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

The package manager is all kinds of broken- so you need to clear the cache- it will show that it has the latest version, but installs whatever old versions is in your cache instead..

 

The new version of MS will sit on some of the same tech, so yeah, it will reduce things a bit. They both compile down to bare metal though- the abstraction layers are completely compiled out, so they have no cost..

 

Heyho, I bought Digger and the integration for it for Microsplat (as well as other modules). It works just fine but it seems that the textures have these environment reflections and I can't find a option to disable it. Is there a way to get rid of this?

I use Unity 2020.2.1f1 with URP 10.2.2.

Here's a screenshot:

 

If you have already adjusted your smoothness maps, then it's most likely the fresnel and minimum metallic value from the GGX lighting model. In Standard, I allow you to change to other lighting models (BlinnPhong, Lambert, and a "NoSheen" model which removes the minimum metallic value), but these are not available in URP.

 

Does your decal module work with your mesh workflow module? I know you say all modules should work with it except for the ones explicitly mentioned in the documents. I don't see any mention of decals in the mesh workflow documents, so I just wanted to double check here before I purchased both modules.

 

It does, but only with dynamic decals - all the docs, for all modules, are included in the free core module, so you can read up on any module before purchase.

 

Quick question if I may...

I got your MicroSplat - Terrain Collection Released Jan 7th 2019 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/microsplat-terrain-collection-135693#releases

I recently noticed you have come out with a more complete bundle MicroSplat - Ultimate Bundle Released Oct 19th 2020
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/microsplat-ultimate-bundle-180948#releases

Thing is as far as I can remember all other similar type " upgrades " would have an automatic discount, since you had
already bought the main asset ?

Is this just an over sight ? or meant to be that I have to re-buy the assets I already have ?
Apart from that.. Thank you very much for your continued hard work and constant upgrades to
all your modules. Thanks so much.

 

No, you'd just purchase the modules you don't have individually instead of as part of the bundle.

 

okay thanks, will do

 

it worked, deleting microsplat core from appdata/roaming/unity/asset-store-x-x/Jason booth, then redownloading from package manager and reimporting it did the trick, thanks a lot

 

This worked for me too!

 

@jbooth Hello Jason, the shader works very well in HDRP 10.3.1 / Unity 2020.2.3f1 - when deleting the package cache before updating to latest version of Microsplat HDRP.

Only problem I have now is in VR, getting the following error message:

Shader error in 'Hidden/MicroSplat/EK1_0_Base-1830122882': cannot convert from 'const struct PackedVaryingsToPS' to 'struct MeshToPS' at line 15552 (on d3d11)

Shader error in 'Hidden/MicroSplat/EK1_0_Base-1830122882': cannot convert from 'const struct PackedVaryingsToPS' to 'struct MeshToPS' at line 19999 (on d3d11)

I understand very well that you are waiting for LTS version of Unity 2020.2, and corresponding HDRP version. But, if there is a quick fix, is this something you could help out with? It would help us out a lot - appreciate any help here!

 

No idea, I will wait for LTS to deal with any edge cases- they re-wrote a ton of code..

 

I wish we could treat our customers like that...

 

Seriously? You want to upgrade to the latest buggy beta, do it yourself. I am not your slave and am not going to spend my entire life working for free to constantly upgrade small changes to the SRPs every week when they break something.You want a stable, supported pipeline, get off the latest beta crap.

 

I love how the expectation is that a one person publisher has to keep up with the latest changes in Unity, when Unity themselves can't even do that. Snaps still only works on Unity 2018.4, HDRP hasn't had a grass system since it was released, yet somehow I'm treating my customers badly if I don't run on a week old tech release. Right. Unity has whole teams of coders, and can't keep up with their own breakage.

 

I didn't expect or demand, I asked nicely:

"I understand very well that you are waiting for LTS version of Unity 2020.2, and corresponding HDRP version. But, if there is a quick fix, is this something you could help out with? It would help us out a lot - appreciate any help here!"

 

Following it up with "Well I wish I could treat my customers like that" is clearly a snide remark saying I'm somehow treating my customers badly by not jumping to fix every tiny breaking change in the latest SRP patches.

 

No really; I understand your situation, but our business is B2B - and unfortunately for us our customers don't care about Unity problems - that is our problem as far as they are concerned... That is why I asked nicely, because I knew it would be a favour if you helped us out.

 

Understood- do they insist on using the latest beta versions of Unity too? I'm often amazed at how some of the people I contract for are on alpha versions of Unity - usually the first thing I do is try to get them off that stuff.

 

I HATE to be on beta version, but there are some features (basic ones, but Unity has been so far behind) which we need for our solution. So stuck between a rock and a hard place at the moment. Sucks, but guess it gets better when LTS for 2020.2 comes... One can at least hope (sigh)

 

Then they'll be on to 2021 alpha.

LTS should be soon though - and I suspect it'll take me about a week to get the adapters done once it's released..

