World Building InfiniGRASS STUDIO✅-Massively optimized,interactive & non uniform volume grass for procedural worlds

Sounds good thanks.

 

Now that would be a huge plus

 

I will be adding a height based and slope based distribution feature in v1.5 and will then adapt that to GAIA, directly or with taking GAIA data into account.

Also in v1.5 the grass will be able to blend in color with the ground, which will increase variability and color adaptation exponentially, making it the perfect companion for GAIA for a non patterned, realistic and perfect blended grass for a true next gen look.

And a procedural system will make each grass blade unique, which combined with the new gravity and local temporal interaction shaders, will create a true infinite variety grass.

The sky is the limit of course and all these features are just the start of the grass journey

Also these techniques will be extended to rocks and mushrooms etc, so the system will essentially have an InfiniROCK module when i am done with v1.5. The goal with this is to have rocks that blend well with the ground and have infinite shaping variability with just one rock model !!!

 

New grass type for v1.5.

The gravity, temporal interaction and vertex blend new modes in v1.5 will also be available for the transparent grass. This new type is a combination of the higher polygon long grass and transparent grass.

Please if you like the pack, when possible, leave a review so i can work much faster on upcoming updates.
As i am a one man team, reviews help a lot in keeping the development for packs full time and delivering extra features much faster.
Thanks a lot in advance for any reviews for the packs.​

 

UPDATE:

One more grass type has been added to the v1.5, longer low grass with textures i created from grass grabbed from my near forest. I also took a lot of photos for reference and plan to create various environments that have all the small details of a real forest. This will be an ongoing study for later versions as well.

Pics will follow soon.

 

One quick question regarding development. Are you planning to develop only GAIA support or is also Terrain Composer support on development list?

 

I have a two step aprroach in this, i am currently working on implementing a stand alone feature for height and slope distribution (that will be the on/off feature, as slope is already considered in grass orientation, but there is no yet control of absense of grass depending on slope/height)

This is because the grass is already taking into account all the terrain surface features, so it will do a two way adaptation (from grass side, which does things Unity terrain does not support, like orientation of grass on surface normal etc) and what the other packs do depending on Unity terrain features and abilities.

When these are done, the system will be able to emulate what other systems do in grass spreading and can act as standalone on every terrain, so will be globally compatible with all Terrain systems.

The end goal is to fully emulate what these packs do for grass (and rocks etc) distribution directly in InfiniGRASS, since this will be the fastest solution and wont require any extra systems, and will come gradually as i enchance this first base height/slope system.

Also i am doing a texture mask based placement / cut off feature, for detailed control of grass types per areas.

After the above based systems are done, i will adapt the specifics of these to each separate pack, starting with GAIA and i will also consider Terrain Composer if i manage to find out how it saves its own information. I hope after v1.6 there will be no need to retreive the Terrain Composer information and do all its spreading features directly in InfiniGRASS.

The system already adapts grass types per splat map, with a weighted feature to decide both the grass type and scale (more will come in this front, like water directed growth and much more) and adapts grass orientation by surface slope, which is a unique IndiniGRASS feature (directly follow normal and in v1.5 a gravity shader will adapt grass on ots length to make it affected by gravity). It can also mask grass areas during mass placement with any object that does not have PPaint tag attached.

Now i am doing a control to cut off grass in mass placement by relative height (to water level) and by slope, to have the first full set of features for placement and then will adapt to GAIA and after that proceed to enchance these with randomzation features and much more controls.

 

Top down look in grass WIP

Note that grass in the upcoming version version 1.5 also has a local temporal interaction mode that will interact with the hero without any computational cost.

 

Top down grass and temporal dynamics WIP for v1.5

 

Performance test with lots of grass, full shadows and quality, multiple image effects at 1080p, no LOD (so can be much faster when LODs are defined) in my old PC (2010 CPU, core 2 duo E7500). The view distance is also very high and can be as high as required. The impact is minimal even at very large view distances.

