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

I assume you just forgot to do the step of adding colliders(see the manual - you'd need to bake the displacement and then add colliders). The placement script relies on raycasting, so colliders are a must.

About making your own buildings, it's pretty straight forward, just model and texture them in the usual way and use the building shader, alternatively you can also make your own shader with shader forge and use the included template.

To make your own trees, it's a bit more tricky but still not that hard, they just need a diffuse atlas, a normal atlas, and a backlight map atlas. Of course you can also texture each tree individually but for performance reasons its better to use atlassing. The way i did the trees was to first create the texture atlas and then simply cut the trees out of a plane which had the atlas applied. If you open the tree fbx in your 3d modelling program you can see how it is done.

I would not give tutorials on basic 3d modeling/texturing, as there are already tons out there, but if you have specific questions i am here to help.

 

I have downloaded the latest version it cleared up alot here is what i have for errors right now.
Shader error in 'Horizon[ON]/Horizon[ON] Flat': invalid subscript '_ShadowCoord' at Assets/Plugins/Horizon[ON]/Sources/Shaders/_horizON_Core.cginc(606) (on d3d11)

Compiling Vertex program with DIRECTIONAL LIGHTMAP_ON SHADOWS_SHADOWMASK _LAYERCOUNT_ONE _DIRECTSPEC_OFF _IBLSPEC_OFF _NORMALMAPS_OFF _EMISSIVENESS_OFF _DETAIL_OFF _WATER_OFF _OVERLAYFOG_OFF _SNOW_OFF
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME

Shader error in 'Horizon[ON]/Horizon[ON] Cliffs': maximum ps_4_0 sampler register index (16) exceeded at Assets/Plugins/Horizon[ON]/Sources/Shaders/_horizON_Core.cginc(92) (on d3d11)

Compiling Fragment program with DIRECTIONAL SHADOWS_SCREEN SHADOWS_SHADOWMASK _DETAIL_ON _DIRECTSPEC_ON _EMISSIVENESS_ON _IBLSPEC_ON _LAYERCOUNT_FOUR _NORMALMAPS_ON _OVERLAYFOG_ON _SNOW_ON
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME

Shader error in 'Horizon[ON]/Horizon[ON] Cliffs': invalid subscript '_ShadowCoord' at Assets/Plugins/Horizon[ON]/Sources/Shaders/_horizON_Core.cginc(606) (on d3d11)

Compiling Vertex program with DIRECTIONAL LIGHTMAP_ON SHADOWS_SHADOWMASK _LAYERCOUNT_ONE _DIRECTSPEC_OFF _IBLSPEC_OFF _NORMALMAPS_OFF _EMISSIVENESS_OFF _DETAIL_OFF _OVERLAYFOG_OFF _SNOW_OFF
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME

 

What platform and Unity version are you on?

 

I have reported the same error at 28 Nov; Using Win8.1x64, Unity 2017.2.p3, OpenVR SinglePass Forward Linear.

 

His error does not show the single pass vr keyword so i hope i can smash 2 bugs with one strike.

 

Oh, duh! Can't believe I missed that. Funny thing, I used Horizon[ON] in a previous project and, as soon as I read your response, I remember assigning colliders to the mesh. Thanks for the clarification.

I appreciate the lead on the far-ground models. I looked at the shader and the building models as you suggested. What stood out immediately was that you mapped all the buildings onto one atlas. Wasn't sure if there was a special way to do that, as I've never used that technique before. Pretty confident I can figure it out based on your description of the process.

Thanks for the quick reply and happy holidays!

 

Thanks! In case of the buildings i created the atlas before i modeled the buildings, then i made a square plane in the 3d modeling programm and uv mapped the whole atlas. I have then cut this plane so that each building wall was its own mesh. These meshes i duplicated and rearranged to create the buildings. Last step was to merge the individual planes of a building into one mesh. The atlas was the most work, creating the building meshes was very simple.

 

Hi there!
Ok, i'll post the main reason I haven't been able to use Horizon so far although I bought it years ago.