 

Excellent! Keep up the good work, Microsplat is fantastic!

 

Just got a confirmation that 2020 LTS will be out this month (so switching to 2021 beta now, NOT!)

 

Hi, I'm really struggling to get any performance out of microsplat what so ever, I'm clearly am doing something wrong. Here is my third attempt, please advise if you notice a basic setting I missed. I have read the optimization and mesh terrain documents.

-unity 2019.4.19f1 personal LTS
-default render pipeline, android platform
-OpenGLES3, optimized frame pacing = off
-android player quality settings = "very low"


import microsplat, say yes to API update message

create basic unity terrain w 2 textures used from microsplat package. no normal maps
cliff albedo 1024x1024
moss albeto 1024x1024

Application.targetFrameRate = 300;
add "Graphy FPS counter" asset to screen

device: MotoG5 android 9.0
31-32 fps w normal terrain, ( not using microsplat )

now, Insert Microsplat:
add microsplat terrain module, convert to microsplat

warning
'ETC2_RGBA8' is not supported on this platform. Decompressing texture. Use 'SystemInfo.SupportsTextureFormat' C# API to check format support.

4fps on device

go to microsplat material, set max texture count = 4
20fps

changed render baking from 1024 to 256
press "compress splat maps" button
Microsplat material > packing mode fastest, blend quality fastest

24fps
...still slower than the normal terrain. no errors.

______________________

purchase micosplat mesh terrains.
Terrain to mesh >
chunks 1, sub division 64
convert materials = yes

delete original terrain

inspector> microSplat mesh terrain script > Template material = none (terrain pink)
I add microsplat material to this

microsplat material:
shader type: Mesh Terrain
Max texture count = 4
per pixel normal = unchecked
normal map mode = regular = 24fps

normal map mode = disabled = 32fps

so after those steps I now get back to the original unity terrain performance while using mesh, but I believe I am still bogged down somewhere, as I see no benefit yet.

If I remove microsplat and put a standard shader material on the mesh terrain, not even a mobile shader, its 60fps.
I know thats not exactly comparable without splat mapping.

OpenGLES seems to run faster than Vulkan on my device

thanks for reading

 

Render baking resolution is not a runtime thing- I think you meant to set your texture sizes in the Texture Array Config.

Anyway, you really need to profile and see what your bottleneck is; there are about 15,000 unique android devices, and there's really no way to know what's bottlenecking your particular device without profiling it. Also, looking over your steps, you're still doing stuff that the Unity terrain shader isn't (Height map based blending is still on, still sampling normals since you didn't turn them off in the material settings, likely using 1k textures since you didn't set the texture size, etc).

 

ok thanks those things did speed it up some. Where exactly do I stop sampling normals in the material settings?
Normal map mode = disabled is what I have set there

 

That's the one.. Note there's an autonormals option, which generates them from the height maps, which depending on how close you get can look good and is much cheaper than using actual normal maps..

 

Just got MicroSplat, MicroSplat Triplanar, Digger, and MicroSplat Digger Integration. Unity version 2019.4.19f1 Personal.

The integration does not seem to be working correctly for me. Instead of nice texture blends on the meshes, I'm getting weird red and black artifacts.



Here's what I'm trying:

• Create a new scene
• Create a new terrain in the scene
• Brush some hills onto the terrain and setup a couple of terrain textures
• Add the MicroSplat Terrain component and click to convert the terrain
• Select the MicroSplat material generated and enable "Export Digger Shader"
• Go to Tools -> Digger -> Setup terrains
• Select the Digger Master object, set Action to "Dig", select a texture
• Try to dig a hole in the terrain

Any idea what might be causing this?

 

Any compile errors with the shader? If you have an error about w4, try lowering the max texture count or raising the shader model to increase the interpolator count.

 

Indeed, there was a shader compile issue that seems to only show up once per relaunch of Unity! Lowering the max texture count seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks for the quick help!

Now I'm running into a different problem. No errors, but any Digger meshes that get created appear to use the texture in the last (4th) slot, tinted a bit darker. The blending with the terrain, uh... leaves something to be desired too.



Any ideas about what's going on?

EDIT: I found a material called "diggerMicroSplat" that had been created in DiggerData/Scenes/<SceneName>/<SomeHexValue>. I enabled Triplanar mode on that material and all the textures and blending popped in! I also set "Branch Samples" to "Aggressive" instead of "None". Do I need to manually sync settings between the main MicroSplat material and diggerMicroSplat? Are there any settings that I shouldn't change in there?

 

No, it should be automatically handling that. I wonder if Digger was caching the shader somehow?

 

Actually, I'm still running into problems here. Setting per-texture properties on the main material does not apply them to the Digger material, and I'm not wild about the prospect of manually copying them over.