UPDATE:

Features for v1.5

- new ground color vertex blend mode to get different grass looks based on ground texture.
- the grass will be leaving the Interactive state automatically if has been pressed down beyond a threshold, for performance enchancement in dynamic grass
- checks to make sure grass is better spread when painted, so brushes dont fall very close to each other, for performance enchancement in dynamic grass
- shader based temporal grass interaction and motion based on interactor direction and speed (shader based for near zero cost)
- procedurally changed ground and rocks, as a first step for a complete world creation suit (InfiniROCK and InfiniGROUND systems)
- procedurally changed grass shape, for unlimited variety without any extra asset creation !!!
- gravity emulation shader features, for emulating gradual bending of grass on slopes and breaking of grass under its weight
- additional noise to wind emulation for better top down results and look and local wind
- many new grass types, including new stackable rocks (rocks that can be painted on top of each other for creating formations)

Features for v1.6 (some may appear in v1.5)

- GAIA support, for spreading the grass in GAIA mode and additional features to complement with the InfiniGRASS unique features (which Unity grass does not support).
- Texture based grass placement, for application of multipel grass types per mass placement application in mesh terrains
- Height and slope based grass elimination (plant only above/below a slope angle or height)
- Static grass optimization, with removal of original grass blade meshes after the batching when entering play mode. The batchers in this case will be flagged as closed and wont receive real time painted grass.
- Full procedural mode, where grass wont have to painted in the editor and will be grown basd on rules in play time to fill in the map. This mode will blend with the editor paimted grass.
- A mini game that will showcase the prefab instantiation and gradual growth methods. I plan to create a maze like and a tile based mini game templetes and evaluate the possibilities of procedural and prefab based stages creation.
- Shadow manager, for automatic refinement of Unity shadow settings

Most of the Version 1.5 features are now in an advanced state of development.

 

That new grass type is exactly what I need. :O

 

Great, i will include a lot more types as well for v1.5 and try to get even more realistic art in the pack as it moves ahead.

 

Yeah be cool if you could make some weeds and stuff as well, saves me from doing it lol

 

I will make sure to add weed style too, i now work with longer blades i grabbed from my near forest and i also got many ideas about creating detailed demos with grass near rocks and tree roots, i am making assets towards that direction as well. I just have to recreate my forest at some point, with grass, trees and all

Also i added a shadow manager as to do feature for v1.6, it is a great idea to have shadows automatically handled for best grass looks.

 

Love the new ground color vertex blend mode! Makes the grass look better "grounded" and you get more diverse results with fewer grass types and textures
Well done mate!

 

Thanks , i plan to expand this for rocks as well for an all around solution. Another idea is to stretch the lower vertices of items to best fit the ground, i am also working towards that direction and see where it leads.

 

A few more top down videos

 

Just a question would it be possible to have shadows for grass only to be not as strong, I.e. at 50% shadow strength?

 

That is currently not possible, as Unity handles the shadows, but you can set this from the sun light shadow "Strength" parameter. I could also add a method where very dense grass would not create some of the shadows so it would lower the effect, but not their actual intensity.

Using fewer cascades in quality options will also lower the shadow influence so this could also be tweaked (the distance must also be tweaked to get the required result). And the ambient light also affects shadows.

I will also evaluate whether it is possible to adjust shadows directly on the object's shader, this could be another option if it is possible.

EDIT: I found a cool shader for ShaderForge (http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=Colored_Shadows) that seems to allow handling of shadows, i will recreate it and see how it is done in the shader and then modify mine in order to provide more shadow options for InfiniGRASS shaders

 

That would be cool, have them have a slight tint of green + 30% shadow strength.

 

Some shots using textures from the HQ Photographic Textures Grass Pack Vol.2 asset.

I will be creating a few demos using such great assets for reference.

I will add controls in the Inspector to adjust the effect and coloration or color shift for the shadows, in order to get any look desired

 

UPDATE:

I have now started work on a first base for the full procedural mode, this first demo will showcase a simple radial approach to grass creation without any further optimization and will be used to evaluate the posisibilities at this minimally optimized mode. Then the rest of the work will focus on the points that require enchancement based on the first full procedural creation tests.

 

Full procedural mode, the below grass & flowers were not painted in the editor and are planted based on rules and customizable distribution.

The grass is Auto painted based on splat map (and soon slope and height), is scaled per splat map (with customized on the fly factors) and can also grab ground color for the lower vertices to blend with ground (not implemented yet in the pics below, but the system is ready and will be in v1.5).




UPDATE:

Some great news, the full procedural mode works nicely with a simple enumeration and the framerate can remain smooth even with my very old CPU (and i did not optimize in the slightest yet).

So in v1.5 (or v1.6) it will be possible to have one Grass manager to fill in the map with grass fully procedurally, without doing any painting in the editor !!!! in addition to the specifically painted grass in the editor of the current version.

