity will be dynamic Ubershaders(one shader for all object with all option) spoke one of the last Unite.

If someone would write a normal tonemapper(with filmic) and normal godrays effect - it would probably be the best selling Asset.

 

Hmm, i'm not sure you investigated Skyshop properly, or you missed some important factors - those factors are also why bringing PBR up is important here

Any unity object that is to be rendered has a material and a shader, you can get 95% of any planned materials for objects from a single shader in both Skyshop and Lux - that is the Bumped Specular shader. They have a lot of helpful exotic shaders but they are mostly for particular situations.

If you are already used to Unity then you know how this goes, Skyshop is no different but instead of using Unity shaders you use Skyshop shaders - you have to use almost completely Skyshop shaders in your scene as anything without a skyshop shader looks wrong. Either way, however, for most materials you're using no more combinations and having no more problems with material management than you already had with Unity.

As far as I know, Skyshop uses the Blinn-Phong reflectance model, Unity's specular reflectance is based on Blinn-Phong but the way they are applied are totally different and the results are totally different wether the material is a dialectric or a metal. In standard Unity shaders they talk about specular highlights as being highlights caused by the reflection of the light source, and reflection in usual Unity shaders is not considered by this. In Skyshop, it works under the physically correct idea that EVERYTHING is reflecting its environment, and observing some physical laws like the conservation of energy and how an objects reflectance can depend on its view angle (The fresnel quality of that material). This also uses the idea of specular reflections but in Skyshops case specular is an approximation of everything being reflected, not just light source highlights, and the roughness of the surface of the material affecting how much of the light is reflected and in which direction

This isn't just another lighting model, it's an entirely different way of being illuminated by the environment and reflecting it, and it depends a lot on the cubemaps you give the material, in Skyshop and Lux these can be set globally or they can have their own skyboxes. Other than the skyboxes, the whole workflow for Skyshop vs standard Unity should be similar, except in Skyshop it should be a little easier as materials are now energy conserving and should need less manual adjustment, all materials in a scene should look correct. You can very quickly create specular and gloss maps if you don't like spending time on these (desaturate and levels to spec, greyscale and levels for gloss) but you can be nice and arty if you want to also.

If you only found the effect did anything for metals I find that strange as I hardly use it on metals so far and find it makes a huge difference to all my materials. To get it looking right you need suitable cubemaps though, skyshop and lux can capture and process these cubemaps but its not runtime (The processing, or 'convolution' of these maps takes a little while), which is why its so static, and why i'm looking for a more dynamic option

The shaders do affect ambient, but this should be obvious as normal illumination affects ambient lighting too, ambient illumination isn't generally a constant either, the lit areas of the material combine the lighting and the prefiltered cubemaps and the material qualities to get your output, and if it doesn't look quite a lot different to 'old style' lighting then something has gone wrong - the cubemap reflection itself is a very striking change in appearance even on very rough surfaces

I've decided to go with Lux for now, rather than Skyshop, as I like the idea of such an agile and community-focussed thing, although I use skyshop tools because they're pretty good, even at this early point though, i know going to PBR is a very important art decision as it will affect every aspect of your shading throughout your game, so it's a decision that generally needs to be made early, later on it could cause a lot of extra work moving to it. Even if you switched from say, Skyshop to Unity 5's new implementation, it should be less painful as your results would be closer than otherwise. Even choosing between lighting models is a big decision - there's quite a marked difference between Blinn-Phong and Cook-Torrance shading in Lux, and then a strong difference between forward and deferred rendering because deferred gives you less control over lighting models. I made it even more complicated for myself by trying to add Oren Nayar diffuse to Lux

So yes I from what you say it doesn't sound like you fully investigated the product, especially when you say the only noticable result you got was on metals, i find that very strange. It should be affecting absolutely anything that can reflect to some degree, which is almost every substance in the universe

Regarding skyshop not looking right with grass, i haven't tried, because i'm using lux, and it's interesting timing you say this as the creator of Lux is also the creator of AFS, version 3 will be in the asset store in a few days, i get the chance to try it out now lucky me, am just about to, in fact, and i'm guessing there could be a strong link between Lux and AFS, which would make sense really. There's also communication between RTP and the Lux creator and the creator of RTP himself is working on a new version of his Volume Grass product that is looking really cool so far, particularly for dense clusters of grass, if it uses IBL in concord with the rest of the scenes shading it will integrate perfectly with RTP i'd imagine

