[NEW PATCH] uNature - GPU, Interactable Grass. Interactable Trees, MultiThreading and more!

Some great news about MapMagic integration:

So, so far multi-threading didn't really take a big part in the grass mechanics, only in the trees, so now, I've added the ability to use threading for copying terrain foliage (so when Map magic is updated you wont feel the overhead)

So far I am really close to finishing this version, should be done very soon!

 

Elroy, I have a question about the support for foliage meshes. With the grass billboards it is possible to randomly vary the vertex colors (and the grass color as a result).
Will it be possible to do the same with meshes so that the placed meshes have varying vertex colors?
The reason I ask is I am thinking of making my own grass shader using a texture array which can vary the texture based off the "random" vertex colors. Basically giving a huge variety of grass textures for a single mesh.

 

Well yes, can't see why it wont work for grass meshes, it did last time I checked

 

Hi Elroy,

I removed a AA shader and the error has gone from RTP. Still issues regarding tessalation but i dont think that has to do with uNature.

I was looking at the Terrain Composer 2 integration and was wondering how it works. It doesnt seem to grab my grass textures from uNature - Am I missing something?

I have had some fantastic results with thick dense grass/plant coverage so have made great strides today. It looks fantastic!

It is going to deliver what I hoped that's for sure. Once I get these few niggly integration issues with RTP and AltTrees I will post some images. When things come together it does look hugely impressive .

 

Thanks for the reply! I'd definitely suggest removing any Open Documentation buttons that don't do anything or have them link to *something*. That was a bad User eXperience.

OK. I tried a quick and dirty TC2 terrain and was able to copy some quick grass over to uNature. I had multiple terrains in TC2 though and only tried it on one terrain tile. What's the proper way to handle that? Attach UNTerrain to each tile individually and copy each one over individually? I hope not, that sounds like a drag.

Does the MapMagic (or GeNa) integration support multiple terrains?

 

Ive tried everything but cant seem to get the grass to paint onto the tessalated terrain on RTP. I have posted to Tom too to see what the problem is.

 

Hey Andy,
As written above the TC2 integration is "built-in", just copy foliage from the terrain as you would normally do

For sure, I will fix that

And well, you can select all of the terrain and then go to Window/uNature/Helpers/Copy Foliage From Terrain

Uhmmm lmk how it goes, I will do some more research regarding that...

 

Oh... I missed that somehow. Thanks!

 

Anytime

 

I have been using RTP and uNature and apart from my issue with FPS after importing grass (nothing to do with RTP0 I have had no issues.

 

Do you use tessalation?

I had no problems until i enabled that feature.

Elroy can I ask how the uNature_terrain layer works? Is there a way of setting that to a heightmap instead of the terrain data?

I think this is the issue. It allows big gains in fps as the terrain data can be reduced down to 129 (for example) while keeping heightmap at 1025/2049.

 

The terrain layer of uNature is the layer used for the terrain in the demo, you can use any layer

And no you can't use the heightmap of the terrain :/

 

Thanks, im trying to retrace my steps but i no idea what has happened but now everytime i paint it is not aligned with terrain. Even removed tessalation but still the same problem.

 

Could you try regenerating the world map ? (Select pink chunk and generate the world map)

 

Where is this option?

I am currently going back to yesterdays commit but i will look at this when it restores. I do get a message about "no current chunks - or something similar is that normal?

 

Oh just click on it again with your mouse like you would select any other object and you should be able to see it, if its still not working I will fix it for you through skype

 

The pink chunks are not selectable for me. Cant see any option to regenerate but i would imagine that would fix it.

 

Hey here's a small example gif:
https://i.gyazo.com/16d48eb1cb24329c79f462a6a0b8f115.mp4

As you can see just left click on it, while if you left click on the black squares instead of pink it will tell you that it's not poppulated.

If it still doesnt work for you, send me your skype privately and I will fix it for you immediately

 

Thanks Elroy, There was items masking my selection, been putting out a few fires today with Drawcall issues but hopefully now I can regenerate when tessalation is changed and it should work now. My revert to previous commit has fixed it upto now and i have left tessalation out until i complete all foliage and trees again.

I did notice today when I used Terrain Composer 2 then copied from terrain FPS actually went down but I don't want to bother you at this time because I've not spent any time looking at why.

Things are looking really good and the whole terrain (2km2) is heavily covered with 6 types of foliage moving beautifully. Hoping to get covered in Tree's tomorrow and then I will look at the issues. There seem to be auto tree chunks which I don't want as I use altTrees (even after switching of uNature trees but again it's to early to report any bug.