I have already implemented the scaling per splat map and i am now working on the grass type per splat map (now i mix two types in random in the above pics), plus slope and height based planting (grass type and elimination) and then i will start working on the radial spread algorithm at distance (now i just spread from the hero outwards, the actual implementation will be to create grass as the hero moves around in a circular way in a distance, so it covers the ground the hero will see in the next frame (in the LOD cutoff distance).

Proof of concept video, this is not the final way the system will work and showcases the automatic grass creation in a radial way starting from the hero and moving outwards (though i could add the near hero growth as an extra option). In the final system, the grass will be grown near the hero on game start and then the rest will grow at the cutoff range gradually, at the distance using the same method shown in the video, so it will be there when the hero approaches. There will also be regulation of how much it is grown at any one time based on hero speed (so when stationary there will be no extra planting).

 

Some more optimization i found possible while playing with the massive planting WIP (besides the more optimized grass distribution to avoid unessesary exessive local density)

- The batchers may revert to a very basic LOD changing only mode when they are full of grass, so they will create a lot less overhead

- The original meshes may be erased to save on RAM after the batcher has received all members.

- The grower scripts may revert to a more basic mode to avoid a lot of low cost checks that build up when a lot of grass is around.

- Some functionality that is now spread in the individual growers may be moved to the manager and distributed to the growers for one time calculation.

I will be working on all these in parallel with v1.5 procedural growth.

A few stats on this, i painted 4200 grass patches and created around 700 batchers, this gave around 25-28ms on CPU in 1080p and this was reduced to around 17ms when the batchers are deactivated (only impacts LOD changing in static grass) and to 14ms after the grower scripts were removed (this impacts only possbile dynamic mode, so it can be turned off directly)

There are still a lot of optimizations that can be done to auto lower the above numbers, by disabling the right things at the right time, to faciliate the massive grass auto creation and will be one of the major focuses for v1.5 and beyond.

 

Dynamic Snow Growth using InfiniGRASS and Sky Master ULTIMATE v3.0

The snow weather is started in the Inspector and thus there is a pause when entering and leaving the inspector to move back to the game. There is zero pause when used directly inside the game as the effect is shader based (so it is a simple variable set in the shader to do the effect).

The snow growth can also be previewed in full real time in InfiniGRASS demo with Sky Master (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/INFINIDY/INFINIGRASS/INFINIGRASS_SKYMASTER3_DEMO.html)

Please if you like the pack, when possible, leave a review so i can work much faster on upcoming updates.
As i am a one man team, reviews help a lot in keeping the development for packs full time and delivering extra features much faster.
Thanks a lot in advance for any reviews for the packs.​

 

UPDATE:

Another feature for v1.5, the re-scaling of grass per grass type in Inspector, this way all grass can be rescaled at will selectively.

 

UPDATE:

After working with bigger brushes i have found an issue with the grass scaling when the scale is larger than one.

While painting there is an additive scaling of the scaled grass, which means it will appear larger than it should. When ungrown the scaling is restored when entering play mode, but not if it is not ungrown. This issue also affects the grabbed from play mode grass.

I have now fixed the issue and submitted v1.4.5 with the fix to the store.

Also i can send a hotfix with the two changed scripts immediately, on PM request. Since this patch may affect some of the grass, it is best to backup the project or grass scenes and the InfiniGRASS scripts before applying the patch.

 

Testing InfiniGRASS transparent grass with particles and volumetric fog.

 

Will infinigrass work on Unity 4.6?

 

There is nothing Unity 5 specific, so it should work. That said, i worked on the system in Unity 5, so it is not directly insertable in Unity 4.6 and will require manual work to transfer from Unity 5 to Unity 4.6 (e.g. the prefabs will probably have to be recreated and links etc also, plus the default presets in GrassManager must also be manually inserted in the import paramaters of the script to initialize properly, or at least the first 10 prefabs even if they are dummy ones)

I can help with such a port as well if something gets stuck.

 

So when will grass placement by Splatmap be available?

 

This functionality is already integrated when using the Mass Placement. You can choose a type and subtype for each splat number (and use -1 in the list for no grass on the specific splat map). There is also scaling of the grass per splat map, so you can assign a scaling near the dirt for example to gradually pass from green grass to the fade area in the dirt.

