Flow

Is it possible to get the raindrops effect on windscreen using the Flow free, or maybe you need for that a special flow shader, which is in the paid version of Flow? Could you explain to me how to get the effect of raindrops on the windscreen? I'm using Unity for only a few weeks and I need a little help.

 

Can Flow be changed during run-time?

I would like to have a deformable terrain, so river paths might change.

 

create rivers seems easy and is amazing. I think it's a good product

 

Can flow maps be updated at runtime? How about water traveling downhill? Can you throw a video together that shows this functionality if it exists?

 

Arkhivrag hope you test it in the latest version unity 4.1 .Scene Splatter and Scene TheEnd not working properly,

 

Just purchased. I hope this ends up meeting our needs.

 

Do the shaders work with an orthographic camera (especially the flowing river)?

 

Great Package. Just bought it.

I am publishing mainly to Mobile IOS/Android and testing the demo scenes that come with the package. To be frank, I'm a bit disappointed because the following restrictions in the documentation.

Mobile version of flow works the same way, but with some restrictions:
1. Mobile shaders do not support reflection, parallax, emission and noise parameters.
2. No specular color
3. Specular map inside flow texture alpha channel
4. Specular lighting directions are approximated per vertex
5. Normalmap uses Tiling/Offset of the Base texture
6. No Deferred Lighting support
7. No Lightmap support
8. Supports ONLY 1 directional light. Other lights are completely ignored.

For each of the Demos in the package, can you suggest what would be the best MOBILE shader to use. Or better yet, can you make some demos that can show off the best abilities of Mobile Shaders in action. This would really help me to learn the best practices of getting the most from the Mobile versions of the shaders.

Thanks kindly.

 

Does this work with the free version of Unity or is it for Pro only?

 

Hi Arkhivrag,

Thanks for your answer and screenshot.

I understand that Mobile shaders are not the same as the Non-mobile shaders. I tried many combinations mobile shaders on the examples scenes to see which ones worked. The process is really hit and miss to find a suitable shader, some work and others do not. What I was asking is to have demo scenes specifically for Mobiles. This way we can see what they can do. Also additional documentation regarding how to best use these mobile shaders (because of the limitations) This information will really help those who bought or will buy Flow for their projects.

 

What's the difference between Flow and Flow Free?

 

Hi Arkhivrag ,

Just bought Flow, and I am trying to use FlowMapPainter to paint a foam line in my wave.

The problem is that FloMapPainter is exporting .PNG without transparency, so I am getting a wrong image inside Unity3d ( v. 3.5.7f6 )

How did you solve this problem ?

 

There is any way to add lightmap support to mobile shaders? That was surprise to me Cheapest shader but with lightmap will be great i think.

 

+1. Would be Ace with lightmap support.

 

Big Thumbs UP for the update.

Cheers.

 

Hi Arkhivrag,

I figure out the problem and it is working now.

I also need to move the Base Texture independent of the Flow Texture.Is there a mobile shader we can do that ?

 

When I do that the material for the ocean cover the material with the foam.

How do I make sure the foam material will be on top of the ocean material. Is there a render order ?

 

Tests in progress...

 

How did you go about making the tears for the statue in the video? Did you just place the flow shader on a plane that was shaped similarly as the face?

 

Thanks for quick response. Really helpful.

 

How you set the direction of the flow?

It have support for normal map and specular?

 

sorry fot lots of questions, but how you drow it in photoshop?

 

Hi Arkhivrag,

I'm using flow (1.6) for my rivers but at the bottom of the waterfalls I notice some artifacts:



Any idea how I can get rid of them?

 

Hmm,

That's strange as the base of the waterfall consists out of particles. But I'll create a seperate project to check your suggestion anyway.

 

Hi,

I still think something must be wrong with the flow shader (using No-base/Flow_Refractive) as this issue doesn't occur when using the Unity water (Fx/Water) shader.

Unity Water

While the same scene (only swapped out the shader and assigned the proper control scripts)
This is the result with Flow:


Can you take a look into this please?

Kind regards

EDIT: If I move the camera sideways the rendering is somethings ok (meaning the particles seem to be rendered ok) but then when I change the camera angle again the particles disapear again. Seems some sort of depth issue?

 

As requested. see PM.

 

I have ask u will update free version because free version wasn't updating for a long time ? (since 2012, correct?)

 

I'm trying to make a flow map for my lava texture, which has magma floating on it. I want the lava between the magma to flow only. I've tried the 2 programs suggested in the readme, but they don't seam to work well and aren't maintained. Can you suggest some other program to help with creating flow maps? I'm just not understanding the instructions well. I have GIMP available to me, but no Photoshop. I can't provide the texture here though as it's a purchase from the asset store, sorry.

Edit: I got the lava flowing by turning just the lava into completely white while leaving the reason transparent, but I have to have a separate flow texture that looks like the lava.. just doesn't look right.. oh well. It would still be cool to have some sort of flow map editor.