Actually what i'm about to do now is especially interesting as it combines the use of AFS, RTP and Lux (I'm reconstructing a Michael O demo level to learn some things, showcase these products and convert all the asset materials for use in my own product at the same time), i'll get back to everyone with results most likely

Sorry for ramble

 

lazygunn,

I am not tell about shader. A tell about Material. Each object must have its material and its Custom Diffuse and Specular cubemaps reflection (see in to shader inside) who be made there where this object placed. Make many custom cubemaps (diffuse and specular) is a very difficult task that affects the speed of development and size of the game.

Then when each object reflects what is beside him and will be considered a full-fledged PBR (Physical Based Rendering). It is possible, but very static now. And of course do not forget the dynamic Global Illumination!

 

I did some cursory things with screenspace reflections (The Candela asset) and it was a bit lacking until 'helped' by box corrected approximate reflections supplied with skyshop - it's quite a nice little combination! I recommend it. The coming skyshop has the sky switching (with box correction) as an update and I think Lux is adopting it too. A fellow I approached about doing the environment map filtering in OpenCL turned out to be very experienced in the field and showed enthusiasm for doing the filtering at runtime and considered dynamic cubemap filtering a possibility but also went into the idea of automatically partitioning areas for environment probes using a bsp or quadtree structure for best fit and accurate cubemaps, all still in OpenCL. So that could be very exciting and while it'd require Unity Pro to dev it (I think?), it should run on a great number of cards, even quite 'old' ones, no matter the platform (Although mobile platforms are ambiguous atm - iOs supports it but only the system can use it, and android is pot luck, some gpus do, some dont)

The ongoing conversation is in the last few pages of this forum if you want to read up

Global illumination is a big subject and an interesting one, i'm actually looking more to other solutions than the one coming with Unity 5 though, i'm not sure how suitable it is for large expanses of landscape, so I expect a good solution to be in the asset store based on Unity 5 improvements to rendering. Theres Jove 2 also, you can look in the WIP forum for developments there (The creator mentions improvements to the idea of box correction to get better mileage out of cubemap reflections in non-box rooms im guessing, although they're hardly noticably wrong atm in glossy surfaces - check a video of the recent Infamous game for evidence of non-accurate glossy reflections still looking great). OpenCL would bring this stuff a lot closer I think, with ideas like LPV becoming well known

Sorry karlbovsky for derailing your thread! If you'd like us to quit just say, it just seems quite relevant to environment simulation atm

 

hehe, no problem! Was a quite interesting "digression". Now i've got an headache but, it's ok..

@Morfeuskiev
Sorry, i've missed your answer, so did you solve your issue?

That's a good suggestion.thx.

..meanwhile i'll be back to work on the 1.4 !!

see you all soon..
Regards,

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/22...-Gator/page9?p=1630995&viewfull=1#post1630995

I described my problem in this post. In general, everything works. But in my case I have a negative height of the landscape and not have the ability to adjust the height of the object Earth for me. For the reason as has been written, object Earth is always in 0 position.y. I solved my problem by simply lifting my landscape so that would be the lowest point of the surface was position.y = 0. If this do not, as I wrote, the contrast of clouds and sun leaves much to be desired and it looks bad.

Thanks for feedback. With Best Regards.


Upd.:

I've been thinking ... and you did not try to add to the atmosphere shader - function "no fog"? I noticed that if you pick up objects Atmospheric him less influence fog and it looks a whole contrast. I also soon try your weather with Sunshine with Atmospherics Scattering.

 

Ok, happy you've found a workaround..

Do you mean the Atmospheric Scattering shader? That could be a nice idea!! I'll give it a try!! thx.


[Update 1.4]

The 1.4 has been submitted for review!
Remember to make a copy/backup of the project you're working on before update!!
Nothing should breaks but, you know...
Since the 1.4 will come with his Transparency order for shaders, if you have already changed the Transparency order of some EG1.3's shaders, please make a copy so to have it in safe.