My main issue is that my terrain doesn't have flat edges. The terrain was created long ago and it's already in the game so I can't modify it freely without having to rewrite lot of stuff on the game. Therefore the horizon transition prefab doesn't work for me.

1) I've tried adding a rectangle around to make it flat by exporting the raw terrain file as suggested by the doc. But photoshop can't open the raw file no matter what I try. Using another tools I was able to open it but if I add a rectangle, the terrain mountain goes from 1000m height to zero in a single pixel! looking horrible. And I can't find a way to smooth down this over a slope. Any help with this would be great.

2) If there is no way to do #1, it would be incredibly useful that Horizon auto creates a transition mesh matching the borders with your transition terrain and generating vertices that smooth down to that level. I was thinking of writing a script for this myself but I have no idea how to do it at the moment.

any ideas? otherwise I'm always left out of horizon.

 

Hey creat327,
1) Photoshop is able to open raw files, if you have a raw file from WorldMachine the extension might be .r16 but you can just rename it to .raw and Photoshop will open it. Anyway i am guessing that you have problems to chose the right settings for the raw import/export in photoshop. I never had the case that a raw file did not open so more details would help me with helping you.

If you have your heightmap in photoshop you can put a rasterized white rounded rectangle above it with the Blendmode set to multiply. You'll have a nice transition to flat then and you have full control about how your transition looks. The rectangle here has the Layereffect "Outer Glow" applied, the settings you see will be a good starting point, sorry for the german Photoshop but if you have the layer effect open on your side you'll see that the GUI controls are on the same positions.

2) Automatically creating a transition that fits any terrain border is next to impossible or at least very hard to do as there are so many factors that play into this(Terrain resolution, Heightmap size is +1, Terrain LOD switching, LOD bias, Normal interpretation of terrain, potential tesselation of 3rd party terrain shaders, and probably a whole bunch more things).

Ideas:
You should ask yourself, do you really need that transition, for example if you run around for long enough in Uncharted 4, you'll find that they also use a solution very similar to Horizon[ON] but all without a transition. What they do, and how it's done in many games, is that they cover it up. Here are suggestions for how to cover it up:

• Place the seam behind a hill/mountain of your terrain.
  
• Place objects on / in front of the seam - trees, rocks, buildings, fences, walls, roads, rivers, deco objects...

First option is the simplest, just place horizon a bit lower than your lowest point on your terrain edge. if the players can walk off of your terrain you have a problem anyway and if they get very close to it and all they see is the skybox you'd still be better of with Horizon[ON]. If the Horizon[ON] start is a bit lower than your terrain edge it will just appear like there is a ridge on the terrain and it continues behind this ridge.

The second option is more work but may give better results. Of course you can combine both ways.

You can also let your terrain intersect with Horizon[ON] if you want, then you'd not have a straight line transition and you can be more creative with covering it up.

I hope this helps a bit, if you have more questions let me know.

Cheers,
Peter

 

at the end i had to pay for a monthly subscription for photoshop trying to do this myself... i was able to do the rectangle and everything but i have no idea how you got that "rasterized copy" layer in there. Every option i click that has rasterize on it, doesn't create a new layer

 

I'm using unity 2017.2 and I'm targeting VR multi pass.

 

I always put that white rectangle on a black background and just hit "shift+ctrl+c" to make a merged copy, then hit "ctrl+v" to paste it over the heightmap. Then disable the other, now unneeded layers and set the new layer to multiply.

 

Thanks for the report. The shadow coord issue in Unity 2017 VR is on top of my list.

 

I have a question about terrain texturing and the transition. Is there a way to make it less obvious? My terrain was textured by gaia tools if I remember correctly and the textures and shaders used on horizon are very different. I added a sky transition and the jump from my terrain to horizon is so obvious it looks horrible. Is there a way to make a nicer transition between whatever we have in the terrain and horizon textures?