 

Well I wanted the rocks to remain stationary and the lava move around them. All being a single texture. At any rate I just set the flow map as completely white so the entire texture moves and it looks pretty good for my usage now. Be cool if somehow there was a built in flow painter for Flow. I think that'd add a lot to its functionality.

 

After importing the latest package, i get this Warning in the Console:

 

Hi, loving this addon! And using it for various things in our project.

Would it be possible to have a shader that can use vertex colour, to fade the mesh to transparent?

 

next mega update will have painter or some tools within the package to let me paint or control the flow inside the editor?

 

If its possible, I think the biggest most helpful update we could get to flow is being able to create the flowmaps inside of Unity. As it stands I had some trouble creating the flowmaps easily. I managed to do it, but it took far too long and I had to go through 2 different tools to do it.

So #1 on my list is definitely an embedded flowmap editor of some sort.

 

You can use my flowmap painter in my Aubergines Editor tools to paint flow maps on meshes directly inside Unity.

Sorry for hijacking the thread

 

But FLOW is using the B channel, isn´t it?

Cause the ReadMe says:

 

today,i update the Flow pro version 1.6.4 . but i find the UpdateInfo.pdf file in version 1.6.4 Version ,not write about version 1.6.4???

What is important to modify or update the content in this 1.6.4 version?

Looking forward to your reply

 

I downloaded Flow Free today to try it out, but I couldn't get any movement in my water. I created a flow map using FlowMapPainter. Any ideas what might be wrong?

 

Excellent! Thanks

 

Hey!
We have recently bought Flow for Unity and We've noticed that on one machine the shader works fine but on the other it somehow doesn't read flowmap correctly. We've tried already to update video card drivers with no luck.

The shader in question is Base Transparent/Flow Reflective but I've had the same problem with other shaders too. The problem is that it seems like the shader doesn't read the flowmap at all. The water has continuous effect of going diagonally through the unity terrain with flowmap areas showing, but the flowmap doesn't affect the flow direction correctly or at all.

Machine specs: (shader not working)
Windows 7 Home premium 64bit
Intel i5-2500 @ 3.30GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
8 Gb ram

(Shader working)
Windows 7 Home premium 64bit
Intel i5 @ 2.50GHz
8gb Ram
Nvidia GeForce gt 630M


Unity versions are the same 4.2.1f4

 

Sorry, I meant Unity plane.
I tried with default Flow materials and flow map and they don't work either. :/

 

Hey, I managed to solve the problem!

For some reason Unity's Color Space Linear messes up with the flow map. Changing it back to Gamma works fine. Thanks for your quick answers and help!

 

Hello,

Excuse my English I'm using google translator.

The flow, so that you have shown in your demos mainly use it to simulate rivers.

Could you use it to simulate cloud?

Greetings.

 

I downloaded the free version and I must say it looks absolutely fantastic. If I could find a way to generate flowmaps at run time I would buy the full version without thinking twice.

Which brings me to this question, what would be the proper way to use this on a randomly generated terrain. I'm using the unity terrain engine, apply hills with perlin noise then use a seed to spawn a path of river nodes. I then lower the terrain along the nodes to create the river bed. Right now as things are I'm using the Water4example that comes with unity, barely any displacement. It looks okayish, the problem is my terrain is 2000 x 2000 units, well my water quad is also 2000 x 2000, and of course the river flow doesn't follow the bed.

Would it be possible to generate a flowmap at runtime?

By the way the shader is applied to a quad, not the actual terrain.

 

Thank you very much for the information, I don't really mind the time it takes as this can be done after the player builds their terrain while the game loads. I can then save that texture within the save file for future references. All the tutorials I see are about using photoshop to create the map, you think there's a way I can do it only with code?

 

Hi @Arkhivrag, thank for awesome plugin Can you make a tutorial to demonstrate how to use free flow map painter for your plugin? thank you very much

 

Runtime would be really Fantastic. +1

 

There is a runtime tool here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/19...te-flowmaps-using-a-fluid-simulation-RELEASED
Which you should be able to use with Flow.

 

Hi,

I am implementing my waves using Flow. At the end of the mesh on both sides it must became transparent so it mixes with the underground texture.

What is happing is that using the Blue Channel ( Alpha ) it does not gives the effect I want. Instead of fading to transparent it fades to gray and the turns transparent.

The top Mesh is using my shader ( 2TSMWaveShader ) which fades to transparency with no problem.

Using the Vaccum/FlowMobile/No_Base/Mobile_Flow_Diffuse does not gives the same effect ( lower mesh ).

Any idea ? I tried other Flow Shaders with no success.

 

Hi,

Transparency is working now, but when we apply one shader over the other, some mesh artifacts are appearing:

 

Hi Image3d,

I have been looking for ways to get rolling waves into unity, I was playing with the Surf's Up approach on the waves but only inside of the 3D application not in unity yet:

http://library.imageworks.com/pdfs/...-Up-the-making-of-an-animated-documentary.pdf
(waves start at page 47)

How are you dealing with the waves? Do you think its possible to seamlessly blend the waves to the regular ocean surface?
Would love to learn more about your wavessetup!