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

Yeah, it definitely works in 2017.3 without instancing, but then that defeats the entire purpose of using uNature. Fingers crossed for a fix soon.

 

Hey - so happy to see all of your modifications! I will get the report going when I am back tomorrow! Same goes for the voice chat!


Elroy

 

Did you also merged meshes and prototype into atlases per density texture?


No problem I can work on issues I can figure out myself.

 

Had a inquiry on slack but it seems pretty inactive. Moving the question here. Any update on MapMagic support? Saw some posts in the past indicating a future version will have it fixed. Can we get an update on the timeline this will land?

 

Hey - sorry back today from a vacation will start getting backto work tomorrow and get you a more detailed answer

 

Are u using the latest asset store version? It has some fixes included.

 

Np, I am on v2.3. I forget the exact error, probably a null or index access violation. I am trying to use uNature with MapMagic for runtime generation. I turned compatibility on for both packages. I'll be on Slack if you are available to run through it together. Thanks!

 

Cool!
Will answer on slack then!

 

Hey there! Any updates on looking into the 2017.3 issues? Specifically the inability to render unless unchecking instancing. I'm also getting an odd one where all grass just disappears on my terrain when I enter play mode, even with the instancing unchecked.

 

Regarding Instancing, not yet.
Regarding play mode grass disappearance, make sure you have the "UNSeeker" component on your camera

Elroy

 

Any update on this yet? Also, what about the 2 prototype limit per chuck?

 

No, the simplest solution is really reverting to an older version of unity as I can't seem to find a fix yet.

Regarding the 2 prototypes, there are a few ways of fixing it but they are pretty limited. I am still researching that

Elroy

 

@ElroyUnity I'm interested in purchasing uNature but I'd really like it to work with Enviro so the weather can effect the trees and grass etc. It currently is supported by Megasplat so I hope I can have a full weather solution effecting the land, vegetation, sky etc. Do you have any plans for integration?

 

Hey!
Not really at the moment but it depends on what you would like to see there. Most things should be really easy for you to do anyways.


Elroy

 

Well as I'm not a programmer I'd be weary on your statement of "most things" but if your api has a way of setting up methods to connect to other component of other assets such as what the asset Zone Controller does then there might be hope

I would mainly like to see Enviro's wind effect your grass and tree movement and winter/frost effect but I just realized that I'd likely have to talk with that developer and he may get in touch with you since it's his asset that would need scripts to talk to uNature.

Just wondering are trees processed on the GPU as well? I'd be using this with Voxeland Mapmagic Integration.

 

How is progress on this going, and what did you mean by "there are a few ways of fixing it but they are pretty limited"?

Also, is there a way to offset the uNature grid? My scene fits very comfortably in just 1 uNature chunk, but currently it's at the center point of 4 chunks. Last ditch solution would be to move my entire scene, which is rather dangerous at this point, so inquiring as to whether the grid can be offset or not.

 

Can anyone help me understand how to use uNature with World Streamer? I have the grass setup in the Work scene, and it shows up during runtime in the Work scene, but they don't show when the terrains are streamed in the Game scene. The terrains stream fine, but the detail data doesn't seem to be showing.

Should I be streaming the treeinstances or something? Any ideas?

[Edit] The UNSeeker is enabled on the FPS controller in the Game scene where the terrain is being streamed, and still nothing.

 

Hi, interesting solution, but i have some quietions before i buy this asset.
1. Can i change sector numbers and size manually?
2. Can i use custom colormap and grass mask?

 

As far as I understand it, no. I'd inquired on this some time back.

 

Hey! Been to the army this week and so was fully disconnected from the internet. Will catch up on emails and forums this weekend

 

Hello anyone was able to make Depth buffer / Zbuffer working on unature? Do you have
any Idea why it does not work at all? It means that all camera effects apply on objects behind grass so you can see terrain shape under some angles and also it is unable to add effects like SSAO or etc on grass itself... I tried my custom 2 sided Depth buffer I am using on two sided cloths but no results



It should look like this:


Just first issue is with that include... throws error:
Shader error in 'Hidden/Camera-DepthNormalTexture': Can't find include file uNature_Foliage_Base.cginc at line 86

 

Cool!

