Hi, I work at SpeedTree...

Hi there, i have a problem with speedtrees crashing the Editor 64bit, 5.1.0f3, DX11 .
Accessing the Occlusion Window after adding speedtrees to the scene crashes the editor, i was able to reproduce this error on two machines with trees form the White Oak and the Free Package.

1. Create a new project/scene
2. Create new terrain
3. Paint at least one tree to the terrain
4. Access Occlusion Panel
5. Crash
(all default settings)

Can anyone verify this?

 

Seems to work here if by Occlusion you mean the Window->Occlusion Culling

 

Yes, thanks for checking. Are you on 5.1 ?

 

Yeah, the same version as you on Win7 64bit.

 

Seems like im special - again. I'll file a bug report.

 

#705299

 

You're not special Same issue on OSX Editor latest patch 5.1.1p2

 

Please push Unity to try to do something about the Speedtree billboard performance. I used SpeedTree for awhile but had to drop it on account of this. See my post here:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/speed-tree-optimisations.317585/

Unity tree billboards rendered 28 times faster than Speedtree billboards. Looks to me that it's because of the batching Unity does on SpeedTrees that it doesn't do on Unity trees. There might be a good reason for why it works that way, but in any case this is the only reason I'm no longer a SpeedTree customer. It's a damn shame, I'd use SpeedTree religiously if Unity could figure out how to not batch almost every single tree like it was a separate object every frame.

 

Our company is also waiting for a Speedtree Update:
Because of the billboarding performance + look and the missing vertical billboard we are forced to use the old Unity trees.

 

I love the look, personally. There used to be the weird dithering when it faded between culled and billboards, but that can be eliminated with the settings to look just like a regular billboard. The only issue I have is billboard performance. Granted, I'm no artist, so my eye is probably not as sharp as others here.

 

I've also had trouble with billboard performance, to the point where I removed all dithering and fade settings on all billboards. They run much better without this overhead that fading adds, but I still think that normal Unity billboarded trees run faster.

 

Hi Danny,

Can you please get one of your artists to fix the absolutely horrible texturing on the African Boabab tree in your Desktop Trees Package 2 please.

It's been out a while now, so I'm really surprised its not been fixed.

The texturing / UV's on the branches is really bad - with UV's rotated and scaled differently between surfaces, and the meshes not too hot either. Seriously it looks like it was modelled by a total beginner - which is not the quality we expect from Speedtree at premium prices.

 

Ugh, this is the next tree on my list to buy. Thanks for letting us know it is defective. UVs would be tough to fix in the modeler most likely.

 

I own the baobab. It's a pretty good looking tree (if a bit location/climate specific ). I do see what mwituni is saying though... on a few branches the UVs are definitely mismatched, and I'm not sure how one would go about fixing this without the modeler. This is most pronounced on the larger/squatter version of the tree.

 

Yikes, that is pretty bad! Without being able to fix the UVs, nothing we can do about it. I suggest using the modeller to make your own and add use the textures from the Speedtree tree rather than purchase it. I hope if there are others like this people post them here so we can avoid them. They are expensive.

 

Don't even know where to start, Desktop Ground Cover Package has grass with defective ambient occlusion. And what they don't want to tell you - you have to buy subscription to fix it, it cannot be done in Unity, only in Modeler.
The same problems have trees in Desktop Trees Package, don't remember which one, had to buy subscription and fix it by myself several month ago.

 

Pay for one month subscription to the Modeller, fix your stuff and cancel. Yeah, more money for defective products, but it will get the job done. The only bad thing is that it seems if you cancel and then re-up later, there is a bug that logs you out ever 15 minutes. Can't win, huh?

 

SpeedTree should man-up and either:
1) Do the correct thing and fix the problems - I don't get why thats not done immediately.
2) Or if they want users to fix it, give users a free month's Designer access to do so.

Charming
Seems SpeedTree don't have a workflow for dealing with bugs.