The look is big step up over terrain grass and that was what I was hoping for most (with touch bending) superb stuff

 

Thank you very much for your kind words
Performance is EXTREMELY better in V1.0.5

 

This looks very interesting. Has this been tested on any of the console platforms?

 

Hey,

Functionality wise it works, performance is a bit of an issue with the V2.0 (in uNature terms is 1.0 but I am using the asset store version to not confuse people) but V2.0.5 is going to fix all of the performance issues, going to be released in around 4-5 days

 

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll keep an eye out for that update. Thanks!

 

do you have an ETA yet for Android Open GL2.0 fix yet?? I know you been busy with other fixes. Also Open GL3.0 performs very badly. This is the store version by the way. Yet to be able to use Unature with mobile sadly right now at all. had to remove from my game, until a fix .

Thanks for your hard work.

 

V1.0.5 is going to fix all of the performance issues but still can't say about GL2.0 fix as I don't have a phone to test with but I am trying to get one.

Hopefully it will be released with V1.0.5, if not then maybe V1.0.7 or something.

 

Final update of the day. Tessalation still causes the odd problem (example 2 or 3 grass textures i metre off the ground) I will test tomorrow one last time where I complete paint without tessalation and then apply and see it effects. Regenerating the height map on RTP or UNature does not fix. Deleting gras and repainting keeps the error even after removing tessalation. Strange one.

Not sure how possible it would be but a really nice feature might be to be able to copy grass chunks. For example I could do a really nice chunk, save it then select a blank chunk and have option to paste or select a saved chunk.

 

Thanks for lettng me know, I will test it out and see what I can do

 

may i need to attach the "un terrain" script to the terrains and the "un seeker" script to the player to use only the foliage system?

thanks

 

Yes, you can disable the trees by simply deactivating it on the unterrain/ on the unseeker.

Note that UNTerrain isn't a must but it will give you a backup for your foliage incase it gets corrupted.
If you don't mind about that simply use "Window/uNature/Helpers/Copy foliage from selected terrains" ( and select the terrains in the inspector of course )

 

Im getting the error below (and a similar one in AltTrees) I wonder if they have some compatibility issues.

Anyone else have them working well together?

I did a test earlier setting up standard terrain grass and trees, change grass over to unature and trees over to alttrees and now i have these errors and drop in fps.


Assertion failed on expression: 'm_PreloadTextureAtlasData.size () == m_DetailPrototypes.size ()'
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:CreateAsset(Object, String)
uNature.Core.FoliageClasses.FoliageMesh:.ctor(GameObject, Int32, Vector3) (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Core/Foilage/FoliagePrototype.cs:868)
uNature.Core.FoliageClasses.FoliagePrototype:GenerateInstantiatedMesh(Color, Color) (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Core/Foilage/FoliagePrototype.cs:615)
uNature.Core.FoliageClasses.FoliagePrototype:CreatePrototype(Texture2D, GameObject, Single, Single, Single, Single, Single, Int32, Int32, Color, Color) (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Core/Foilage/FoliagePrototype.cs:735)
uNature.Core.FoliageClasses.FoliageDB:AddPrototype(Texture2D, GameObject, Single, Single, Single, Single, Single, Int32, Color, Color) (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Core/Foilage/FoliageDB.cs:121)
uNature.Core.FoliageClasses.FoliageDB:AddPrototype(DetailPrototype) (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Core/Foilage/FoliageDB.cs:142)
uNature.Core.Utility.UNStandaloneUtility:AddPrototypesIfDontExist(DetailPrototype[]) (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Core/Utility/UNStandaloneUtility.cs:162)
uNature.Core.FoliageClasses.FoliageCore_MainManager:InsertFoliageFromTerrain(Terrain) (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Core/Foilage/GPU_Utilities/FoliageCore_MainManager.cs:286)
uNature.Core.Terrains.UNTerrainEditor:VegetationCategory() (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Editor/UNTerrainEditor.cs:273)
uNature.Core.Terrains.UNTerrainEditor:OnInspectorGUI() (at Assets/uNature/Scripts/Editor/UNTerrainEditor.cs:118)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

 

You can ignore that error, it should be fixed in the new version and it wont affect your gameplay .

Can you elaborate more on the fps drops?

 

That's good news, Never stops the game running but it is always a bit concerning to see an error.

