ForestVision [ Artist Essentials Product ]

As an artist myself, I really appreciate the work you put into this product. In my opinion, your trees are much better for the artist than any I’ve seen for Unity. Really looking forward to the update because of this, I know it will be quality.
Thank you for keeping this asset alive.

 

Thank you sir. That really has been my goal from the beginning. Trees can be simple background elements that Speedtree can meet the need for easily, but I always hated how I couldn't tweak anything, which is really when I decided to start making my own. Sometimes you just need something special, and the ability to create exactly what you need. I really hope that this update closes the gap on alot of areas I felt FV lacked. There is, and probably will always be something else to add, but I'm really happy with this update. I have a few housecleaning tasks remaining after this next demo scene, and then I will be submitting it. My goal honestly is to have this out by next weekend.

 

I'm looking forward to the update. Do not forget to advertise your asset (and possibly do a promotion). Maybe you could promote a bundle: ForestVision + PBR Texture Lib + Trunk Shader.

 

Ok, I've added just about everything I wanted to add at this point. I'll start working on new promotional images now, and push this out to ya'll. Still a few small things I'd like to do, but I want to get back to working on my game now.



Hopefully this will tide you over for a while.

 

Very nice!!

Looks great, I’ll be keeping my eyes out for the update!

Glad you took the time to add this into your schedule, much appreciated

David

 

Thanks David, update has been submitted.

Remember there is going to be a discrepancy between these demo scene renders, and what will be in the package since I can't just hand out Time of Day .

This update has inspired me to go ahead and launch my 2 new products, so I guess the game is on hold for just a little longer.

Rockvision is on the way, and the Foliage Creator shipping with this update is going to be extracted into its own product. FV will come with version 1.0, but all future updates will be in the separate product.

More to come...

 

Excellent!
Can’t wait to see them.

You have to follow your inspiration, that’s when you will do your best work.

 

Update is live.

Remember that I had to strip out Time of Day from the demo scenes so don't be surprised that what you open isn't what you see above.

As always, back up what you are using, before you update as this was a pretty singificant update.

 

I got it downloaded last night, and got to open the first demo scene.

I had a problem with the texture on the plane. I could not get it to render and had to replace it with another one, even though the texture showed up in my materials list.

Any thoughts on why?

First scene looks great, by the way. I'm using weather maker so I'll have to play around with it to get the same feel as you have with Time of Day.

Looking forward to exploring the update!

 

I'd love to see you post what you end up with if you don't mind; would be cool to see how another atmosphere plugin handles it. I might have to switch!

I'm at work so I don't have the scene right now, but my guess is that the plane was a substance material, and maybe it hadn't finished generating? Not sure, it is weird. I'll download the update tonight so I can see exactly what you have.

 

I’ll put it up for you after I figure it out again.
I’ve been doing design so much that I’ve forgotten a lot of the set up, and there have been several updates.

Time of Day atmosphere looks awesome, I love the misty look you got out of it.

I didn’t get a chance to look at the other scenes, but the first one looks great.

Do you place each plant by hand or do you use a brush or other tool?

 

The only one I painted was the last one. I typically just place by hand because my scenes are so custom, and I'm never trying to fill a "game level", only a shot. I think I painted the grass in demo 3 and maybe a couple of trees, but the last one is like 98% all painted. And by painted I mean terrain painting.

 

I thought so.

Excellent work. You have a great eye for details.

I’ve been transitioning into other populating assets such as Vegetation Studio, but miss that hand placed perfection. So I’m working on a mix now. My primary scene being placed and the background and grass being populated.
We’ll see how it turns out. I still fall back to Vue when I need that realistic photo fix. But I’m learning Unity because Vue has lost some of its functionality and their store has vanished.

I’ll try to get back into your update tonight and check the other demo scenes and get some pics up for you.

 

That reminds me, I need to break out Veg studio and give that the ol' once over. I spoke with the creator once, and he said he didnt have any issues with the optimized trees, so apparently it's the heavy prefabs--which is reasonable since they were never meant for any kind of optimization.

Side note: I've added another product to my list.

ForestVisionUni

Complete library of FV trees built as unity trees, using FV textures and assets for those wanting FV to be more "game ready". Should be fun.