The Website has been updated as well as the Docs and Tutorials. There are some new sections regarding the new features and in general, all the documentation has been simplified and reworked!!

The webplayer demo(1.3 version) has been removed. The new webdemo should come soon ( 1.4 or 1.5 ).

Best Regards,

 

Looking forward to it.

I was checking the profiler while playing my game and noticed that the environment gator has alot of garbage allocation...
To be specific, here are the numbers:

DomeSlice.Update() -> 5.5KB

AtmosGator.Update() -> 1.4KB

EGClouds.Update() -> 1.0KB

StarsGator.Update() -> 164B

You should probably fix this asap

 

Hi Eskovas,

yeah, i'm aware about that.
I'm already trying to raise down the amount of allocations,
but i'd to admit it's not easy.

thx for the signal.

Edit:
I was looking for garbage made by complex components but, now i've figured out that some , very simple components like the GDomeSlices feed the GC in stupid manners.
So the above "it's not easy" should be read as "i'm tracking it" right now.

 

Hi to all,

the 1.4 Major Update has been released!!

Check what's new in the online DevLog.
I wrote a brief overview Here.

Reminder
Remember to make a copy/backup of the project you're working on before update!! Nothing should breaks but, you know...
Since the 1.4 will come with his Transparency order for shaders, if you have already changed the Transparency order of some EG1.3's shaders, please make a copy so to have it in safe.

The Website has been updated as well as the Docs and Tutorials. There are some new sections regarding the new features and in general, all the documentation has been simplified and reworked!!

The webplayer demo(1.3 version) has been removed. The new webdemo should come soon ( 1.4 or 1.5 ).

Best Regards,

 

Hi to all,

There's an using directive inside the GSpheresGator.cs script that should be not there.
This can throw an error during Build.

-Open the GSpheresGator.cs
-Remove/Cancel the using directive that says:
- using UnityEditor;
-Save the file, compile and now the error is gone.

I'm sorry about that issue, something went wrong in the master repo and the R15 of the file is inside the Build instead of the R20. The code is the same , but the r20 was the correct one to put in build. I'm moving to GIT + SourceTree for VC, it seems to be the easiest and safer way to go.

[EDIT]
"The above quickfix is not needed anymore, the 1.4R23 hotfix is online."

Regards,

 

Hi to all,

Here just for a brief update.

What's coming next !?

As I said the 1.5 will be a release focused on "hotFixes".

I'll try to reduce the amount of datas that goes into the GarbageCollection.

The Astronomic Season feature is proving more difficult than expected, i mean, not difficult but complex. So i'm evaluating some workaround to simplify things a bit. ( At least that you don't want me to rotate your scene in order to reach the correct inclination, reaching our Periapsis.. )

The Editor will be probably improved in order to have a setup/design process even more designer/artist friendly. At the moment the "Presets" idea has been discarded, after all , an EG prefab is already a sort of preset, so I'm thinking more at some sort of @runtime editor, to set values/parameters on the fly inside the current EG prefab and then store it.

I've started to work at the new Elements/Precipitation system.

I've also re-organized the entire development workflow, my internal server is back to work , and now i'm using a distributed system for repos ( "Yeah, goooood morning Beastie !!"), so that an error like the one in 1.4r20 will be easily avoided.

I've not a date yet for the 1.5. If i decide to just put hotFixes in it ( no new-features ), maybe it will be faster to release, let's see.
As always, if there are specific requests or suggestions, they'll be welcome.

Keep an eye on this topic or @ www.sixteenleft.com to follow the development.

Thank's a lot for the support!!

Best Regards,

 

Hi, do rain drops collide with unity water and show droplets on the water?

thanks,

shwa

 

That's good to hear. Maybe one update focused on bug fixes and performance improvements is the best.
I haven't updated to 1.4 yet, but i'm also noticing that environment gator is eating many resources, here's an image of the profiler:



I was confused as to where those Physics.Simulate were coming from, since i don't actually have much physics running in game, so i disabled EG and found out that those physics were coming from EG.