The system is also weighted, so the scaling will depend on the amount of splat participation in the final texture.

The scaling per splat map is also working outside Mass Placement, so can work while painting grass in the editor or in play mode.

 

Many thanks, I will consider it!

 

Fence and player setup tutorials:

Tag based Player Option: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/in...orm-grass-solution.349921/page-6#post-2357389

Fence creation & customization: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/in...orm-grass-solution.349921/page-6#post-2358117

Summary of InfiniGRASS tutorial videos, more will come soon

 

InfiniGRASS Basic Setup 1 Intital setup & Grow options

InfiniGRASS Basic Setup 2 Custom grass type & LOD

InfiniGRASS Basic Setup 3 Grass look controls & Use with Sky Master fog

Summary of InfiniGRASS tutorial videos, more will come soon

 

UPDATE:

InfiniGRASS has been tested on the latest Unity version (v5.3) and the demos are working great. I will do some extra tests to make 100% sure every single thing works ok, since the system has a big amount of options and I will post about the process.

The next update (version 1.5) will release on Unity 5.3, since it is very stable and streamlined to do the transition.

 

Planting trees, grass and rocks with InfiniGRASS (all objects in the pics are using the InfiniGRASS system for ultra performance and true non patterned next gen look). InfiniTREE 2 will also take the trees many steps further, with L-tree options, dynamically adapted roots (that may also grow in game) and dynamically grown branches based on splines, user input or physics, bark sculpting with procedural shaping, vines that climb on trees dynamically, tree orientation towards the sun light and much more. A refined version of the tree assets above will be included in InfiniTREE 2.

UPDATE:
New grass spread modes are in the works, these will be combined with another asset i am working on as well for ultimate control. The reveal of the new systems will be done within the month.

Also a question, what other tutorials would be desired to see for the system ? I can work on the suggested ones as priority.

 

Update:

The current WIP includes on providing support for Speed Tree foliage to be used with both InfiniGRASS & InfiniTREE systems at various levels. More information & videos will follow soon.​

HOLIDAY DISCOUNT for a limited time !!!!​

Store link

Enjoy next generation looking grass with extreme performance, customization & placement options. True non patterned solution, with pure GPU implementation for maximum speed (no render textures used) and Interactive grass options (scripted & shader based, real time grass painting).​

 

InfiniGRASS and Sky Master ULTIMATE v3.0 - Gradual dynamic moss growth for seasonal effects.

The moss texture is applied procedurally to the bark and wall and can be adjusted per season or be removed completely in play mode. Also there are direction controls (shown in the video near the end). The dynamic 3D moss is applied through the new brush in v1.5 of InfiniGRASS.

A lot more nature detailing work is also in progress, with vertex color blending to the ground, wetness on grass using Sky Master shader and various other details for more variety.

 

Roof style grass WIP for v1.5

A huge amount of new features is planned and worked on for v1.5, including new interaction modes in shader, gravity mode, full procedural growth, vertex blending with the ground, texture mask based planting, new local wind modes, dynamic moss, snow and wetness when used with Sky Master ULTIMATE v3.0 (snow already applies to transparent grass in v1.4, v1.5 will bring snow to vertex grass as well) and a big number of new brushes (including SpeedTree and tree base samples, tall grass, realistic grass and much more).

When possible, please remember to leave a review to help with the development, every review counts and helps a lot in working faster on the new features.

 

Ashen Rift





UPDATE:

Two extra features for next version(s) inspired by a stunning looking game that uses InfiniGRASS ( Ashen Rift ).

- Grass patch (batched) material override to enable gradual burn locally and mass erase per patch for maximum speed on burned grass. More effects like scaling or even a burn shader may also go in, all super exiting ideas.

- Deformable terrain grass adaptation. This is a bit trickier, but still possible. The gras can be erased and regrown instantly for example in the new spot. I will evaluate both real time and editor use, in editor it is a definite possibility to have grass readapt to changed terrain, probably i will have a recalc button for it to mass find the changed terrain spots and reapply the grass.

- Grass burn shader option, to gradually dissolve the grass on burn, with edge light up for a realistic effect. I will also evaluate if i can create ash flying away on the same shader if possible for max speed (otherwise will require a particle to complete the effect)

 

3D planets with InfiniGRASS, everything is planted with the system (trees, rocks, fences, flowers, grass etc) for super performance, LOD transitions and next gen looks & shadows. LOD is set low to show the way the items can be recreated on the far side for extra performance (though the system is super fast with vast view distances as well, but every little bit helps when it comes to performance)

Besides the full mix mode (spherical + flat) which is already supported, i plan to also have support for bend shaders (e.g. for Curved World support) for pure spherical modes.

