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

Oh I see, thank you very much for your feedback, adding it to trello as the highest priority after terrain output generators. (Will most likely be done this week )

 

That's awesome thanx <3

Btw, is there a way of identifying and removing orphaned .asset files from the maps directory?
It's quickly filling up and not sure which are safe to delete and which to keep.

 

If you are using V2.1 it should be automatically removed/ added if you remove/ add prototypes.
Make sure to always delete the foliage manager when you dont use a certain scene.

You can also just remove all of the maps, move around the scene and let it regenerate them (Will only create what it needs)

 

I've noticed using Unity 5.5.2 here... It only deletes some of the files when deleting a manager. It looks like some regenerate during the removal process.

I've watched the directory while it deletes... And see new files being created alongside the deletions.

 

Uhmm interesting, will take a look

 

Hi Elroy,

As soon as i create the Foliage Manager, paint on one terrain Chunk and save the scene, the scene file becomes very huge (per Chunk about 150MB). Why does all the texture data created by uNature is saved in the scene file? It looks like the maps gets serialized in the scene file. Even in your example scene shipped with version 2.1 this problem occurs.

I'm using Unity 5.5.0f3 and uNature 2.1

 

Hey!

It shouldn't ever be close to 150 mbs per chunk

can you try on a higher unity version? maybe there's a bug with that specific version?

 

I don't know how big the scene files are supposed to get... But testing on an 8000x8000 tc2 created terrain group. After copying foliage to uNature the scene file grows by about 4GB. That's with Unity 5.5.2

 

Wow... didn't notice that strangly so far

Going to put it as top priority

 

I fixed my problem partially. At the start of the project i have set in editor settings the "Serialization mode" to "Force text". So every entry of the maps gets serialized, which results in a scene file which contains many (millions) of these lines:

- serializedVersion: 2
rgba: 25856
- serializedVersion: 2
rgba: 26368
- serializedVersion: 2
rgba: 26624
- serializedVersion: 2
rgba: 26624

Now i have changed the setting to "Mixed" and the scene file is about 13Mb.

Is there an option to disable the serialization of the maps? Because i sometimes edit the scene files manually and its easier in a version control system to track changes.

 

Uhmmm interesting - the issue is that the only way for me to do that is if I put the maps in the resources folder but that actually casues a lot more issues. I am going to look into this over the next 2 days and fix it as the highest priority atm

 

Okay some great news - was able to completely abandon maps saving on project (that means that it doesnt save it into files any more)

It still remains on the scene file but added hard lots of compression so it reduces the scene size "adjuster" by around ~70%
Also, because I removed the references to the asset files it should even reduce it further

 

Cool! I didn't like the way that there were lots of different grass files lying around my project - I like myself and the team to be organised

 

I absolutely agree, been wanting to do this for a while

 

Do any of the tutorials to date cover runtime procedural implementation?

 

This is for sure a welcome improvement.

What would be the correct workflow for using with World Streamer at this point?

Do I set it all up before splitting the scene and split as usual?

 

Not yet but its the next one on the list - delayed it till today as I made some changes to the API. But going to probably finish it somewhere until Wednesday

Apparently world streamer integration broke in V2.1 from a report I received. Going to look at it next week and send over an integration document (if works in V2.1) and if not I will just send you a beta

 

Been putting lots of work today as seen on Trello
And got the procedural demo done, would you want me to send you a private build to show you the capabilities? [Made it a level-editor] (will be included in V2.1.5 and also as a public demo soon)

 

no big rush if it's coming, just checkin in =]

 

Ah np


Also guys - took your feedback about the prototype management and added the ability to change between prototypes:
https://i.gyazo.com/fb35e98fa1f70c474812d1f9a9ac9ec4.gif
And also the ability to finally change the texture/ model of a prototype:
https://i.gyazo.com/8de4ca5655cc48741423b692011886b2.gif


More changes can be found here

 

I have a very big problem. When I use uNature in fullscreen it's pretty much slow, both in terms of CPU load and FPS. But when I have FOILAGE right with the game in fullscreen, it's much faster. What can be causing it? The performance drop really is noticeable.

