[FREE]MicroSplat, a modular terrain shading system for Unity Terrains

Depending on how lighting is done (baked, realtime), you can modify the shadow maps or shadowing shaders in unity to get different results. Generally, outlines and quantization is going to be better handled in post processing, why do you want to do it directly in the terrain shader? Outlines on specific objects usually involve drawing the object more than once which can be bad for performance (you draw it expanded slightly as black, then draw it again over itself).

 

Hi Jason, this is a wonderful tool, a sorely needed component for unity's terrain system right now.
I've been working with splatmaps generated from World Machine and importing them onto the terrain, but which texture layers correspond to which splatmap channel is unclear. Right now I'm importing two splatmap .tgas, with a splatmap loaded into each channel of each texture, for 8 splatmaps total.

I assume I have to mirror the texture layer order with the splat map channel order?
Which splatmap channel gets assigned to which texture layer?
It would be very useful to be able to assign channels to texture layers from within the inspector, it would cut back on a lot of photoshop channel shuffling for large groups of terrains with many layers. If not, labelling them would be quite useful.

I've also seen a few bugs with LWRP support, for instance enabling per-pixel normals in the material breaks the shader in a way it can't recover from. The terrain disappears and disabling per-pixel normals doesn't bring it back. Replacing the material file with a fresh one is the only thing I've found that will recover it.

My unity version is 2019.2.3f1, using LWRP 6.9.1

EDIT: I just realized that the reason I'm having trouble figuring out the layer order is because it doesn't look like it's using the second splatmap texture at all.
I imported two debug splat maps to my terrain, and changed all my texture layers to rgb colors. The debug splat maps are text labels in each channel of each texture, ie R1, G1, etc. The textures appear to load in flipped on both axis, which isn't a huge deal, but the last four of my 8 materials don't display at all. I've updated my texture array, and both splatmaps appear to be attached to my terrain properly. I get one of the "Duplicate basemap name: '_MainTex'. Ignoring" errors, maybe that's related. Am I doing something wrong?

 

Splat maps are RGBA format, if you leave the alpha out it will default to 1, which would make the fourth texture get a weight of 1.

 

Is there an option to control mipmapping the same way as with the standard Unity shader? At least I can't find any options regarding it...

 

What do you mean?

 

For custom splat maps, is the math for uv localtoworld and worldtolocal the same as when using unity's splats?

 

Jumbled a few things into a single file as I have more abstraction around it, but hopefully this is useful.

It's a simple abstraction around working with custom splats. Couple of utility functions for converting to colors and back. Threw in a localtoworld and worldtolocal also as static methods.

https://gist.github.com/gamemachine/b2e33112c4b173f868b37bbb47ef9b63

 

Yes, the only difference is which textures are used to look up the weights.

 

A terrain flipping module would be nice FYI. Only took a few minutes to hand modify the shader to support that (shadows no idea), but I'd pay a few bucks just to not have to customize your shader generation pipeline.

 

Terrain flipping?

 

For caves and underground areas. Works pretty well actually. Cull front flip normals and after modeling invert heightmap.

 

Would be pretty easy to add your options to a module - Doesn't seem like the kind of thing the average user would use, but could be given away open source or free or something.. Throw me a diff of your changes and an example scene showing it off and I'd setup the module code..

 

@jbooth : I just got Microsplat last month and haven't had a chance to use it until today.
But I'm having a problem. If I tick UV Scale, no matter what numbers I give the UV's the entire terrain goes blurry.




No matter what i set the number too the result stays exactly the same.
I'm using Map Magic, so not sure if that's the culprit (the third thumbnail shows the error for map magic). I know Map Magic isn't your product, just wasn't sure if it was important to list the error for you as I'm not sure if it's related - I followed the MM dev's video tutorial on how to make it work. Which everything works fine, so far everything works fine except turning on UV Scale, then the terrain blurs out entirely.

EDIT: It turns out all the per texture properties aren't working at all.
For example if I tick "tint" the entire terrain goes a super dark gray nearly black.

I saw someone in the last page mention per texture properties weren't working for them and you said to check the propData, well I click the on "MarsMaterial_propdata" and it's simply just empty.

Edit 2: I also purchased the mesh and terrain blending feature earlier and it's not working correctly.

I go into the material for the terrain and enable the blending options then I put on the Micro Splat Blendable Object script onto my test cube and it goes purple and gives an error saying ("Terrain shader is not setup for blending, please enable this on the terrain material in the Shader Generator section").

Edit 3: I can confirm it works properly on your demo scene.

 

Nevermind I got it working, it was a glitch in the Map Magic Custom Shader output node, I just removed it and replaced it and bam worked.

@Wolfos ^^^ Not sure if you're using Map Magic, but if you are, this might be your issue. as none of my Per Texture properties were working until I did that.

(NOTE: @jbooth Blendable objects still don't work).
Ahh I see why it didn't work, but this begs the question, is this doable with Map Magic? Because I want to utilize the realtime generation. I can't go in and press "Generate Terrain Descriptor Data" by hand if it's randomly generated with Map Magic.

