Need ideas for vehicle tracks

Hey guys. So I need to add some details to our new level. Because it looks like crap right now. Foliage is really out of the question for VR. But I was hoping to make it a little nicer with good terrain textures.

Its a desert map so it should be pretty bare, but places like this would be nice with details.


A old gas station like this and millions of vehicles have passed it over the years. I remembered these beautiful tracks from Tarkov

How could I achieve something similar?

Or like these
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/BaQ4r

 

I'd say using Deferred Decals https://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/02/06/extending-unity-5-rendering-pipeline-command-buffers/

 

Im on forward :/

 

I'm afraid I can't offer help as to how to implement it on your own as that's far outside my wheelhouse, but for all my games running in Forward, I use Dynamic Decals.

 

Thanks, it seems displacement maps is the way togo. But I really cant find much info on how to implement it with Unity terrain

 

I converted my terrains [49@11kmx11km] to meshes and went from 30FPS tp 1200+ and was able to use a subtropical rainforest of 10's of thousands of trees, plants, rocks, debris etc and get 90-120FPS in VR whilst running Edy's Vehicle Physics pro sims with two cars. With meshes and MegaSplat you can do all the tessellated displacement and use up to 256 textures and still get a great framerate. HTH.

 

EDIT: Disregard the question, found plenty of reading about this elsewhere on the forum.

If this isn't derailing the thread too much, I might ask, what's the difference between a terrain and a mesh? I thought it was the same.

And, I don't know if this applies because I know nothing about VR, but if you export the terrain as a mesh, and if you have Substance Painter, you could just paint the tire tracks on with a normal channel decal. Or sculpt them and bake a normal map. Neither of those would be very efficient though becuase you need to know exactly where you want to put the detail.

 

@BIGTIMEMASTER : the difference between a mesh and terrain is pretty much about control over everything.
It might require more management, but in doing so, you can get practically unlimited detail exactly where you want and only loading it when you need it.

The terrain is good at what it does, and only what it does. It tries to be optimized - and in a way it does a good job at it, but at a cost of loosing out on so many other options - tesselation, roughness maps, metallic maps, etc. And need I state the obvious - lack of overhangs and caves lol.


But keep that in mind, terrain isn't bad, but you have much more dynamic control if they are meshes - at a cost of more upfront management.

 

Cool, any videos you can share of your world, interest to see how it looks

 

Here is a video one of the playtesters did (preview shadows to save time in baking while playtesting and itterating level deisgn)

As you can see, I need todo something about the ground detail

 

Megafiers creator has been working on a deformation 'tool', I think there is an asset store thread about it. It looked more like real-time deformation rather than just decal-ing but might be an option to look into. Decals would probably be more optimal.

 

Er just use microsplat for *everything* on the floor. You won't even need decals and it'll be fast as hell. If meshes are your bag, do what ipp said.

Decals for detailing are just a supremely bad move unless done right, and they won't be done right until 2018 onward in Unity.

 

Just don't use unity terrain for VR, use mesh terrain.
And if you really in need to use decal, use it sparsely and use the decal:blend function in surface shader. It finally work properly now to blend decal on top of other object.

 

What's the best tool / workflow for a Gaia created terrain to convert to mesh, included the Gaia texturing of the terrain?

 

I'd ask on the Gaia thread. The developer usually responds promptly.

But I know from my own experience that you can export the terrain as a mesh from the Gaia window menu. I am not sure, but I imagine there is a way to export a splat map or something like that for the textures as well.

 

Also @ippdev don't forget to post a video, super interested to see the level of detail you have achieved with your foliage in VR

 

Thanks will do

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/best-replacement-for-unity-terrain.409810/
You can read my process and progress from 30fps to 1200 then adding foilage down to 300fps. There are some screenshots.