The fps drop is strange. Its as if a cache is filling up or something. Everything runs great whenever i first run unature but as i add to it rather that gradually getting slower with detail as you would expect it suddenly falls off a cliff. Huge loss of fps and invariably I end up deleting everything and starting again.

The strange thing is I am getting identical problems with AltTrees too. I'm thinking they conflict somehow. Each on there own seem fine. I get one working really well then think i will add the other and then problems begin.....

 

Uhm very very strange...
There's no reason for them to collide but if you can find any more leads let me know :/

 

Woa... looks like a really impressive asset!

A few questions before buying, since I don't know technically what's behind the scenes:

1) Does it require DX11 to work or DX9 only?
2) Does it work with forward and deferred rendering? HDR? Occlusion? All types of lights and shadow casters?
3) Can you randomize the scaling of each single grass quad? From the vids and the images they all look perfect replicas
4) Can you further randomize the coloring?
5) Since this appears to be faster than Unity's default grass system, are you going to support WebGL, iOS/Android mobiles?
6) Would it be possible with a single value to decrease all densities (a multiplier) so that I can set this as slider inside an options menu? That is, a fast way to tweak everything, globally, and to do some form of adaptive detail setting?
7) Can I create overlapping layers of grass (eg: 1 layer on the ceiling, 1 on the floor). Can I scatter grass according to the normal value of the collider or mesh I'm painting on? Or, it is a system built to decorate a plane? Can I create 3D shapes like fog clouds with the "grass" programmatically, much like particles?
8) Does the grass correcly write on the Zbuffer?
9) Are those real polys or there's some tech magic behind it?
10) Can I use any type of shader on the grass? Translucent? Refractive?
11) Can I use it to create, let's say, a furry rock and a 360° furry cave?
12) How does grass bending work? Does it just rotate the quad or some kind of vertical subdivision takes place, so that some kind of spring dynamics can be used on it?
13) Does this also work at runtime? Can I "burn" certain areas of grass? Make grass in a certain radius be animated with a spritesheet with different indexes?

Thanks for your time

 

well I been testing this for awhile now for you, so maybe contact Nath for his advice and send me the file to test... So that way you don't need to buy one. Just a thought, if not you can get one for under 50 bucks now a days, if you really want one, you dont need anything special if you want to get one. Just a thought..

We had to pull it from our game sadly and use something else. But you may want to let others know its not working well for Android , and Open GL 2.0 devices, which is about 42 % users out there may want to state its not working, so they do not buy it if they are like me an Android developer. atleast until there is a fix.. Best of Luck with it.

 

Hey sorry for the late response:

1) No, it works on both DX11 and DX9.
2) Deferred rendering should be supported, haven't heard reports on it yet. Also in .0.5 there's support for Occlusion & Normal Maps.
3) Yes, in the video it might have been pretty low, but yes, you can set a range for both width and height.
4) Uhm what do you mean?
5) WebGL & IOS & Android are supported (As written in the reply bellow GL2.0 doesn't seem to work properly at the moment, will be fixed. (+ Perf issues that are fixed in .0.5)
6) Yes, simple as "FoliageCore_MainManager.instance.density = (0-1)"
7) Currently there's no support for layers but it's definitely something that I am planning in the future .
8) Yes
9) real polys with some magic behind it
10) Yes, but you will still have to integrate it (1 line in the vert section of your shader)
11) Furry rock yes, but you cannot create caves with it yet (no support for several height layers as written above but planned to be added)
12) It moves it according to the interaction's position, I guess a "spring" affect can be made .
13) Well on runtime you can change/ modify anything without ever regenerating meshes, so it's pretty generic.

So, burn affect isn't built in but you can add it pretty easily by extending the system a bit (everything is extendable) and it might be added as a built-in feature in the future.

And what do you mean by the animation with a spritesheet?


My pleasure !

Np will add it to the post now and get it fixed soon, thank you for your feedback!

 

Thanks for answering, I'm very pleased by your answers and future plans. It would be cool to have a look at your roadmap

4) I meant: by default Unity gives a "healthy" or not colorization to grass patches according to some function and parameters. Is there a way to override this in uNature? For instance: applying a custom colored mask to a certain part of the grass to change its color (effectively colorizing the grass with some sort of image). It would be cool to have a native function for that, so for example, you could apply a smooth circular gradient of black on a specific point of the grass as a result of a fireball explosion in that point. Or maybe a gelatinous cube could move on the grass by leaving a greenish tint on the grass. Or, some creature could explode in a bloody mess, colorizing all the grass nearby (smoothly, no hard edges) with a "decal" of a blood splash (which could also be applied as a real decal by third party assets).
Or, again, a giant could leave footprints on the grass by deactivating/scaling the grass following the contour of a texure.
I think changes in color, height, and other parameters based on a texture mask/decal/overlay would be pretty cool features to have built-in (as it's probably not so trivial to implement for many)!