And no. Only grass. Trees are handled by the unity terrain (for now at least)

Well it depends. some ways are really to write an index on the byte value of the texture and then you can have 4 different prototypes but you can't insert density. Next one would be to combine index + density into the map but then you are limited to max number of 15 prototypes on the foliage manager. (16 * 16)

But yea it's a bit complicated but I do have some ideas. Will keep you updated when I got something to share.

Regarding the grid. Try to move it, never tried it but it should work well I think. Make sure to use the latest asset store version as it has some fixes for the foliage manager positioning.

Make sure to Update heights after you are done to make sure all is updated.

As far as I remember its only enabling the world streamer interaction on the extension window and then making sure you paint the grass on the scene and ONLY then seperate the terrains into different scenes. So you need to make sure that you have one foliage manager and its on the main scene. (Not several foliage managers on the terrain scenes)

So the steps would really be to open the main scene, load all terrains, copy foliage on all of them in the main scene, enable the world streamer interaction, bake the terrains into scenes again, add UNSeeker on the camera and then play the game and see if that works.

1) Not on the asset store version
2) Should work regarding color map, not sure about grass mask as it will need to write in the uNature format.

Uhmm interesting... I will have a look probably next weekend, out of time on this one... just went back on the messages now but back in the army from tomorrow till next weekend. Will hopefully check this out then.

Elroy

 

@ElroyUnity I guess I'll have to wait purchasing your asset, I was hoping the grass and trees would work with Voxeland but as you say the tree support is currently for unity terrains. I would but it asap if it could work with Voxeland and have dense gpu driven forests.

 

I tried those steps and still nothing. I've also tried streaming the foliage manager in the main Working scene to the Game scene. Did the same for the Thread Manager but a new one seems to be created in the Game scene regardless.

 

Hi Elroy, hope you are well. I am wondering if you plan to support VS as some of the other grass assets have. I still prefer this shader over the others but really need it to work in the VS workflow. I've been doing other parts of my project so forgive if this already is implemented.

 

@Andy what is VS?

 

Uhmm will check

Uhmmm I will check it over the weekend

 

I have encountered two problems.

1) If I put any spread noise value on a grass prototype, the height seems to be incorrect or lose precision.

With a value of 0, grass sits roughly on the ground.


If I change the value to 0.01, some grass jumps to a different Y position.


As I increase the spread noise value, grass X and Z move smoothly, but the Y position is usually incorrect and moves in steps for some grass.

I have regenerated heights multiple times and looked into the Advanced shader to try to understand why this happens, but I could not find a solution to this problem.


2) While painting I can paint many different prototypes (I tried 8), but using SetDetailLayer in a script, I cannot seem to place more than two grass prototypes. The first two prototypes are placed fine, but when I go and place the third one, the first one is removed.

Edit: I may have found a fix for this by preventing SetDetailLayer from setting density to 0. It seems that it was erasing previous prototypes if they happened to be on the same channels. Of course this means that SetDetailLayer no longer removes grass, but I'm fine with that.

 

1) Great catch I will have a look this weekend!
2) uhmm theres a limit for 2 prototypes max. Did removing the density removal allow you to place several prototypes? Shouldnt work that way.

Elroy.

 

It has worked, yes. I still cannot overlap more than two prototypes, which is fine.

I have a tool which places grass according to maps and some settings. Most levels in my game use around 8 prototypes, the tool calls SetDetailLayer on the whole level once for each prototype. Before my modification, new calls to SetDetailLayer would set a density value of 0 on areas of the level where the current prototype was not placed, which would erase previously placed grass on the same channel, even if I was not actually placing new grass there.

I'm not sure if that is how SetDetailLayer was meant to be used, but by changing it so that if it does not call SetDensity with a density of 0, it works for me.

 

Oh I see makes sense. Will have a look! and submit a fix this or next weekend

 

Have you found a solution to the height problem? I still have not found why it happens.