 

Nah, the propdata object (on the microsplat terrain script > debug > per texture data) was incorrectly assigned.

 

Ah okay, glad you got it mate

 

The right solution would be to have map magic node generate this data, as it has the heights and normals already, it would just need to write them to a texture for the blending data.

 

Thank you. I'll attempt to give it a shot I suppose.

 

Hey there,

If I own all the addons for Microsplat would it be possible to get a key for the bundled version? Just to make importing easier, as importing the 11 independent modules takes a bit more time

 

There’s not really a way to do this within the store system. We get vouchers, but only a dozen per year.

 

Darn D:

 

I've purchased the procedural texturing add on, however I'm not able to bake the procedural to terrain. I'm getting a shader error but I'm not experienced with the shader language.

Error:

"Shader error in 'Hidden/MicroSplat/RenderBake_ProceduralSplatOutput0A': Fragment program 'frag_surf': Unrecognized sampler 'sampler_diffuse' - does not match any texture and is not a recognized inline name (should contain filter and wrap modes)."

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

 

Yeah, this happens on Windows. Best I can tell it's some kind of internal compiler error where it changes the sampler name from sampler_Diffuse to sampler_diffuse for no reason. Still trying to find a hack around it..

 

This is a MapMagic + MicroSplat question thought id ask here - I can see the two together are popular and im not surprised because Microsplay makes Mapmagic terrain look great.

Ive almost tracked down this issue. Using MicroSplat with MapMagic and the MicroSplatMapMagicSync.cs file to sync it across all terrains. this works great in Unity 2019.2 on Mac

The issue is on iOS. I get an error that sounds like the MicroSplat instance on newly generated terrain isn't appearing, so there's a null reference. It means that some of the terrains generate but just as flat terrain, while other ones generate just fine.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

at MicroSplatTerrain.Sync () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
at MicroSplatTerrain.SyncAll () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
at MapMagic.MapMagic+ChangeEvent.Invoke (UnityEngine.Terrain terrain) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
at MapMagic.GeneratorsAsset+<Apply>d__13.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
at MapMagic.Chunk+<ApplyRoutine>d__40.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
at MapMagic.ThreadWorker.CoroutineFn () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
at MapMagic.ThreadWorker.UpdateApply () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
at MapMagic.ThreadWorker.Refresh () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0​

I feel like im so close to the solution but can't quite get it and im hoping smarter minds may have an idea. Ive pretty much narrowed it down to the MicroSplatMapMagicSync.cs file (which is a very simple file) because I can use MicroSplat on a single terrain no problem (looks great) - its just with the syncing across some new terrains it seems to be missing. often in conjunction with an error like
Right neighbor of the terrain has a different heightmap resolution. Stop neighboring.
Which I am not sure is related but I mention it because maybe that is related to why some terrains on the grid generate and some stay flat.

For reference here's the sync script im using

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using UnityEngine;
4. using JBooth.MicroSplat;
5.  
6.  
7. namespace EternalLife
8. {
9.     public class MicroSplatMapMagicSync : MonoBehaviour
10.     {
11.         public Material MicrosplatMaterial;
12.         public MicroSplatPropData PropData;
13.  
14.         public void Start()
15.         {
16.             MapMagic.MapMagic.OnGenerateFailed -= MapMagic_OnGenerateFailed;
17.             MapMagic.MapMagic.OnGenerateCompleted -= MapMagic_OnGenerateCompleted;
18.  
19.             MapMagic.MapMagic.OnGenerateFailed += MapMagic_OnGenerateFailed;
20.             MapMagic.MapMagic.OnGenerateCompleted += MapMagic_OnGenerateCompleted;
21.         }
22.  
23.         private void MapMagic_OnGenerateCompleted(Terrain terrain)
24.         {
25.             MicroSplatTerrain mst = terrain.GetComponent<MicroSplatTerrain>();
26.             if (mst == null)
27.             {
28.                 mst = terrain.gameObject.AddComponent<MicroSplatTerrain>();
29.             }
30.             mst.templateMaterial = this.MicrosplatMaterial;
31.             mst.propData = this.PropData;
32.             MicroSplatTerrain.SyncAll();
33.         }
34.  
35.         private void MapMagic_OnGenerateFailed(Terrain terrain)
36.         {
37.             Debug.Log("Generation failed for terrain: " + terrain.name);
38.         }
39.  
40.         public void OnDestroy()
41.         {
42.             MapMagic.MapMagic.OnGenerateFailed -= MapMagic_OnGenerateFailed;
43.             MapMagic.MapMagic.OnGenerateCompleted -= MapMagic_OnGenerateCompleted;
44.         }
45.     }
46. }

 

I just found out that mapmagic has a custom shader node we can use for microsplat instead of the script I’ve been using. I’m going to try it out and see if it solves the problem

 

Yes if I remember correctly, the sync script was the old/inofficial way. Then MM added MS support to the custom node later on.