 

As with all terrain related work it requires some art effort, e.g. adjusting material properties and textures. The first thing you may want to do is to adjust the Global Tint in the "Main Settings" section. The RGB Value(or better switch to HSV) can control the brightness and also slightly tint to make the colors warmer or colder, the alpha value controls the saturation. If you match the brightness and saturation you have already covered a lot of ground. Then you should try to offset the mask/layers to fit your terrain in a good way. So that, for example, you don't have a desert on horizon when your terrain on the edge is completely green, or vice versa.

If you need more control than this you can of course modify the textures to be more similar to your terrain texture colors, or even completely create your own textures.

 

ok i think i found a bug, it happens on play mode but not on editor mode and i've been trying to figure out why on the shader without luck.

If you don't set the Y position of horizon to zero, place it at -157.544 which is my case. Then add a transition sky. Your Scale Height set to 1, which means maximum. Line up your terrain or whatever, so you don't see a jump between the terrain and the transition. Hit play, looks fine.

Now go back to editor mode. Change the Scale Height to 0.05 for instance (mostly flat transition sky). Looks fine on editor. Hit play. Your transition sky is floating mid air.

So I found the cause, just don't know how to fix it. It only happens when you place your Horizon at a Y position different than zero. Something in there is then scaling the vertex on play mode that doesn't do it on editor mode differently. Any ideas? I can't set my Y at 0 because it's an already released multiplayer game and I can't change the position of the terrain freely. The trick for now is to set Scale Height to 1 so it aligns properly but I don't want that height on my game because I'm trying to avoid to render transparent stuff as much as possible.

 

I assume you mean the "Horizon[ON]_Transition_Terrain" object, i can't think of a reason why the "Horizon[ON]_Transition_Sky" would behave that way, could you please verify for me that you really mean the transition between Horizon[ON] and the sky?

If it is like i assume and you mean the transtition between the terrain and Horizon[ON] you can take a look at the script on this object which is called "HorizonCompensateZFighting.cs".

It has 4 variables that are of interest:

minCamHeight = -159.544
minOffsetY = -157.554 (notice the 0.01 offset, change a little if needed)
maxCamHeight = 343.544
maxOffsetY = -159.544

If you set them up with the values i chose here you should be good. What it does is, it places the transition as close as possible on the terrain based on your vertical camera position. If we go further up with the camera, the object moves up a little to minimize the risk of z-fighting. Alternatively you can also try to remove this script and just place the object at a value that works for you, if you don't run into z-fighting issues, there is no reason to use this script.

If it really is like you say and the transition to the sky is acting weirdly we need to dig deeper.
Please keep me updated.

 

it's the Horizon[ON]_Transition_Sky not the transition_terrain. It has no CompensateZFighting.cs script attached to it.
It's easy to reproduce, just set your terrain and horizon[on] master to that negative Y

 

I found the issue, disable "Batching Static" and its fine. There is no batching happening for this object anyway, as it has a separate shader, not sure why unity still recreates the mesh, this was not happening in previous Unity versions and probably just nobody noticed this issue yet as its common to have terrains at 0 height.

 

ouch, any other tricks? i can't disable batching, my game loses lot of fps. It's a mobile game.

 

Don't disable batching, disable batching for that single object, it can't be batched anyway and unity apparently screws it it up for some reason when the y position is negative and batching is on.

 

oh, lol, i understood for the project. Thanks, worked like a charm!

 

great By the way: What i wrote about the Transition Terrain object and the compensate z fighting script will probably still apply in your case with the lowered terrain.

 

Hey @Becoming any updates on the errors?

 

Yes i think i have them fixed, uploading to UAS tomorrow.
I send you a PM in a moment, so you don't have to wait for asset store approval

 

hi, i bought this in the sale a day or so back, and i've just now sat down to try and integrate it into one of projects, and...