 

Hey Mwituni,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention! Our artists are fixing this right now so you should be able to download a corrected tree very soon whether you bought this individually or as part of a tree package.

For learning purposes here is where UV problem was found: The SpeedTree modeler uses a series of profile curves to fine tune adjustments to trees. For instance, if you wanted trees to have a large radius at the bottom of the trunk and a narrow tip, you can create a profile curve that reduces the radius relative to the spine.

In this case the profile curve for the v-tile scaling had a sharp decline to -100 causing UV problems the further along the branch. by maxing out that curve the problem goes away.

We really appreciate you bringing this to our attention so that we can correct it, while we don't expect out trees to suit every project, our goal is to have them be as usable in many different projects with very little effort. In cases where there is clearly a modeling issue we try to correct them as soon as we find out. One of the quickest ways to get in touch with our artists with issues concerning trees or the modeler is to throw it up on our forum at www.SpeedTree.com/forum that way they can address it directly.

@Teila Concerning the log-out every 15 minutes bug, we've tried our best to reproduce this on multiple machines wiht cancelled/resubscribed test accounts and have not been able to reproduce an error. As soon as we're able to nail down an error we'll get it corrected.

@montyfi Let us know if you remember which trees you noticed errors in, I'd love to get them corrected if I can. Also, which what issue are you having with the AO on the grass?

Thanks guys!

 

I was told others have reported this problem by one of the Speedtree employees on the phone. My guess is that it has something to do with having to cancel my account and re-subscribe. I had a problem with Speedtree not allowing me to change the date on my credit card when it expired so had to cancel and subscribe again with the new expiration date.

It worked just great before that. My suggestion is that you guys wipe our account and resubscribe. It is really a pain to have to re-login every 15 minutes and I have to re-login numerous times in order to get it to work...then rinse and repeat every 15 minutes. I pay every month for this and yet I can't use it very efficiently.

So..you can't reproduce it....but of course you can't because you are not subscribing with credit cards, canceling and then re-subscribing the same account.

What I would like to try is to make a brand new account and subscribe again. Of course, to do this, I have to make sure I don't lose my current purchases. But I have a suspicion that if you allowed me to do this, the problem would go away.

I have already received emails a month or so ago about "when we can reproduce". That is not good customer service.

 

1)

Excellent news thanks. Look forward to it.

I contacted your support months back. No reply at all.


2) Another thing thats not right on the tree is the way the branches just end ... as you can see in Chingwa's post above just left of where he highlighted the "UV MISMATCH"...



There's lots of reference pics of Boabab's. but here is a good (large) one you can zoom in on ...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Baobab_and_elephant,_Tanzania.jpg
Have a look at the branch ends and compare that to your model.




Thanks

 

OK. Found email to your support from May (sic!)

I have another problem now with Desktop_Ground_Cover_Package from Unity Store.
I have strange black artifacts on Rough Grass Desktop Cluster, only on LOD1
Also, in description it says Tuned LOD transitions, but at least in that case LODs are changing without any transition. Just jumping from LOD1 to LOD0 directly, causing very noticeable black artifacts removal.


So I've been instructed how to fix it in modeler. Which I did, and did the same for every tree I bought from Asset store and your site as well. I don't remember the trees in question because at the end it was faster for me to do for every tree I bought.

Unfortunately, speed trees have another problem, which cannot be fixed. SSAO.

As soon as SSAO is turned on and camera looks thru leaves on the ground I can see those strange shadows (not shadows on ground, more like transparency problem), they are static, not moving when leaves are moving with wind.

 

Okay, I purchased the Kapok tree on your website. I am a subscriber so buy there for the discounts.

I needed this tree for a particular scene and it looked gorgeous in the website pictures. So, I bought it, left it in my bin for a while until I needed it. I created a nice new terrain just for the trees, downloaded them and put them in my scene.

At first I thought...Wow! Beautiful trees!