 

Hi Elroy,
I'm still trying to get uNature to work with World Streamer. I've tried all sorts of combinations to get it to stream, but still nothing. Even if I copy the Foliage Manager from the Build scene (where uNature grass is working fine) to the streamed scene, still nothing. The grass seems to work fine in the Build scene if items such as the pools and thread manager are disabled, but not when the foliage manager script is disabled. I figured that duplicating or streaming the same foliage manager over would work, but it doesn't seem to work. Any ideas?

 

Can you repeat the issue you are encountering please?

What you need to do is have 1 foliage manager ONLY on the game scene. Not on any of the streamed scenes. you want to have all of the streamed areas loaded into the game scene, do the grass stuff, and only then you want to stream it into different scenes. Note again that none of them should have any foliage managers or something of that sort.

 

It's about the grass jumping to wrong Y positions with a spread noise value of anything other than 0.

With a value of 0, grass sits roughly on the ground.


If I change the value to 0.01, some grass jumps to a different Y position.

 

Okay, that worked. The only issue is that the grass isn't streamable, so it has to be edited in the Game scene like you said. It's not a huge issue, it just means it takes some extra work to make it look nice.
Thanks for the help!

 

@ElroyUnity

Is uNature still being developed? 4 months ago you stated the "Remastered" version (that fixes the issues users have been having) was about ready for a beta release, but no news since then.

 

Hey,
It is still being developed but slowly as I got recruited to the army 3 months ago, and so haven't been able to do any programming. I am getting back to programming slowly and should be in a much better state in the next month or two

 

Hi,

I have a problem with uNature, any time when I do a copy foliage from terrain there is no foliage afterwards, no matter if I paint it with the Unity brush or generate it with GAIA, all foliage gets deleted. I'm able to paint foliage with the foliage manager, but I would like to have my foliage spawned with GAIA.

uNature 2.4.2, Unity 2017.3.0f3

What I'm doing wrong, any suggestions.

Regards

Frank

 

Hey,
Are u using the latest asset store version?
Do you have UNSeeker attached to your camera?
Is your terrain layer included in the "Maps Generation Mask" in the foliage manager window? If not, add the terrain layer and select "Yes" in the dialog that pops up (or click update heights at the top of the window)


Elroy

 

I'm getting the BrushProjector(clone) game object error as well and it's causing an issue with another script. Is there any way to remove this? I can disable, but I would prefer to remove it.

 

What do u mean? Can you show me a ss?

 

I think you can forget about this asset.
In fact it is abandoned.
Author of this asset all the time in army or in vacation
It is so fun to read this thread.
Ha-ha

 

It is not abandoned. Development is simply on hold at the moment. I am providing support for both uNature and uConstruct but I simply don't have the time to continue the Remastered version due to being in the army. Once stuff settles down I will resume the development, which shouldn't take long.

 

Hi, I don't know if this has been asked before... Given that uNature relies on multithreading, I was wondering whether this could have any interaction, problem or incompatibility with the Unity 2018 Job System. Sorry if it's a dumb question, I'm a self-taught coder.
I already bought this asset, haven't tried it yet. Still, I'm basing all my terrain in MapMagic, so any advance with this would be very appreciated.

 

I'd love to hear if you have success combining uNature with MapMagic @Nunez-Torrijos

 

Should work just fine
Getting into a regular schedule in the army in 2 months and then should be back on developing the assets.

 

Are we getting instancing fixed for 2017 ?? its been months and months ......thats the whole reason for the asset....its supposed to be GPU grass.. theres a competing product out for the same price and this developer will get beat by them if he doesnt fix his stuff pretty soon!

 

Hi, Sorry to hear you got swept away by the army. I suspect that this was mandatory - had a few friends in the EU that did this as well.

I bought uNature a while ago and got it working without issue (great plugin!) - I am now trying to add it to a new game, but when I add it to a new project - it is not showing up in the menu under Window->uNature. I looked everywhere for it. I am using 2017.3.1f1 - thx for any help.

 

I also wanted to mention that there are UN scripts under Component -> Scripts but they all seem inactive. If I could get a base setup for GPU grass setup - even with some manual tweaking it would be super helpful. I am likely missing something here on my end... :|