...well, i haven't even got out of the starting blocks, i'm afraid

probably me being dense as usual, but, i'm having trouble even setting up a very simplistic use case, which i've reduced to the following steps:

> New Project
> Set Linear Colour Space
> Import Horizon
> New Scene
> Set Camera Far Clipping Plane = 25600
> Add new untextured default UnityTerrain, positioned at -250, 0, -250
> Add Horizon Master
> Add Terrain Transition (ensuring no Static Flags are set)
> Add Sky Transition
> Transition Settings Scale Inner = 0.33, to ensure it overlaps the Terrain
> Position Camera to view the edge of Terrain
> Run
> No sign of the Terrain Transition (although the Sky Transition is visible)
>
> Set Camera Clear Flags to "Solid Colour" (Black)
> Run
> Now both the Terrain and Sky Transitions are visible

so, i didn't see anything about it in the manual, but is that expected behaviour (i.e. that you need to have the camera clear flags set to something other than "Skybox" when using a standard Terrain object)?

if i replace the unity terrain with the prefab mesh from the examples, then everything works as expected (i.e. i don't need to do anything to the camera in order to see the terrain transition)

the problem is, i want to use Horizon with Digital Ruby's "Weather Maker" system, and that uses the Unity Skybox, so when i try and combine the two systems, i get that invisible terrain transition, which means that at the moment i can't use the two systems together

any suggestions welcome

p.s. i'm using Unity 2017.2.0f3

 

The example scene also works with Unity's skybox... the kind of sky should not matter at all,
Anyway it seems what you do is correct, i can only guess here. Do you have the transition terrain scaled and positioned correctly? It uses a decal shader so it needs to be correctly placed on something(the terrain or terrain mesh). Can you post a screenshot from your sceneview?

 

thanks for the reply

your guess was spot on. once i'd set the scale to match the size of the terrain (which i thought i'd tried, but clearly not) then everything worked as expected, and i'm on my way at last!

 

Hey!

I purchased Horizon[ON] in the Black Friday sale and only just got around to playing with it this weekend... I'm hoping for great things

One particular area where I struggled was to get it working nicely with the TimeOfDay Atmospheric Scattering... I couldn't achieve a nice blended effect on the terrain transition or sky transition elements...

Reading the manual, it does briefly mention this topic, and I have scanned over the previous posts here and it is touched on now and again.. but I was wondering if you could provide some specific details and settings from where you said you got it all working nicely (and the pictured indeed looked great):

- Which type of elements would you recommend using between the two assets (Horizon[ON] and TOD)
- Any additional objects like temporary planes that you used
- The scattering settings that you might recommend in TOD
etc

I'm using current versions of both assets on 2017.1.1f1 / Windows10 in case that helps.

Many thanks!

 

If you use the atmospheric scattering just disable/remove the transition sky object, and put the atmospheric scattering density low enough so it does not affect the transition terrain and high enough so it hides the end of Horizon[ON]. We use Horizon[ON] and TOD in D.R.O.N.E. and it works nicely, i don't remember having any issues apart from having to remove the transition sky object (the atmospheric scattering removes the need for it).

Basically you would need to find the right density values. Maybe i can help you more after you tried my suggestions and post some screenshots of your problems.

Good luck and please report back

 

Hi Peter,

I'm unable to select any Color in the main settings on Unity 2017.2.0f3. Resizing the inspector width doesn't help.

Latest version of the HorizonON asset.

 

Interesting, here it works, i will look into it right away!

 

I can't reproduce this issue, do you have any other asset installed which modify the inspector gui?

Edit: I am uploading a fix that may fix it but i am not sure, i am a bit blindfolded without being able to reproduce the issue.

 

Update 1.4.1 is uploaded and pending for Asset Store review

Changes in Version 1.4.1
• Fixed a potential inspector GUI issue related to the inspector width.
• Fixed an an issue with using too many texture samplers on VR.
• Fixed an an issue with shadow coords on VR.
• Fixed an an issue with having wrong normals due to normal texture unpacking changes in Unity 2017.

 

I've tested this in an empty project with just HorizonON and then the issue doesn't occur, must be another interfering asset.
Edit: Issue was caused by the Bullet UI asset from Evil, removing this asset does remove the issue.

 

How to make trees facing camera?

 

I notice Horizon[On] Draw tree prefab and combine them，that is why billboard shader doesn’t work.