Then I zoomed in. The trunk of the tree looks horrible, full of horizontal lines as if the UVs are bad. So I opened the Modeler and looked at the tree. It looked fabulous in the Modeler. I created a brand new project, just a terrain and one Kapok tree. Same problem, weird looking trunks. I tried the other Kapok versions, same thing. Very bad.



I have had small issues with Speedtrees in the past but never anything like this. Please fix this! We spend a significant amount of money on Speedtrees and this is just crazy. I can't see how this made it to your store at all with this sort of issue. Do you even test them in Unity?

Please give me a time frame on this too. We need the scene for GUI backgrounds and not having decent trees is putting our development back. I should have check this back when I bought it.

Edit: See my below post. Sorry for my frustration, but might help if you give us Unity trees in a Unity package.

 

Yep, looks like Speedtree need to up their game in this respect @Dannyoakes

 

Well, interesting. I redownloaded it and now it is fine. So it might have been an import error from the Speedtree download site. Very weird.

I will leave the above post just in case someone else sees it but my suggestion, redownload. Unfortuately, Speedtree does not use Unity packages so could have been something that happened when extracting to the Unity project folders, something I really hate to do. I am going to package up this working copy and move it to my other project and keep my fingers crossed that it works again.

Lovely tree, btw.

 

Thanks for bringing this up Telia! I'll be sure to have this logged with our store manager to see if we can replicate it. My first instinct is that it may have something to do with the import into Unity as downloading from the store is simply grabbing the same zip file from our side.

Glad you like the tree!

Also, don't forget to grab the January bonus content that's up on the store.

 

Great, Danny. I think you are right about that. Later I copy and pasted into a new Unity project and had the same problem. Had to redo it to make it work.

So far, I have had everything offered as bonus content. lol I am hoping someday, you guys will offer something I don't have. Either way, I use the modeler a lot.

 

@Dannyoakes
Would you care to comment on the following?
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/speed-tree-optimisations.317585/#post-2449420

 

Maybe slightly off topic, but I'd like to ask people like @Teila who own SpeedTree modeller :

Can you make high quality trees with the speedtree modeller? And by high quality I mean trees that are going to be the centerpiece of a scene and that hold up great up close.

I downloaded the free "Example" trees package and while they looked pretty good at a distance, they immediately fell apart as I got closer and started seeing issues.

 

Your performance was a bit wooden. Leave the jokes to the professionals. Be sure to bark and/or ring the next time you want to try; I'll be rooting for you.

I honestly can't think of a pun that involves evapotranspiration. But, I mean to try.

 

That is a very difficult question to answer. I have found that what I think is beautiful someone else might think is not. So...not sure what you are asking. If you are asking if the trees will be amazingly realistic, no flaws, absolutely perfect...then probably not. If you are asking whether they can be beautiful and set the scene for a lovely terrain, then yes, I think they can. I make mine in desktop quality so I can use more trees. If you use Hero quality, you will get much higher resolution trees with more branches, leaves, etc.

Close up, I think they are fine...but again, that is subjective. I have on occasion replaced the bark with one of my own and improved the close up view, especially true if you want high resolution textures. I have also used leaves/branches found elsewhere but find the Speedtree ones fine. I think the below looks fine and this is a quick scene I took that has a lot of finishing yet to do..and IE tweaks. I took it just for scale to show someone earlier today...so not a masterpiece. These trees were made by me in the modeler using textures and meshes from various other trees. They are supposed to be unique trees in a low-fantasy game.

I recommend you subscribe for a month, see if you like it, and if not, cancel. there is no way anyone can tell you whether the quality is good enough for your needs...no one else but you.



Oh, and full disclosure..I use Alloy shaders and they have improved on the Speedtree ones.

 

Apologies for putting you on the spot and thank you for the answer and information! I'll probably do just that when the time comes.

 

No problem. I don't mind answering even though not sure I helped you at all.

 

You did actually.

This is way more information than I had before I asked my question and is actually useful to me.

 

Have you seen Hero quality tree? It wouldn't be better than that. At least palm trees looks pretty good on Hero. Haven't even tried anything else due to impact on the system.
My only problem with speedtree is Forward rendering and SSAO. Probably will move to deffered.

