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HORIZON[ON] - Bridge the gap between the sky and your scenery.

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by Becoming, Jul 30, 2014.

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In which scenarios would you use Horizon[ON] ?

  1. Small to medium sized terrains (first/third person view/driving game)

    33.9%
  2. Small to medium sized terrains (flying game)

    17.5%
  3. Big to huge sized terrains (first/third person view/driving game)

    41.4%
  4. Big to huge sized terrains (flying game)

    31.9%
  5. Small to medium sized terrains on mobile (first/third person view/driving game)

    16.9%
  6. Small to medium sized terrains on mobile (flying game)

    13.1%
  7. Big to huge sized terrains on mobile (first/third person view/driving game)

    16.4%
  8. Big to huge sized terrains on mobile (flying game)

    18.1%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. Porto881

    Porto881

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    For some reason the Transition_sky hade the terrain material? Changed it to sky and now it works :) However its very very low resolution but maybe that gets explained in the manual at a later stage?

    Thank you very much for fast and great support! Will write a great review as soon as I get more acquainted with it.
     
    Becoming likes this.
  2. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Thank you, yes there are many ways to make a higher res look, i explained it the best i could. If you run into troubles again let me know. The Transition prefabs have indeed wrong default materials(i forgot to assign the correct ones to the prefabs in the update), they should be "TransitionSky" respectively "TransitionTerrain".
     
  3. crypt0

    crypt0

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    Hi,

    I am frustrated :( - I have finished one map with Horizon and it looks really great. But, when I add Horizon to a second map and do any changes, the first map will also changed. I have no idea, what's the problem. I have removed the master component in the first map. I have looked into the documentation, but I can't find any informations, to solve the problem...

    What can I do?

    Cheers
     
  4. crypt0

    crypt0

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    And here is another problem, with the deco painter.


    As you can see, some trees are not placed directly onto the meshcollider.... Horizon_Painter.png
     
  5. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Horizon[ON] Works with Materials, just like any Unity rendered object. The Horizon[ON] Master script just changes the materials of its children. Either you click the second Horizon Master to update the materials or you duplicate your material set for your other map(don't forget to assign them to the according objects)... You can make a folder for the materials, MaterialsMap1, MaterialsMap2 and so on...

    For the Tree placer, it works with regular unity physics raycasts, i noticed too that sometimes a tree can be placed a little inaccurate but definitely not as much as in the image you posted. I would guess that there is another collider in that place. Did you check if there are colliders on any other Horizon[ON] objects?
     
  6. crypt0

    crypt0

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    Hi,

    yes, I have checked this and there are no other colliders. I have test it also in a new project with same result.

    I am not sure, but is it normal that when I clicked onto baked into mesh, that It looks like that the cliffs are higher than that what I have set? When I delete the mesh renderer, the colliders lokks right...

    Cheers
     
  7. crypt0

    crypt0

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    Fyi: the distance between the trees and ground/collider are 10-15m/units
     
  8. Becoming

    Becoming

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    that is because the displacement shader takes the vertex position and adds the heightmap brightness. So initially the mesh was flat, displacement is correct, then displacement is baked, additional displacement is not needed. Deleting the meshrenderers from the collider objects is the correct way to deal with that.
     
  9. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Hmm, i tested it many times and for me it works, so there must be some difference in the setup. Is your horizon on 0 on the y axis? if you move the TreeGroup down, does it match the horizon?
     
  10. 99thmonkey

    99thmonkey

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    please post a tutorial video
     
  11. ptblk

    ptblk

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    Hey Peter

    Bought your asset today and wow, very cool! Even better was you step by step tutorial! You wont believe how many devs expect buyers to just understand their assets as well as they so, after they have been working on it for years compared to us opening it for the first time, leaving us with a very empty feeling after paying for something that we now have to struggle to learn.

    Anyway, i have a few questions/requests:

    1. While the tutorial helped me understand the way horizon works, it doesn't go into more advanced areas such how you placed trees and buildings in your demo scene? I see there is a deco painter in the Window menu, but have no idea how it works? Is there a tutorial to show this? Im looking to build a landscape which includes a city scape (skyscrapers) so need a detailed tutorial showing me what can be achieved with your asset.