But It can also make a cross billboad tree to draw .(Sorry for My English

 

Updated review, to 5 stars, working great for PC game and mobile. I had some time to work with Horizon On again, working great. Thanks. for updates, please keep it working great.


Using it for our Steam game we are releasing next year, hopefully, open world.. So it seems to be working well. Mobile game is releasing Spring of 2017, that also is working well. Both use Horizon on again before I took it out, due to some issues with mobile game. But got it working really well now.

 

I Modified the shader and make a cross billboard tree，it work！
but can you provide the uv coordinates of the tree diffuse map？

 

Hey, i would like to help you but i am unsure how You can check the UV coordinates of the tree meshes if you open the fbx in a 3D Program. Can you clarify how i can help?

 

Glad Horizon[ON] is working for you on your platforms of choice! Good luck with the games!!

 

Never mind ,I Find it out~

 

Thanks for the hints... all blending nicely now... I replaced the transition to sky with some additional displacement planes

Absolutely great asset!

 

Hello~ Can you help me to generate the mountains？

The mountains model in 1.4 is very beautiful!

But I look up the guide but still don't know How to make it...

How to make splat maps? And any advise to generate the mountain models in wolrd composer?

 

If I buy the mountains model in this link
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/cn/#!/content/59036

How to generate the maps for these models?

 

My terrain fades into some kind of haze within 6000 - 8000 units from my camera. The attached image shows the effect. The closest red cylinder is on the world origin, while the others receded into the distance in increments of 5000 units. I want the first cylinder that has no red coloring to be the last one at 30,000 units. Thanks.
(Note: The camera is at an 'altitude' of 1000 units.)

 

Solved! I was looking at the controls within HORIZON[ON]. This fog effect is controlled by Unity > Window > Lighting : Scene > Other Settings > Fog >Density.

 

hi,

The normal map you provide in the asset for demo is fantastic and actually Horizon On looks so good with a great normal map...But i can't create one as good as yours. I don't use photoshop..only GImp could you please give us some a process in order to create the best normal as possible?

What do you think of "normal map online"? Is it possible to make a good one with this site?
Still struggling with the asset for saving presets and saving the préfab...but in few hours and only playing with the normal you provide i had some amazing results wich make me hope a lot in this asset! i must admit it's not that easy to use. for me at least!

I think maybe you could provide us more textures with random rgb zones like the one you give. Users might find what they need without doing it.

Taking a pic of his terrain from top view is quite clever!! still missing the quality of the normal...

I'm still ignoring what displacement is and how it works... Does it create Height of the Horizon mesh regarding the texture given or the terrain itself? Will the mesh follow the bump of the splat and normal texture i will use?

I couldn't flatten my terrain on edges with TC1 (yes i have TC1 and TC2 but still use the 1st! )though i followed the tuto on Nath page..Will dig into it...If ever you already have an advice?

The most impressive was the performance cost!! Many thanks for that, almost nothing!!

Thanks in advance

 

the transition sky shader doesn't take into account direction lights. I put a scene at night time and i see it all bright.

 

@Becoming There is something strange in the FixSeams method implementation. It's a method that's being called from displacement baking code. For some reason, it's performing operations directly on shared meshes of Horizon object hierarchy, which is a very strange thing to do. Shared, project-hosted meshes are usually treated as untouchable and are normally instantiated before any modifications. As is, FixSeams method simply corrupts the serialized representation of FBX meshes included with Horizon instead of modifying per-GameObject instances of project meshes. Thankfully, corrupted shared meshes are easy to fix with a reimport.

I suppose this is an unintentional typo, because modifying shared mesh doesn't even allow that method to accomplish per-object geometry fixing, as every single loop operates on exact same array, over and over.

Maybe you're assuming that FixSeams method is never called before DisplaceMesh (which correctly instantiates a referenced object in MeshFilter) goes over an object, but that doesn't cover a case where DisplaceMesh bails out, failing to discover one of the shader properties - I'd use a check for mesh being a unique instance or use MeshFilter.mesh in FixSeams to prevent that from happening.