Other thing noticeable from that screenshot, is that about 90% of the top heavy performance things in my game are from EG, about 3-4 ms, along with the GC allocation, and my game was already kind of heavy.

I haven't looked much at the code, but do you make that much physics calculations each frame? it could also be something to do with triggers or something, inside the EG prefab.

 

Any way to get Environment to work for Flight sims?

 

Hi to all.

sorry for delay but the last week was a bit problematic..

@Eskovas
Your results are very interesting and i'm tracking all the possible "lacks" in code for the next release.
I don't get the same values as yours during tests and the Physics.Simulate() looks way too heavy, if everything comes from the EG.
Just for test purposes, please try to not Activate the GDome at all ( SKYBOX panel>Surrounding clouds>Set to NONE) and see what happens. I also suggest you to update to the 1.4R23.

@SHWA
The short answer is, yes. Using Shuriken as particle system allows to set SubParticle emitters that we can use to spawn additional particles ( i.e. droplets ) when , for example, our main Particle collides with a specific Layer.

@Jhon G.
No...for the moment!!
If you are working on a "real" flight simulator ( aKa the entire World/Globe represented and flyable) , the approach used in the current version of the EG will not fit well in your project. If you'r working at a some sort of "restricted fly zone" kind of simulation, maybe you can achieve something with the EG. Which one of the twos?

Guys, i'm sorry if lately i've answered with a bit of delay... things should come back to "regular" soon..
Thanks again for cooperation!!

See you soon with more infos on the next 1.5 (hotfixes) update.

Best Regards,

 

Hello there,

Here's with the surrounding clouds enabled:


Here's a screenshot with the surrounding clouds set to none:


One thing unrelated to EG
Do you know what Gfx.WaitForPresent means? those red spikes are from that, and it can get ridiculous sometimes...

 

I also updated to version 1.4 yesterday.

Sorry for double post, but it's not letting me edit the post above...

 

Yep, as far as i know, it should be related to the VSync.. urban legends told that we should not worry about those "disturbing" red spikes.


p.s.
Guys I'm catching up my workstation, the maintenance work in the building should be finished .. a couple of days and everything should be back to normal.

 

Hi.

I testing SunShaft now. Sun shaft not work that in your shader blend3 has no ZWrite Off. When i add this - Sunshaft work Fine. And second problems - Sky object (atmos). When i added ZWrite Off - Sunshaft work - but atmos shader don`t work. Maybe you can do something? For example do alpha transparency in shader (EGSkyFromAtmos).

And once again I want to tell you. Today I tried to water(For Rain) and snow in RTP shader. They are very easy to use (just a few parameters that are configured on the texture presets).

Water(For Rain) from another example, but work as well.

You just have to add support for these things in the next release. And also (possibly) provide the addition of other components. ))

Even as a proposal. I would like to customize the detailed weather effects in a certain period of time. The scheduler predefined tasks.

 

Hi,

yep, i've made a list of 3rd party components for which i wish to add support/compatibility and it's a loooong list. It will be just a matter of time to have those type of support inside the EG. Now there will be an HotFixes release that maybe will include some new features as well. Within the next version ( 1.5 ), i'd like to add the final touches and refinements to the system code,mechanics and core functionalities, once that is done , i'll start to add Pro features and 3rd party components compatibility. Actually i'd like if someone wants to help redacting a sort of "priority" list of the "most wanted 3rd party components compatibility ".

The ZWrite you've mentioned is one of those "things i want to define". I mean, since the EG uses the "very basic" Unity free Fog and since this is not the best fog you can afford , i had to find temporaries "compromises". That's why i suggest to use the Fog as a far haze instead of a close-hard fog. Ofcourse the EG needs his own Fog element and will probably use raymarching to simulate volume ( for clouds as well, but this will happen in a medium-long term ). The EGShaft is another example of this kind of temp compromises which i had to adopt and it will turn in a "no compromise" feature soon.

not sure i've answered all the topics since I'm having some problems ( i guess ) reading the forum, i can't find some posts anymore ( i.e. the MorfeusKiev post about Fog ).

i'll be back soon...

Regards,

 

Hi, Karlbovsky.

