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

Definitely possible.

 

That'd be fantastic. I know it sounds simple on the surface but gets pretty tricky once you dig into it (how long do trails persist? How do you handle trail intersections?) but I'd sure love to have a module for this in a couple months

 

The real issue isn't that stuff, but rather physics.

 

Ah, well, what do I know.

Anyways, could you note here if/when you decide to make such a module, so I don't have to worry about finding another solution? (Again, don't need it for a few months.)

 

Would be really helpful to allow channel selection for some textures.

AO, Gloss, etc - single channel maps. Would also be nice to have specular mode option.

Unfortunately I'm using textures from a wide variety of sources with various inconsistencies in terms of quality and format. Ideally, I'd move to pure substances or consistent source like quixel, but in the meantime - you gotta make due.

Would be nice to have some controls to make this easier.

 

Not sure what you mean- AO textures are generated from the height or normal data if they are not provided, and you can select which channel the data is in on a per-texture or per-channel basis. Same for smoothness, height, etc..

 

Oh wow! I didn't realize that if you set it to custom it allowed per texture channel selection!

My bad, that's awesome!

 

The MS material for my terrain somehow got corrupted--all shiny and flat, like the default standard shader. Finally I just reconverted the terrain to create a new material and associated files. But I have 64 terrain tiles, and it seems I can't assign the new shader to all the tiles by selecting all of them and dragging it to the Template Material slot. I have to select each one, one by one, and drag the material. Am I missing an obvious way to assign it to all the terrain tiles at once?

 

You could copy the new material over the old one, leaving the meta file untouched, and then they'd all point to the new one..

 

I was gonna do that...but then Unity crashed and lost the material assignments entirely. So I guess the answer is no?

 

I don't think that component is written for multi-edit.. Could look into it though..

 

Submitted tonight:

MicroSplat 1.4

• Fixed bug in per texture UV scales when triplanes blending is on
• Fixed bug in per texture contrast allowing other textures through
• Fixed bug in height blending when weight of all textures approaches 0
• Switch Triplanar to use square matrixes, which are required on some GPUs
• MicroSplatTerrain component now references AddPass shader to make sure it gets included in the build
• PropData now uses RGBAHalf when running on the Nintendo Switch (RGBAFloat is not supported)
• Several per-texture properties were trying to use the same values and would conflict when enabled. Fixed.
• Fixed issue where prop data is not assigned correctly when converting multiple terrains at once..

As usual, wait until all your modules are approved before updating.

 

Slides from my Unite 2017 talk are posted:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ObLw-0Y9BseWZlLofSinAnbLmYgXf6wh8ousRzvXOgQ/edit?usp=sharing

 

It's really nice of you guys to share all the innovations to the community.

 

Some of these approaches are not new but to hear the reasoning on why and how to use them for mobile is really useful.

 

Nice to have:
- "back to default / recommended" button for each settings group.

Currently I tend to refer to the screenshots in docs for recommended settings. Not sure if this is best way or not. Probably better to refer to default values in source ?

(this is extra important because 'ctr z' undo is semi unreliable on material settings)

 

@jbooth, do you have video of your unite talk?

Extremely impressive. Like, wow.

That talk is on a whole different level.

 

Unity will likely post it soon- usually takes a few weeks for them all to get posted..

 

Wow, you worked on Asheron's Call? That's one of my favorite games all time. My wife and I used to play together online. I even bought a recent subscription to start playing again and then they went and cancelled it. D'oh!

 

Several lifetimes ago, yes- was the first game I ever made, as it was for everyone else who worked in the basement that became Turbine..

 

Awesome. I read the story of how the game came to be and it was truly inspiring. Great work, Jason.

 

Hi Jason.

After 1.3 or 1.4 (not sure which), my baked shadows are purple.
I tried baking with the Unity default shader, and then they were black again.