    2. How on earth did you make time of day asset look so good in
    Could you also please release a tutorial on how you created the lighting for this? Just cant seem to come near to the same level of quality.

    Thanks
     
  12. ptblk

    ptblk

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    Actually just a few screenshots of your setting would be fine for point 2. Thanks
     
  13. ptblk

    ptblk

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    Oh and another question. I built a test scene using the Multi-Level Arrangement system, which is cool, but is there an option to lower the resolution of the start section, sot hat all the others also lower in relation to that. I am building for mobile so i really dont need that many triangles. A setting that reduces it would be extremely useful
     
  14. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Heyho, sorry for the delay, i have a bad cold and a food poisoning on top... so i will just aswer briefly and move back to bed.

    Time of day should work out of the box, it is just the Time of day settings... make sure the ambient light is controlled by TOD(spherical harmonics) same for reflections, you can include Horizon togheter with TOD in the Reflection, even for realtime, as performance is very good(on Desktop, realtime reflection probes on mobile are a bad idea, if they even work).

    The tree and object painter is explained in the manual(basically horizon just needs colliders to paint on).

    My biggest recommendation for mobile with the multilevel arrangement would be to bake the displacement and then to reduce the polycount of the meshes... prefereably, export them with an obj exporter, in your 3d program combine them and let a poly reduction algorythm run over it... this way you can go really really low with polycount and still have a very good look. if you analyze the mesh in the mobile example scene you can see such a processed mesh.

    Alternatively just use the blendmeshes, that should give you te lowest possible polycount(dont be shy and make your own blendmeshes, it is super simple)...

    i am sorry to say, time does not allow at the moment, we are short before releasing a game and we are in crunch... if i hopefully recover soon i am faced with a big pile of work. However, if you have specific questions, i will do my best to answer.
     
  15. ptblk

    ptblk

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    I dont want to bake the displacement, i bought the asset to lessen my work load not increase it.
    You already have an algorithm that reduces ever subsequent outer layer, so why not use it to allow us to set the inital one, which then drips down to the rest, instead of focign us to us a fixed number of polygons.

    I also have deadlines, *again why i bought he asset) so I dont see your point that you cant assist a customer, with a VITAL feature because you are too busy?

    Not happy with this at all. You promote mobile ready when i actually isnt unless you hack at it! I want a reduction feature so I can meet my deadlines
     
  16. Becoming

    Becoming

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    I am sorry that you are not happy with it but i never advertised that a poly reduction feature is included. The displacement is not meant for mobile, you can use it though if you bake the displacement(a feature that is included!). For mobile you should rather use the very optimized blendmehses(which work out of the box) or, like i said, bake the displacement... if you want it to optimize on top of that do a poly reduction. I will happily give you a refund though, just send me your invoice number so i can set things up with the assetstore staff.
     
  17. crypt0

    crypt0

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    Hi,

    today I have downloaded the new Unity 5.3 - After that, there is problem with the Horizon[ON] Tress / Buildings shader.

    Any ideas?

    Cheers

    horizon-shader.png
     
  18. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Me too.....

    P-
     
  19. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Might be a shader forge issue, probably it needs to be recompiled, i will look into it...
     
  20. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Here is are the fixed shaders for Unity 5.3: UnityPackage
    (This should do it until the update is on the store. If you have shaderforge you don't need to download these, you can instead just open the original ones with SF and recompile)
     
    hopeful likes this.
  21. crypt0

    crypt0

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    Thanks! It works ;)
     
    hopeful likes this.
  22. Deleted User

    Deleted User

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    Anybody using this? looks like a great fit...

    PixPlant
    a smart 3D texturing tool that creates and edits seamless textures and 3D maps.
     
  23. Porto881

    Porto881

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    I encountered a problem with using SSAO with Horizon. Having clipping planes set to a high number that horizon requires REALLY messes up SSAO. Maybe this can be solved with a different camerasetup but I really don´t wanna mess around with that since I will add postprocessing and so on later plus I use Time of day and I dont know how that works with multiple cameras.

    I´m using Unitys built in SSAO for the time being.

     
  24. Becoming

    Becoming

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    I am sorry, i have no real solution for this(also i stay away from unity's imagefx like the plague), you'd need to use an ssao like SSAOPRO or SESSAO where you can adjust the distance... i dont know if there is such a setting on the default ssao from unity.