My post about FOG i delete

I thought about what was not right about the fog and its use. A standart unity skybox does not affect fog. In this case, the question arises - how to be a Very strong fog - because when heavy fog - that clouds usually not visible and it is natural. So I just deleted some messages about the fog. I came to the conclusion that even though your settings are strong, unfortunately I probably will have to modify them for themselves.

Why did I insist on fast integration of RTP?

Wetting and coating of snow in the shader is controlled only 2 slider (after setup(slope and another function), One for each):
0 - 0,5 - 1


The same goes for water.

I'm sure add 2 slider with lerp function is not difficult. After you in a certain way already implemented rain and snow. RTP have shaders for meshes, but I'm sure that everyone will be able to realize it and through its shaders. That is why it would be nice to provide an opportunity to connect another custom shaders.

Need to be always ahead of the competition, and not go with the times

But of course the choice is yours.

Thanks for your reply. Best Regards.

Update:

RTP shader has very advanced documentation. 110 pages. This is not much But I am sure that you as a developer of such a unique weather system would be interesting to read about the work of your colleagues.

 

+1 RTP integration with weather effects would be great.

With regard to flightsim use, I was thinking along a non restricted area.
Maybe some way of moving the clouds in relation to players position?

 

Hi,

@Morfeuskiev
Ook, message received. Let's see what we can do..

Yes, that could be a solution, much depends on the mechanics you choose in order to move your Player-Cam inside the World. Is the world moving and the player is set in the center, or vice versa? You will also need "flyable clouds". Inside the EG you can use Volumetric clouds and try to set a complete "flyable sky" ( flyable sounds weird, i mean clouds you can fly through ) but what you want to achieve, a flight simulator, goes far beyond volumetric clouds and maybe, Unity itself.

I'm very interested in flight simulation stuff since long time, so your project sounds interesting to me and if i can help integrating the EG (or an extended version of it ) i'll be glad to help.

Regards,

 

Hello Karlbovsky

I found a bit more bad things happening with EG ( sorry if i've been a bit negative lately).

- The moon has so many polygons that i do not know why you would make it like that...
Here's a comparison image using and not using only the renderer of the moon:


The statistics window shows less ~130k Polygons and less ~60k vertices.
The moon could be set up with only a low poly transparent circle, but it's setup with a 40k tris sphere... the same as the earth and sky.

Talking about transparency, the GSpheresGator transparent accounts for ~4ms on the GPU, making it the most expensive thing on the GPU. I had to remove two GSpheres, but i still get ~2-3ms on the GPU.
You should also make it so we can delete specific GSpheres. Right now, you can only delete from the end to the start of the array. I had to replace the first two with the last two, so i could remove the first two.

The Earth sphere and moon sky are also very high poly and do not contribute to anything to the final image.

(SEE EDIT)
This next one is pretty important:
The DomeGator is really heavy on the CPU. I expanded the DomeGator.Update() so you see what it is doing.


Also, if i alt-tab and get back in, it breaks that and it no longer updates. I don't actually notice any visual difference in the game though...

Also, if i disable the TheGDome gameObject, all physics calculations go away (a problem i reported awhile back)

Hope i can help you with this info to improve EG.
If you want more info about certain things, please tell me


EDIT:

After seeing the profiler's DomeGator.Update(), i put a rigidbody with kinematic enabled, and it fixed the physics overhead. It's because of how the current PhysX works in Unity. ( Unity 5 new PhysX will fix this problem. Basically, if you have a collider and you intend to change its position, rotation or scale, always put a rigidbody attached to it with kinematics enabled)

 

Hi,

i'm tracking almost every issues you've listed. The ( too )hi-poly moon will be replaced by a "simple" textured flat mesh, and a new low poly model/mesh will be available to choose in the inspector so that every gameObject that uses a sphere or a GSphere, can be set with a low poly or a hi-poly mode, the earth sphere as well.

The GDome is under rework. Meanwhile try to disable all or some of the mesh colliders attached to the GdomeSlices.

Hey don't worry about that, i was wondering that everything was going too smooth..
Jokes apart, i really appreciate all the feedbacks and critics, no problem, they'll help me make a better product.

Most of the above will be fixed inside the 1.5 update.

regards,