About spritesheet, maybe I was asking too much
I was thinking about having animated textures for each plane of the grass each one with its indipendent and randomized starting frame
That would be a pretty unique feature (collateral usage: myst/fog zones, fires and flames and so on)

By the way, would it be possible to spawn animated prefabs/meshes, such as, for example, bouncing underground mushrooms, and have the "bending" logic trigger a script on them so that they play an animation to either open up and illuminate the surrounding, or close and dim the light? I'm not sure of how heavy it would be, but for small zones would be better than using many of the scattering assets on the stores right now I suppose.
Again, I have no idea about the underlying architecture of the asset, that's why I'm asking.

Technically, would it be possible to have, let's say, prefabs with light components or any other script scattered on a terrain?

Can we use lighting probes to colorize the grass?

 

First of all, here's the trello page: https://trello.com/b/I4kqOpDC/unature


4) Ohhhhh, well uNature has support for color maps, you can modify the texture pixels and change the colors to make it work as you want , you can also change the height of the grass on positions very easily if you want as well

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And nope :/ spritesheet support currently isn't doable, but maybe in the future!

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Uhm you can't get a callback about when an grass is being touch bended, but you can simulate it in a custom script, (try to check if a player is close to the object for instance)



Lmk if you have anymore questions!, they are ALWAYS welcomed!
Elroy

 

Hi, I've just bougth the asset, so I'll be able to check everything soon

Do you mean, I can apply a colormap Texture with a certain world size scaling, on a specific 3d point (well, it's actually on the XZ plane or a projection on the Y axis I suppose), also taking into consideration the alpha channel of the colormap?

I'm not sure I understood this. Of course I can check the player's proximity to a certain point in space without using uNature.

can uNature scatter GameObjects? What is an "object" in uNature? Can I refer to a specific strand of grass or tree instantiated by uNature? What happens if that strand gets deactivated by the Lod system?

 

1) Uhmmm well uNature generates for you a color map which is a picture of the certain instance area (if you got to read the docs yet) and what you could do is simply setting pixels on the cords you want on the color map and it change the color of your grass accordingly

And yes, can't see why not

(I can probably send over an example if you want)

2) hmmmm well, uNature (for grass) doesn't instantiate grass, it's rendering them straight from the system, that means that they arent dynamic or game objects.

Now, you can't change anything on 1 grass instance (other than height, color and normal) so it really depends on what you want to do.

When an object is getting disabled by the lod it just wont be rendered, it wont disappear out of the cache if not necessary (if that makes sense)


It's quite hard to explain, is there something specific you want to achieve with it? maybe there's an easier way?

 

I see, I think I've got an idea of what uNature does under the hood now.

No, I'm probably not going to be able to use the asset in a few months, I was just checking the features, I don't have any specific need right now

I think an example would be cool, but a native method to do that out of the box would be even better!

Something like:

ApplyTexture(Vector3 position, Vector2 worldScaleSize, Quaternion projectionDirection, Texture texture, bool useAlpha=false, bool backfacingOcclusion=false)

In this way you could handle all types of "grass decals" such as the darkening of the grass due to an explosion, etc.

 

Yes this might actually work!
Will add it to the roadmap!

 

Cool! I'm already drooling just by thinking about all possible future uses!
I edited the post, forgot to consider backfacing (should basically work like a projector)

Thanks again, can't wait to see it in action!

 

Hello there Elroy!

I just bought and used this and I am having a problem (that seems very basic). I added grass to my scene and I can see it in the editor and in the camera. But when I run the game it isn't there. I noticed in the documentation that it says click the "Save grass maps" button --- but that button doesn't exist. Am I missing something?

Thanks!

 

Ah make sure to add the UNSeeker component to your player/ camera

That should solve it!

 

I knew it was something simple, thanks so much!

 

Anytime!

 

Umm, our team is in kind of a dilemma. We really want this asset and we want to save those 15$ as they are precious to us with high exchange value in our country. However, we don't know when will the price go up to 50$. Can you tell us when it will go to normal?

 

Hey,
In a bit less than week (4-5 days or so)

 

Is there an sample of the harvest tree script somewhere?