 

I do like VS, it does a great job with bringing in more grass than Unity engine does alone. And creates billboards based on your trees that you can color customize to match perfectly.

I like the idea of ForestVisionUni, sounds like you’ve become inspired!
Looking forward to it!!

 

haha, yeah lil bit. I'd like to do this more, and eventually as my only job would be nice! Figure I need to do more in order to meet those goals.

 

That would be a dream come true.

I hope you get there. Art is a hobby for me that I would love to turn into a career one day, until then, I do it to relax

 

Reminder for everyone using 2018, you will need to install the new Substance plugin

 

Hi There!

I love the idea of your tool to allow everyone to create their dream trees from scratch, it is such a pain on the but to get the right trees that one imagined for their game. If i understand correctly these are not unity trees but rather individual meshes that can be merged together at the end. If that so could you confirm that at the end these will not come with LODs especially billboard support? I only ask because my use case has my trees quite far away in great quantity. I have found a great tool LushLOD Trees https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/vegetation/trees/lushlod-trees-76549
that does an excellent job at converting Unity trees that i want to get to solve my issues of great distance rendering and i am just wondering, have you ever tried it with your trees?

 

No they do not come with LODs as the initial goal was to offer artistic options to develop trees, You can very well make LODs with them.

I have not tried that plugin.

 

Speaking of Unity trees.......

https://forum.unity.com/threads/forestvision-uni.533438/

 

So FV is not yet compatible with 2018. Apparently there is a significant process to update the materials, so I'm working on an update now.

 

The update looks great. I was going to ask which settings are best with VS but looks like you have answered above . One last thing, if I want to create an acacia like the one in African savanna's what would you suggest be the best way to do it? I am just working on my grassland/savanna biome which is basically the odd Acacia and lots of yellow long grass and dusty terrain.

 

Going off the below reference image, and keeping in mind that I do not have FV in front of me so I can't tell you exactly what meshes to use...

But this should be pretty easy as I have plenty of good bendy branches which should create the overall structure, and then I would start with the foliage by using the Cards meshes, under branches. Those are the ones without any visible branch base, and then I would just start stacking them, and randomly rotating them until you get the foliage looking the right way.

I will definitely be adding this type of tree!

 

Awesome, thanks for the quick response. That's the perfect reference image i'm using it too .

 

So after investigating the update to 2018, this isn't going to be quick and honestly I'm not sure if its worth it.

They (Allegorithmic) have changed the type of textures which are accepted as inputs which means that they dont accept textures which have been compressed--which unity does by default. So every one of my textures will need to be overridden by switching back to no compression, which will double the entire size of FV immediately. For example, one 1024 black and white mask texture went from 2mbs to 5 mbs.

I'm still working on the best way to handle this update, as its still very new and I expect more bugs will be worked out, but for now, updating FV to work with Unity 2018 is on hold.

 

Seems like they always break something with their updates and especially new versions.

I’ve only recently switched to 2017 for this reason. I understand your issues and hope Unity fixes the problem so that your assets continue to work for all versions.

But I don’t really mind as I don’t plan on moving into the 2018 version. It’s better to keep my game going and stay where I am, instead of having to fix everything that the updates break.

I really like your update, I’m just getting into some of the new trees and they look GREAT!

 

So update on the update, I have all the substance issues worked out and will be submitting the "fix" shortly.

But I would recommend staying in 2017 until they move the substance plugin out of beta.

 

ForestVision 2.4.2018 has been submitted. All substance and missing materials issues have been resolved.

 

Hello, I have downloaded the asset twice, but the version never coincides with that on the asset store. I tried to delete the downloaded files in the Unity asset folder, but I always have the same result.
Below I put the images, as I see the ForestVision page on the browser and how I see it in Unity.
I use Unity 5.6 pro.
Can you help me, please?

 

Using 5.6, you're obviously not going to be able to get the latest release as that was built in 2018, but I would reach out to Unity regarding your issue as this is out of my hands. I've submitted a couple of versions which are compatible with 5.6 but I'm not sure how the downloader itself works. The last 2 updates have been in 2017 and 2018 versions of unity, and the one before that was 5.3.