 

Got your asset! This is fantastic! I'm working on huge procedural planet. I want to add grass to the surface. It's possible, as I understand your system. But I can't understand how. My planet's chunks are generating procedurally, and I want to place grass based on vertex color (use vertex colors as splatmap). Please, help me, give direction or some code snippet!!!!

 

The system can work with procedural planets, but not out of the box yet, as it requires extra scripting. I plan a full procedural placement mode with rules in v1.5 and this will be expanded to cover as many cases as possible. The procedural is not trivial as there is so many ways to do it and is very case dependent and same goes for placing with texture.

That said, i have already got a first version of full procedural working, so given enough time i will have it ready and working.

One question, is the planet made at game start and remains the same or in editor procedurally ? Or is it made on the fly in real time and is different each time ? That would be the hardest case to solve.

Note that the system already covers the case where you have a procedural planet and want to cover it with grass in real time, so this code can be used to do anything (like in the real time planting in the demo, this can be applied to a procedurally created item in principle), the only limitation is that you cannot plant a lot of grass at one time in real time (so you could fill the whole planet for example at game start based on rules no problem, but is harder if the planet is randomly created as you play for example)

A vertex coloration system is also coming in v1.5 and i will adapt this to also choose type per vertex color if this is needed.

If your planet is instantiating pre-made chunks, it is already possible to prefab them with the grass manager and instantiate (using the gradual grow option so they wont spike when they come in the scene)

Let me know if the above helped and we can try to tailor the system for your specific case in v1.5 as well, so you wont have to adapt the existing code for it. If you want to experiement with the possibilities, you may look at the demo code where it plants the grass in real time and adapt it, that is how i am doing the procedural system as well.

 

Thanks for reply! Yes, the hardest way) Chunks can be created only at Runtime, not in the Editor. And not in the Start. But firstly they are prefabs, prefabs without mesh and mesh collider. Next, in the game cycle, they are instanciating, next I'm adding mesh and mesh collider to them. And mesh is different for each prefab. Thats the process...

 

Are the meshes for each prefab specific or change as well ? For example if you have a prefab "Mountains", will this always have the same mesh, or is it procedurally created ?

If it is not procedurally created, then the current system could handle it (maybe with a few tweaks), you would add the mesh/collider in editor, add the grass, remove the mesh/collider and prefab the Grass Manager and grower scripts with the terrain chunk. Then would enable the Grass Manager after the collider has gone in and use the gradual growth mode. This will create the grass around the hero (so make sure to have only as much grass around the hero as it will not spike) and then you may create new areas that come in further from hero so grass wont be created at all when the region comes in (then gradually come in as the hero approaches).

If the meshes are also procedurally created it could be handled from v1.5 and forth or with custom scripting it (use the paint mode code to apply grass as needed to the region, which is how the full procedural mode will work in v1.5).

 

Just to check quickly. Is it so that Texture Based Grass Placement is still planned for 1.6 so it will not be in 1.5 version?

Stated earlier:
Features for v1.6 (some may appear in v1.5)
- GAIA support
- Texture based grass placement
- Height and slope based grass elimination (plant only above/below a slope angle or height)

 

This is a feature i am working on in parallel with some of the v1.5 features (e.g vertex coloarion from ground), but to make it justice i would like to give it extra time and release v1.5 with the more complete features first. If the v1.5 is not ready very soon though there is a chance that the two pipelines converge and have the feature in v1.5, but i state it as a v1.6 feature to be on the safe side.

 

Chunks are procedural. I'm using prefabs only for optimisation purpose - not to create mesh filter and renderer components on runtime. They are parts of procedural terrain with LODs.

 

I suppose the planet once created does not change shape ? If so, in theory you could create all shapes at game start and plant grass over them on game start as well. Or the shape of planet may change for example ? Or you have a seed and re-created everything on the fly (with same shape using the seed) and destroy the further away areas ?

Amazing work btw

The problem is definitly one of the hardest to handle in general, so as a first step will help a lot to know exactly how it works, so i can work towards it or find a fitting solution.