While i'm here i also have a question.
When i am painting textures on my terrain, whenever i get to a point where 3 textures meet, blending goes off. Instead of height blending i am seeing hard lines. Is this normal? Or perhaps because of Unity's paint tools?
Now i figured this was inherent to splat mapping, but a doubt keeps lingering so i thought i'd check with you.

Grtz

 

Can you show me a shot of the purple and your settings? There's not really any lighting code in MicroSplat other than #pragma's which tell it which models to use.

The number of blends can be controlled with the Blend Quality setting- if you have it on Fastest, then you only get 2 layers, where as you get 4 if set to Best. This is a way to trade quality vs speed, as restricting the blend count can greatly reduce the amount of samples that need to be taken (ie: in triplanar, it's blend * 6, so 12, 18, or 24 samples per pixel).

 

Baked with MicroSplat:
link
standard shader:
link
Thanks for the blend quality tip. I will try the other settings to see what it'll cost me.

(edit) first time trying to include images. Using imgur, but that doesn't work, so links will have to do for now.

 

About screenshot of settings... which settings do you need?
(I tried to bake with all lighting models)

 

just the material settings at the top..

Really strange, I have no idea what would cause things to go purple. Do you have a strong purple anything in your scene?

 

Here is shot of the material:

https://imgur.com/XUeITrH

I have nothing purple or anything even coming close.

Here is a shot of my lights:

https://imgur.com/WtpKF0d

 

Hmm, the only thing that can think of is perhaps one of the shader stages isn’t compiling correctly, and when it goes to compute the light map, it’s getting a pink shader. I would expect it to spew some kind of compile error though. Any chance you can send the scene over for me to have a look?

 

I'll send you anything you need.
But can you help me how to do that?
Just zip up the project folder?
Folder is 3.5 GB.

 

Don’t include the library folder as that doubles the size usually. You can usually break out just the assets in question, but if that’s a pain the whole thing is fine as well. I usually zip them and send a Dropbox mail in a PM. Also, what version of Unity are you using?

 

ok. will do.
Hope i can get it done in time.. i have to go to a wedding tonight.

Using 2017.1.1f1

 

Here's a more recent in game shot using Micro Splat for the terrain, Alloy for everything else (they mix very well) you weren't kidding about the speed, I don't notice any impact at all on BOV, just using snow (of course) and the anti tiling pack

 

Not sure what the cause of this is - but on occasion:

TextureArrayPreProcessor : AssetPostprocessor

This seems to break a handful of my prefab assets. Not sure what the cause is.

Immediately after this, 4 of my prefabs in resources will have their values nulled out.

Right now those prefabs are doing some work in OnValidate, which admittedly, they probably shouldn't, but that code has been in project (working fine) for well over 6 months with absolutely zero change.

I believe this only occurs when changes are made to code while running and exiting playmode. Kind of annoying - I have to roll back these 4 prefabs over and over.

Usually after this problem, all Microsplat materials will be empty and I need to click update on the config in order to update the materials.

This may be really specific to my project (which is a little extreme at this point), but if it happens to someone else then you may want to dig into it. For my usage, I can just rollback these 4 guys.

 

Heya @jbooth ! I spent some time at work watching videos for all of your modules (I love that you go through what all of the options do) today and had a quick question about the snow module - is there any way to apply a different color to the snow? I imagine you could use it for things like dust accumulation in a desert scene.

 

So, this is only supposed to trigger when the platform is changing. Basically, if you switch to iOS, then the array needs to be recompressed into PVR format instead of DXT, so this enforces that this happens without user intervention. However, if you delete the TextureArrayPreprocessor, it won't cause any issue except you'll have to press Update on your arrays when you switch platforms. Now, why this would effect a prefab, I have no idea.. If you get explicit repro steps though, that would be interesting..

Snow takes two textures- one with Diffuse + height map, another with Normal (RG), Smoothness (B) and AO (A). You can make them whatever you want, so if you want to drape moss over the scene with snow, fine..