 

It works It runs really fast nd MicroSplat looks amazing in MapMagic.

For anyone it helps I stopped using the old sync script that is floating around and used this MapMagic tutorial for integrating Microsplat natively

 

@jbooth Has the baking feature for procedural texturing module ever worked on Windows (since the release in April)? I'm also waiting on a fix on this. But if it's going to take awhile, you may want to clarify/put a disclaimer about this feature in the asset description to prevent potential bad reviews. (Not from me ofc )

 

No, I dev on OSX and it's not the kind of issue I'd expect. I actually spent a few hours this morning rewriting a ton of that code to try to work around it, but no luck yet. I'll change the description if I don't find a way around it soon. It really makes no sense, the code itself is very simple..

 

Hello, I bought the Lightweight pipeline support but the terrain appears pink. I read in the documentation that I need to to setup the lightweight render loop.
I don't know how and can't find any documentation on it. Any help or link?

 

you need to consult unity’s documentation and install/setup the LWRP. Once that’s done you can select the light weight render loop on the material and the shader will be recompiled for that pipeline.

 

That worked out, thanks a lot for the quick reply

 

Hey I am having issues on Unity 2019.2 with the latest microsplat on Android. I have 3 terrains, all with the same material settings but different terrain settings. The largest one is giving a solid white texture at distance.

It is 2000x2000 could that be an issue? It appears across x86,ARM, and ARM64 alike, emulator and device.

 

hard to say without seeing your setup, but I’d check the references on the terrain components to make sure they are all pointed to what you think they are pointed to, and that the PropData references are all assigned.

 

This is now fixed (or really worked around), uploading a new version to the store now.

 

Hi Jason, is the Microsplat for Meshes add-on still planned for release some day?

 

I have some bug in the painter which only happens on DX/Metal platforms that I need to fix before it can be released, and I've just slacked rather than trying to fix it.

 

Really looking forward to it!

 

@jbooth does the glitter effect work from a fixed top down perspective like in diablo 3?

 

It's designed closer to Journey's glitter effect which is view and light dependent. But if your comfortable with shader code you could easily hard code one of those angles such that it's triggered from whatever perspective you want.

 

Sounds a bit like a soft no? Reagrding shaders, sadly i'm pretty much clueless in that aspect.

 

@macish
If I understand jbooth right you can search the shader code for the occurance of the glitter calculation and substitute any camera vectors used in these situations by some vector of your own liking. When playing with that vector you can force the glittering even at angles that wouldn't normally glitter in top down situations.

 

I dont have the addons yet so i can't test it out. I guess i'm gonna just give it a try then

 

I have this same issue. I don't quite see where I am going over the 16 OSX limit. I have 10 terrain textures, puddles, streams, terrain blending. Debug says Shader Model: 3.5, Texture Samples : 9, Regular Samples : 12. Also could you help me with this advice: "there's no reason to sample the control map Unity provides for textures 13-16, so you can reduce this down to get a sampler back." Do you mean I should reduce the Max Texture Count to 12?

 

Samplers are not the same as samples. You can have as many samplers as you want. Basically, in older APIs you have textures and samplers- a sampler samples a texture, and they were paired. So if you have 1 texture you have 1 sampler to sample it with. MicroSplat uses Texture Arrays, so the diffuse and normal array would consume 2 samplers, regardless of how many terrain textures you use. Puddles and streams consume more samplers, because they have their own unique textures. And the control maps for splat maps as well. So if you set the max texture count to 16, then that takes 4 control maps, and therefor four samplers. So setting that to 12 in your case will save you one sampler.

On most newer APIs sharing works, and this isn't an issue.

 

Hi
Im not sure what am doing wrong your example scene work with this setting...
So mine 0 and 1 textures works, 2 and 3 looks like they didnt receive the given Distance Resample information
Using MM terrain, Micro Splat Terrain (Script) has been Sync, im out of ides

 

Other than your resample distances both being set to 0 (this would mean you never see the close textures, which I assume is just testing) it all looks fine. Are you saying that wherever textures 2 and 3 in your array are used they don't respect the resample scale? That seems unlikely given how the code works, it doesn't really know or care about which textures it's operating on. Can you try painting a big area of one of the textures and then editing the resample scale to make sure it's not scaling up/down with it?

 

Just so that you know I tried my other Micro splat creations and this works. But on this current creation ist not a joke even if it seam one, ill try to rebuild Micro splat components maybe its that. But here is this my talk about; image1; green is Tex1,Blue Tex2,Orange Tex3 the rest is Tex1

 

some great results with microsplat on my textures! reworked the maps and got even better results in microsplat. first picture is a puddle drying up inbetween the tesselation and displacement of the dirt texture. i lerped this global shader propertie to achieve puddle effects from rain that dry up after it rains and fill up when it rains.

 

I have found my problem- it works if Max Texture Count=Eight and up