 

I am not sure I am following, so when the Foliage Manager is open you get a lot more fps?
Also, it seems like you have an error in the console, maybe that's causing the fps drop?

 

Yes, you got that right. There's nothing so important in logs, those errors are definitely not the source of a problem.

 

Uhmm seems weird to me

Could you possibly send me an profiler log in both scenarios ? Sending you a profiler exporter privately

 

@ElroyUnity I finally got around to playing with uNature and the performance gain is amazing. It's a little confusing to see millions of tris in the stats windows and still running at 200+ frames per second!

I tried implementing uNature in a fresh scene, however, and I'm running into a problem. In the scene manager and game view when in edit mode, I see the grass. However, as soon as I hit play, the grass disappears in the game view. It's still visible in the scene view. Any idea what I might have missed?

 

We had the same problem with the grass disappearing.

 

Was this only in a new scene, or was it behaving the same way in the example scene "FlatScene?" It behaves fine for me in FlatScene, which makes me think I missed some configuration step in my own scene.

 

New scene that I made.

 

It's nice not to be alone

 

Did you guys forget to assign the UNSeeker to the character/camera?

 

Indeed I did. Thanks for the tip!

 

As stated above by Astaelan1 you most likely forgot to add the UNSeeker component. It wasn't in the docs of V2.0 (my fault) but it was added to the current asset store version docs

 

Any hotfix for this ?
The scene file 43mb becomes 780mb...

 

Yes but I didn't yet perfect it, I will release the first beta next week and it will be included

 

Ryan says he added that. Hmm.

 

Uhm when you said fgrass dissappearing did you mean not showing at all or randomly dissapearing?

 

It disappeared after adding uNature.

 

Did you make sure to add the terrain layer to the generation mask in the foliage manager?

 

He says yeah. I feel like his office secretary. lol

 

Haha ping me on skype in 2-3 hours and I will take a deeper look make sure you are on V2.1 btw

 

This was for a presentation Ryan gave for a Unity User group last Monday. So not really important to us now. I will let Ryan know though and he can talk to you about it if he still has concerns.

I mostly wanted you to know that we had the same problem as the other person.

 

Ah I see - personally haven't heard about that kind of an issue where its not the UNSeeker/ heights not applied, let me know if you ever encounter it again

 

If it wasn't UNSeeker and heights, it could MAYBE have something to do with the issue I reported about bad culling. If it's not related to an excessive amount of grass in my case, it could be something others are seeing situationally and just not aware it's the culling issue. However if ALL grass disappears, I'm at a loss beyond the 2 things mentioned.

 

True, did I send you the fix for it btw? can't remmember

 

Nope, I can wait for a collective 2.1.5 release, but if you want me to get back to testing past what I already found, a new package will be needed. After reporting those things I kinda put the rest on hold and started testing a few other assets to give you time.

 

Oh I see, it must have been some one else then
Will release a beta next week for V2.2 and send it to you (renamed from V2.1.5, decided not to use .5s any more )

 

Sounds good, I'll plan some time next week to run a new test of uNature. Really hoping to see a performance improvement, as I hadn't see the big jump others have even with going from 5 million terrain grass, but I'll have to do some more testing with JUST grass to see what's up.

 

Yep currently working on the new lods approach. So far a teaser would be:

View distance: 500 at full density
No LODs: ~20 fps
With LODs: ~130 fps


And it's not even ready A better showcase post will come later on this week

 

Fantastic, I've had some less than encouraging results with my current dev system so I was just hoping it was some bugs or lack of functions causing it, despite others going from 20fps to 200fps in some cases. I had hoped to see it regain some frames.
Looking forward to the next updates.

 

Today I figured out that uNature is causing a huge memory overhead. It's because the contents of the Resources folders are added to every build.

@ElroyUnity Could you please work on a version which doesn't require those nasty Resource folders at all?