Also, for the desert scene, terrain blending with the slope feature is a great way to layer sand on top of normally textured objects. (It allows you to apply the terrain texturing to the top of the object as well as the intersection area).

 

I used microsplat for the terrain, soil texture seen here. Used microsplat's levers to make it look like soil.

 

That grass is stunning. Is that Quixel?

 

Hi no it isn't I haven't got the time to make the quixel scans into meshes.
Most of that is from photographic grass 2 https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/85717

 

In Unity 2017.2.0f3 there are 2 errors
I created an empty project and imported MicroSplat (without demo scene).

1. Assertion failed: Assertion failed on expression: 'scriptParameterClass != NULL'

2. Script error: OnTerrainChanged
This message parameter has to be of type: int

 

Does running the script updater not fix this? I'll have to see what they've changed about that API and fix it for the next patch.

 

That is a known regression bug in Unity. It looks like it will be fixed in a patch.

 

Joy!

 

I just purchased the Triplanar module. In the Triplanar demo scene, it sure seems to be working nicely...but there's no Triplaner option in the material. I've restarted Unity, reimported the module...is it there but I've gone completely blind? (I also updated all the other modules before importing this one.)

 

Also, I'm still having trouble using the Normal Noise only on certain textures. If I set Normal Noise #3 to .5, and then in per-texture, set it to zero for most textures, but 1 for a couple of them, it's still applied across the entire terrain, at .5 or greater strength -- it seems to treat the .5 as a minimum strength regardless of per-texture settings, and then uses per-texture only to increase it beyond that minimum level.

So then I thought: Oh maybe I should set it to zero in the Normal Noise #3 parameter, but that zeros it out across the terrain, no matter what the per-texture settings are.

I've updated all my modules today. Am I missing something?

 

That's really odd- The defines are clearly in your project, because the ad for triplanar isn't showing up. If you put a breakpoint in line 59 of MicroSplatShaderGUI.cs, does the triplanar module not show up in the list of extensions it iteratees through?

There's a collision in the pixel values read in the current version- I'll be submitting an update soon that fixes it, but will test the settings on that to make sure it's all fixed before it goes out.

 

Uh, sorry, I only use Unitron and I guess I can't add a breakpoint there? (I opened Monodevelop for the first time ever and was pretty baffled.) I'm not a coder, obviously. Anything else I can try?

 

Try installing into a fresh project and see if it comes up there.

 

Works fine in a fresh project, even after I import all the other modules. But back in my project, Triplaner is still not showing in any Microsplat shader -- not mine, not any of the demo scene shaders, nowhere. No errors or warnings.

 

You could try re-importing the MicroSplat directory, or worse, killing the library folder and letting Unity re-cache everything. I've had unity refuse to compile a class into the assembly before where forcing it to rebuild everything was the only fix. Annoying, and will take a while, but hopefully will work.

 

Hello jbooth,

I'm having a problem with this shader. The terrains with Micro Splat Terrain component assigned and with material set up, display as pink. The preview of the material is also pink. At one point, I received these errors:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. Texture2DArray is not supported on this platform/GPU
3.  
4. UnityException: Failed to create 2D array texture because of invalid parameters.
5.  

I don't know when exactly those errors appeared, though, and it doesn't seem to appear anymore (but the terrain and material are still pink).

My platform is Windows 10 (Windows is also selected in build settings). My GPU is NVidia Geforce GMX 1060, so pretty much top of the line.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Edit: Another issue:

Multi-editing doesn't seem to work with MicroSplatTerrain. The script MicroSplatTerrainEditor seems to have the CanEditMultipleObjects attribute, but if you select multiple objects and assign the Template Material, it only gets assigned to one of them.

I believe I had this problem with my own code as well at some point. I forget the details, but I think the OnInspectorGUI was still applied only for the "real" selected object or something. And it was my job then to apply the changes to the rest of the objects manually...