    A 2 camera setup works with horizon and time of day but usually its not needed. It might help for this standard ssao issue but i am not sure.

    You can of course lower the view distance and make the horizon shorter and us a stronger scattering/fog density but balancing this for your specific situation is un avoidable if you really need to use the standard ssao
     
  25. Porto881

    Porto881

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    Well that´s great news because I plan on using SSAOPRO but didn´t want to buy it if it wouldn´t work. Thanks!
     
  26. Cactus_on_Fire

    Cactus_on_Fire

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    Hey. This looks like a great terrain tool.
    Is it possible to generate trees and buildings as you navigate through the terrain, also is it possible to use custom tree images for the trees ?
     
  27. mcmorry

    mcmorry

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    I have a side scrolling procedural generated racing game on mobile and I'd like to use Horizon for the background. The road is without end. Is it possible, or the size/position is defined at design time?
    Also have some check points at specific distance to re-start the race. The background should be properly aligned to that distance. There is a way to specify the offset for the generation?
    Thanks
     
  28. Becoming

    Becoming

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    It is not a terrain tool in the usual sense, it is meant as mid and far range background... you can take a look at the tree images... you can paint/bake your own texture atlasses... the geometry is very simple... so if you look at the included trees in a 3d program you will figure it out... it is quite simple. also since i know you are a shaderforge wizard, you wont have a problem to adjust the shaders to your needs, the tree and building shaders are shaderforge shaders ;)
     
  29. Becoming

    Becoming

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    You can definitely use horizon for such a case. I have thought to make a seperate product for sidescrollers, as how things are working now it would require some customization and maybe some scripting to instantiate parts as the track progresses. It easy to make such adjustments if you are not afraid of learning how horizon works. It is not a sidescroller background solution out of the box though.
     
  30. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Last edited: Dec 21, 2015
  31. jonfinlay

    jonfinlay

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    I followed the Getting Started and it works flawlessly, however when I used my own Colormap I got from Google Maps Pro it's just far too blurry (despite saving it at maximum resolution) and I've been trying for a few hours now.

    My questions are:

    - How can we create the Detail map from the Colormap?
    - How can we create a Heightmap used for the displacement?

    In the manual it says this about the issue of blurriness:

    Like i mentioned already 2 pages earlier, the terrain has more high frequency detail compared with Horizon[ON]. Sure, we could just crank up the resolution of the layer textures but i think there is a better way. Since we are already in the features section let‘s check if detail textures do the trick.

    Where is this resolution setting? Is it the scale?

    Thanks

     
  32. Becoming

    Becoming

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    The resolution is limited by your texture but, if you unfold the layer settings(for each layer) there is a tiling value... just higher the number there...
    for a detail map you can pretty much use anything that you like or just use the included one... the trick is that it is blended in overlay mode, that means everything above middle gray will be brightening and everything below middle gray will be darkening.

    For heightmaps, the most simple way would be to paint it in photoshop but there are many other ways, best would be to take it from the same source you take the satelite images... look for world composer for example.

    If you have a heightmap you can create normal maps from it too...

    Let me know if you need more help ;)
     
    jonfinlay likes this.
  33. jonfinlay

    jonfinlay

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    Ok thanks for the response. Be trickier than I'd imagined but it's gradually looking better.

    EDIT: Looking quite impressive now, the key is getting for me was increasing the tiling, and using the multi-level arrangement settings to make it look rocky. No need to change the heightmap.
     
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2015
    Becoming likes this.
  34. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    Is there a tutorial video for this? Maybe you could create a rough end to end video while we wait for something more polished, just put in some background music - no talking required. I can usually follow along or set it to slow speed / pause if necesary. THx!
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2015
  35. bradcode

    bradcode

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    Hello,

    I just purchased this fine looking plugin. I am able to open and run the demo scene in a blank project. Unfortunately the plugin either crashes or freezes when trying to import into my existing project. My project is based on the google cardboard unity demo with a few other plugins.

    Are there any known incompatibilities or ways to avoid this import crash?
     