 

So the Substance plugin is def still buggy. All the substances in 2018 will not populate when you open the package, therefore they come in as missing...aka pink.

Just right click -> Reimport on ForestVision/10 Extras / Substances

This will reimport all the substances, then you'll need to fix the shaders on the branch materials. Change from Standard to ForestVision -> FV_Foliage....or whatever shader you want. Then Just save the project and you should be good to go.

Not sure why this happened, I'll post it on the Substance forum and let them know about it.

This is what happens when you release a beta of a major plugin.

I personally would recommend that you stay in 2017 until they release a real update to the plugin.

 

Submitting newest product today!.

 

I'm doing a test run using one of your demo scenes, but I'm getting a bunch of compiler errors when I try to build. I'm using 2017.4.3f1. Could let me know what to do? It works fine in edit and play, but won't build.

There were a total of 71 all from BV_MultiBlendGUI.cs, all namespace errors.

• Assets/ForestVision/09 Scripts/BV_MultiBlendGUI.cs(6,34): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `ShaderGUI' could not be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

• Assets/ForestVision/09 Scripts/BV_MultiBlendGUI.cs(58,3): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `MaterialProperty' could not be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

• Assets/ForestVision/09 Scripts/BV_MultiBlendGUI.cs(131,3): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `MaterialEditor' could not be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

Thanks!
David

 

I don't know why this error still pops up for some people and not all. I never get this error anymore, and I addressed the issue several versions ago, but alas it still shows up.

Just delete /BV_MultiBlendGUI.cs

 

Thanks
I’ll give it a try.

I’m seem to be a 1% person. I always get errors that others don’t.

Looking forward to your new asset!

 

I think version 2.5 is going to be an overhaul. I'm going to clean up alot of things, rearrange folder structures, remove un-supported elements, and then start working on adding in new models, as in new high poly collections.

Personally, FV was never meant to be something that was mobile friendly, but over the years I have slowly began to try and make it so. That's why I moved to making FV-Uni, something that is built to be mobile friendly, and then I can keep FV focuses on what I wanted it to be--high poly assets for creating high fidelity trees and environments.

So get ready for a top down overhaul of FV, removing this, replacing that, deleting that shader, fixing that shader, etc. Nothing is going to be the same. I may keep the summer, spring, etc., folders because I can see the value in having those kind of arrangements, but I'm not sure. I might just move to more of a species driven folder structure.

Feedback is always welcomed.

 

Hi Mc,

I'm a little bit confused. Are "ForestVision Uni" and/or "FoliageMaster" new products in sense of a replacement? I read about your intention to make the original ForestVision as a "HD product", but what exactly is ForestVision Uni and FoliageMaster? I thought the original ForestVision can create Foliage too!?

 

Uni is all Unity Trees built from Tree Creator, geared more towards people who are concerned about mobile readiness, and cross compatibility with other products.

Foliage Master, or more correctly as I have now named it, Tree Texture Suite, is about 10 different tools which will allow you to create foliage, barks, and grass textures to supplement all vegetation needs, for all products. It's easier for me to focus on these products seperately as they really do have different end goals.

The base of Tree Texture Suite, basically the beta, ships with FV and FV-Uni because I think the tools are just that cool and useful.

 

is there a demo scene i can download that i've missed somewhere?

 

Inside of 12 Scenes folder

 

I have made you a picture of your first demo scene. I added background vegetation, mountains, and animals. The atmosphere is done using Weather Maker (fog, clouds, god rays) and post processing with Final Lens Effects. I didn't do any photoshop post work on the picture, it's a straight screen shot from Unity.
I hope you enjoy it, it was fun playing with the new tree scene.

 

Wow, very nice! It's so cool seeing other people's work! Thanks for sharing

 

Thanks!

I'm having fun working on it. I am making a little video traveling through your trees. When I get it finished I'll let you know.

David

 

New product ForestVision-Uni is Live for those interested!

 

I will check it out.

 

Price drop on ForestVision-Uni!

http://u3d.as/1cwC

 

So... Support VS yet?

 

Can not see it...

 

What's the new price? It still shows $20.