 

Hero Trees might be a good place to start. The modeler is capable of making extremely detailed trees. Of course, this comes at some cost as the triangle count goes up. It is more than capable of creating great centerpiece trees. If you need help feel free to post over at our forums to interact with our artists! (speedtree.com/forum/)

 

After a year of patient waiting I tested Free Speedtree Package again and I see there are no sigificant changes:

- vertical billboards still not available (Trees seen from top get rendered as a rotating line)
- normal billboards are popping to different angles when orbiting the camera
- dotted matrix when switching from geometry to billboard
- no response to Turbulence, Pulse Magnitude and Pulse Frequency

Speedtree for Unity in its current implementation is absolutely unusable for creating architecture presentations.
The speedtree intergration is my personal biggest dissapointment using Unity3d.

 

In Germany there's a saying, that if you lose sight of the greater picture because you're focusing on all the details, you can't see the forest from all the trees.

Thought it would fit in here - Welcome!

 

I'm looking at a couple trees in the speedtree store--but they are only available in the regular version, not the Unity version. What's the difference? If I subscribe to the modeler, can I make the necessary adjustments (which would be...)?

 

I heard your trees weren't really suited for games, that true???

 

Considering how many games SpeedTree has been used in over the years both AAA and indie, I would say that is not true at all. If you want to see some current examples made with Unity look at Shroud of the Avatar and P.A.M.E.L.A by Nvyve Studios (Just two off the top of my head, there are many more).

So, you're probably looking at our v6 or v7 trees which are intended for vfx use. This means that they have a tris count that would probably be unreasonable to use in a game. You may be able to use the low or medium models, the low models are sometimes on par with a real time tree and mediums can be used as a hero tree in scenes. This really depends on what your budget for polygons looks like in what you're creating.

To use them, you're going to need to open them up in the SpeedTree Modeler for Unity and use "Save As" to create a model that will import into Unity. In terms of making a VFX tree more economical, there's a number of ways that can be done, from creating new leaf maps (using the leaf map maker) or reducing the amount of segments in your branch and trunk. It's very dependent on your needs and they are probably not drop in ready like our Unity trees.

Which models are you looking at?

 

I'm looking at the Acacia and Umbrella Thorn Tree. Any chance that Unity-optimized versions of those will be coming out soon?

 

I'll see what I can do! No promises though, our artists have a long to-do list right now.

 

Great, I'll keep my fingers crossed. I don't need-them need them for a few months.

 

You missed Witcher 3, which is mainly many, many KM's of SpeedTree..! Looks awesome though.

 

Do you have ents?

 

Uhh, no BUT we do have this guy: https://store.speedtree.com/product/headless-horseman/

And of course Mister Killbot: https://store.speedtree.com/product/mister-killbot/


ALSO, friendly reminder:

If you've got a subscription to our Unity modeler we've got some fresh bonus content for you at store.speedtree.com as well as 15 percent off all our Trees.

AND

If you use the code "treehugs" you can get 20% off our store (no subscription required) because it's Valentines weekend and we like you guys

 

Yep! Fun fact, one of the environment artists from CDprojekt Red is now working for Unity. Only good things can come out of that!

 

You can make VERY detailed trees with speedtree, far past even hero models. You can model each leaf if you want to. It would be probably millions of polygons and take you forever to do, but it can be done. Or anything in between.
Here are some evergreen trees and various other mountain plants( with the desktop grass package) I made when I first was learning speedtree to give you an idea to simulate a Sierra or Rocky Mountain environment. These are about hero resolution, I have since made desktop resolution versions that can be used in a game but don't have them posted on that site. I don't know why the images are not coming up, here is a link-http://imgur.com/a/lEGTk/layout/undefined?#16

 

Shameless plug:

Use "DIVISIONGAME" to get 15% off SpeedTree assets at Store.SpeedTree.com this weekend.

<3