  36. malkere

    malkere

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    Can this be made to work with runtime procedural terrains?
    To be more specific, in a world whose terrains are generated as the player moves ie: the data does not yet exist, this asset would be unusable, yes? Or are there already methods to generate the necessary data prior to the horizon terrains being created, ie: following Terrain Composer noise or something.

    meaning direct noise input is not possible? texture input must be used? What if we generate the texture being used during runtime and change what's being used when we past our 100km mark or whatever?
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2015
  37. mcmorry

    mcmorry

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    This is a good news. :)
    How much time you will need to create this separate product? Also, will it require a license for Horizon, or will be a self contained product?
     
  38. Becoming

    Becoming

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    I still am very busy but i think that would be doable, which things would you like to see covered?
     
  39. Becoming

    Becoming

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    I don't see why this would happen, did you try to switch the blank project to the same build settings as your project your having issues with?

    Is your project on unity 5.3? In this case maybe it would help to exclude the tree shader and building shader and import my fixed version afterwards(look a few posts above).

    Other than that i am clueless, maybe you could give me more detail when exactly it crashes/freezes... whille importing you should see what is curently imported. This might give me a hint where it could go wrong.
     
  40. red2blue

    red2blue

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  41. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Well, i dont have a good answer for this, i am sure you could make it work if you are creative about it but there is not a feature that comes out of the box for this. But, maybe there is, if you try the webplayer, you'll notice that you can move the horizon with the buttons in the bottom, this might give you a clue if you can use it for your case. For textures, they are just textures so you can create textures procedurally and apply them to the materials like you can with any other shader/material.

    So, not a great answer to be honest, my best tip is to try the webplayer and see if it gives you an idea :)
     
  42. Becoming

    Becoming

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    You can but you need to fiddle with it, Twobob posted his ideas and results earlier in this thread, i gave him some tips there too, i don't think he went all the way for a polished terrain like on your screenshot but his attempts definitely go in this direction. Look at page 7(+/-).

    edit: no sorry i dont have a video at this moment.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2015
    red2blue likes this.
  43. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Sorry, maybe what i wrote is missunderstandable, i meant i was just thinking about it not that i have something in work. I can't give you a time frame, as i dont even know yet if i will make it at all. So far you were the only one creative enough to think about using it for a (2.5D?)sidescroller(at least who publicly asked for it). If you are working for desktop it would be very simple to adapt Horizon[ON] as is, for such case. For mobile it would be possible too but you would need to rely on blendmeshes or go the extra mile and bake out meshes with the included baking functionality(these can be reduced then in a 3d program if feel you need it, but it might not be even neccesary).
     
  44. Becoming

    Becoming

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  45. mcmorry

    mcmorry

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    It's fine. I bought it. Let see what I can do :)
    You should expect some technical question next weeks :D
     
  46. Becoming

    Becoming

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    Thanks, after you made yourself familiar with it, either by following the getting started guide or just by analyzing the example scene you can get the first sidescroller setup by just placing the displacement planes in a line behind your level, from there with some very basic scripting it is more or less childs play. I look forward to hear back from you and maybe also see some screenshots :)

    I am very curious to see it in action in a sidescroller,! As i said i was thinking about such a usecase and in theory it should work fabulously. Let's see if my ideas were correct. Let me know anytime if you need help ;)
     
    mcmorry likes this.
  47. CurtisMcGill

    CurtisMcGill

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    I just picked up this package and it is great. I am wondering, if I can make the endless water instead of the ground? For a water game.
     
  48. plokkum

    plokkum

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    Hi! I'm working on a game with a 32x32 kilometer very low poly, unsmoothed terrain (that's the style I'm going after). Does Horizon[ON] also support this type of horizon terrain?
     
  49. Becoming

    Becoming

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    You can, just paint the alpha channel of the mask completely white...
     
  50. Becoming

    Becoming

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    That would be the same answer as for red2blue, 9 posts above. Look for Twobobs posts around page 7... he tried it and got some results, although i am not sure if he persued the idea any further. Basically you would need to bake the displacement export it and reimport it with normals set to calculate and 0 smoothing... if you have it exportet you can also do all kinds of tweaks in a 3d program if you want to, eg. poly reduction to break up the grid subdivision look.
     
    red2blue likes this.