Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

[In Review] Vertex Tools Pro

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by PitHeimes, Oct 19, 2015.

  1. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Hey everyone!

    This is our first post in this forum and we just wanted to share what we are currently working on.

    While trying to make our own small game we came to a point where we needed certain specific tools and shaders to get the results we wanted. So we started to build some of them on our own and they worked so well for us that we discussed making them an asset for the asset store. We aim to release a package that contains a fully functional Vertex Painter, a tool to deform (push/pull/pinch/expand/shrink) multiple or single vertices inside Unity and several awesome shaders for vertex blending.
    We know there are similar assets out there (& some of them are great!), but we also felt that most of them are outdated and not well maintained by their publishers or just too overpowered in some aspects while missing the basics of workflow and functionality.

    Here are some screenshots from the current state.
    Both screenshots are showing our 3 Texture Blend Shader with full PBR support.
    More shaders going to come in the next days, also waiting on your suggestions and wishes there.

    screenshot_forum001.jpg

    screenshot_forum002.jpg



    We really hope some of you might be interested in this.
    If you have any questions or ideas, please feel free to post them here - we are looking for as much feedback as we can get!

    We don’t just want to put things together without hearing what the community has to say.

    Thanks!
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2016
    Teila and mikolajspy like this.
  2. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

    Joined:
    Jul 12, 2014
    Posts:
    7,790
    Looks nice
    Do you have any examples of the vertex deformation? Video would probably be best.
    I think the answer is yes, but need to ask - can the vertex deformation be animated / deformed at runtime?
     
  3. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2010
    Posts:
    29,723
    Looks alright :)
     
  4. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Video will be made in the next days. System is set up to support animation. But, we are still unsure about the workflow and the GUI. Since mentioned we believe that most of similiar tools on the assetstore are missing a throughtought workflow and provide not that great UX.

    So probably it's something for an early update. Was and is planned for the first 3 weeks after release. But then, with full keyframe support.
    Same goes for vertex color.
     
    theANMATOR2b likes this.
  5. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    As promised a video of painting a deforming a simple plane.



    Should be mentioned: When modifying single vertices the size of the helping sphere handles will be calculated. Just missed that till now. Will be fix before release of course.
     
  6. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Hey there,
    some update on the tools.

    We decided to enhance the features to the use of a colormap to be indepent from the vertices. Therefore also lowpoly models can be painted with high detail and different brushes.

    Furthermore we upgraded our shaders and switch from unity's parallax to a custom parallax computation.
    In addition we are currently trying out heightbased painting.


    As you can see, the painted snow gets blended according to the heightmap of the bricklayer.


    Another picture from heightbased painting, this time enhanced with another wet layer to get some nice blend between the snow and the dry bricks.

    A video of the actual painting process will follow shortly.

    Comments & Critics highly appreciated.

    Thanks :)
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2015
    theANMATOR2b likes this.
  7. ZJP

    ZJP

    Joined:
    Jan 22, 2010
    Posts:
    2,649
    In Game?
     
  8. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    We plan to provide some sort of API for all our tools, to make it easy to access those functions like deform or paint within just a few lines of simple code. This is planned for an early update after we are finally happy with the workflow and our shader and release v1.

    Could you just clarify what excactly you mean with "In Game"? Would an API fullfill your needs, or what excactly do you want to use/do ingame? And how can we help you, to make integration as easy as possible?
     
  9. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Another quick question:

    We are currently looking forward to integrating a specular, metallic, glass and a fur shader. All fully paintable. Do you have any feature suggestions or wishes regarding the shader?

    The specular/metallic shader will work like Unity's standard shader except the enhanced Parallax Effect and the heightbased blending.
    Glass shader will have refraction and blurriness.
    Fur shader will be a typical fur shader, but will support PBS.

    Any additional wishes on the shader?
     
  10. specialkbs

    specialkbs

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2015
    Posts:
    1
    Looks very cool! Looking forward to the release!
     
  11. sjm-tech

    sjm-tech

    Joined:
    Sep 23, 2010
    Posts:
    733
    Just what i need...any idea when will be released!
    In these days I'm evaluating to purchase one of the others similar tools that, as you correctly say, they are outdated or not fully supported... not a great investment right now...instead your tool seem very promising.

    Cheers
    Max
     
  12. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2010
    Posts:
    29,723
    My only wishes for any shader is that they be optimised as much as possible ie as few textures as possible etc, maybe even packed texture support.
     
  13. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Hey there,

    it has been a while since the last update. Just wanted to inform everyone we are finally started working on our demo scene. Screenshots will follow this week.
    In terms of release date, we are not quite sure yet. Expect it in Early 2016.

    In terms of packed texture. Do you mean the use of a texture atlas, or packing multiple grayscaled textures into one rbga texture?
     
  14. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Hey there,

    some update on our progress. A small teaser from our demo scene.
    Everything you see is made with seamless textures and our heightbased Vertex Painting.
    So yes, the two houses share the same material just painted them different.

    We are looking forwatd to a release within the next few weeks.
    If you have any questions or suggestions, we always love to hear your feedback.

     
    Last edited: Jan 6, 2016
  15. Eriks-indesign

    Eriks-indesign

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2012
    Posts:
    50
    This looks fantastic! This is exactly what I've been looking for. Can't wait to see more and release!
     
  16. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Thanks for the feedback. Painting Tool and Shader are finished. Seems like the first version will be submitted next week. Though already have plans for an early update. Any suggestions for it?
     
    theANMATOR2b likes this.
  17. Teila

    Teila

    Joined:
    Jan 13, 2013
    Posts:
    6,932
    I love this! Thank you. Can't wait to see it on the asset store.
     
  18. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Thanks again. Just a little more patience and it will already be available.
     
    Teila likes this.
  19. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Just a quick update: We decided to go with Basic Vertex Based Flow Map Support in the first version. On our Todo for first update: Ability to not only process the data from a given map, but also to let you freely draw the FlowMap in Unity itself.

     
  20. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    We finally began to restructure our all-in-one shader and eliminate some nasty things we did during development.


    Next thing: Tooltips to ensure the easy use.
     
    Eriks-indesign likes this.
  21. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
  22. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322
    Demoscene seems about finished. Lastly polishing our API a bit for easy runtime use.
    Any feature wishes or suggestions? Anything you definitly want to be able to do at runtime?
     
  23. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2015
    Posts:
    322