It also appears that I can no longer paint textures on the Digger meshes. The paint mode in Digger Master has no effect and attempting to paint inside a hole with the terrain's paint tool paints the nearby surface but not inside the hole. Digging holes or adding terrain with the Digger Master also no longer affects the texture of the newly-created mesh, instead the mesh appears to use the terrain's textures.

 

Yeah, you shouldn't be mucking with any other material other than the main one. I'm not exactly sure what state you've gotten things into, but you should maybe revert/clear out the changes you made and reapply stuff from scratch.

 

Hi,i have some problem about unity native decals in HDRP with microsplat hdrp.

as you can see, the unity native decals on rocks just rendered in front of the terrain,but half of the rock is under ground.
the questions are:

1.is this a limitation of microsplat or just a bug will be fixed in the future?

2.will the decals module for microsplat work on regular gameobjects like the rocks?

i'm using unity2020.2.3fc1 and hdrp 10.3.1,microsplat version is the newest one downloaded from unity package manager yesterday.

 

Downloaded MicroSplat a week ago and started running into problems. Somehow it crashes Unity UI and upon every other launch I am told I need to reset or load default, then Unity just hangs, so I need to kill the process, relaunch and load my own layout. This is getting really annoying now and I would like to revert my terrain back to Unity terrain and delete the asset, it's just I don't see any means to do so. Could you please elaborate how do I get rid of MicroSplat without screwing the terrain? Thanks.

 

We are using latest Microsplat version + UNity 2020.3.3f1 + HDRP 10.3.1 without any problems.

 

HDRP is only supported on LTS versions- Unity changed the decal system in 2020, and the new one won't be supported until they release 2020.3LTS and I write the adapters for it.

 

Remove the component and assign the Unity shader back to the terrain. This issue is not caused by MicroSplat, but is rather a bug in new versions of Unity - I've hit it in plenty of projects that don't have MicroSplat installed, and it's pretty annoying.

 

Ah, thanks for the info. It seems every version comes with its own variety of new bugs these days, that's why I refrain from upgrading. Will seek additional details about the issue. Cheers!

 

oh,ok,thank you for reply.
i will wait for unity2020.3LTS and the decal fix.
keep it up, Microsplat is amazing!

 

Hi, MicroSplat is great. I have some minor workflow questions:

1) Is there a way to have Microsplat automatically add a terrain name to all the various 'MicroSplat_XXX' files that get created for a terrain rather than us having to rename ourselves? This is just nicer when searching for multiple materials to see the terrain they are associated with at a glance.

2) When changing a texture in the texture array config it will make a new .terrainlayer file but not delete the old. Is there a way to make Microsplat auto-replace the previous .terrainlayer file rather than adding new files each time?

 

No- and deleting or editing the terrain layer would be dangerous, as their might be another terrain using it.

 

Hi.
First of all, thanks for a great product.
I have a weird issue with normal maps. It was all good from the start, but at some point it just stopped to see any changes of normal map in MicroSplat Config file. I can delete normal map or assign other one, there is no use, there still normal map that was assigned some time before. Almost like it stuck somewhere and keep using it.
Any ideas?
- Unity 2019.4.9f1
- URP

 

most likely you have more than one config and the material has the old normal array assigned to it.

 

Yes, I do use couple of configs for different material scenarios.
Therefore a couple of questions.
- MicroSplat not working properly with more than one MIcroSplat config? Do I have to use just one config for all MicroSplat materials?
- Is there any way to use multiple configs for multiple materials? Maybe redirect to other than MicroSplatData folder or something?
- Is there any way to reset normal array data or manually assign this data to material or config?

Thanks in advance.

 

You can have as many configs and MicroSplatData folders as you want. Usually the best way to arrange it is to put each terrain/scene which has a unique setup into it's own folder and set up microsplat, so that you don't end up with all the files in one MicroSplatData directory.

And yes, you can just assign the normal array to your material the same way you would assign any other texture.

 

Hi jbooth

In the URP Scene (CoreLD-> Examples) I noticed that the enviroment lighting, unlike in non URP, has no influence on the shader. Did I miss something?

Tested in 2019.4LTS with Microsplat 3.7.1 + URP 3.7.0 (Package cache was cleared)

 

I'm encountering an issue where the terrain loses its default fog and the shadows are very dark (near black), and the terrain is unresponsive to changes in the ambient light.

I'm using:
Unity 2019.4.20f1 (URP 7.5.2)
MicroSplat 3.71.0 with MicroSplat URP support 3.7.0 (both installed via the package manager after a cleaned GI cache)

I created a fresh URP project and added MicroSplat +URP support. I then create a terrain and add the MicroSplat terrain component to it. As soon as I convert it to MicroSplat terrain, this issue arises. I attached two screenshots, before and after converting to MicroSplat.

Any idea if I'm missing something? I've been happily using MicroSplat for a few months now and this is the first time this happened. I used Unity 2019.4.16f1 before and tried whether upgrading would fix something but unfortunately it didn't. If you need any more information from me, please let me know

Before:


After:

 

Found and fixed.